Nate and Ben call it catching the ghost.

“It’s a spirit or feeling that’s in the room that day.  Sometimes you catch it and sometimes you don’t… it’s what lets us know that we’re on the right track,” says Nate Quiroga, aka Mad Rad’s Buffalo Madonna and one half of Seattle rock duo Iska Dhaaf.  We’re in their rehearsal space, and Nate and Ben Verdoes (drums/keys/vocals/other half of the band) are explaining how they know a song is done.  After nearly 3 years of playing and writing together, the two couldn’t be more on the same page.  “We recorded the song that we’re releasing Friday 4 different times,” says Ben, “We’d go home and listen to it and call each other and we’d both have the same problems with it.  We’d rather get it right than get it done.  It takes however long it takes.”

This “do whatever it takes” attitude is maybe the most refreshing thing about the monstrously talented Seattle music scene veterans.  And I had the chance to watch them practice a few days ago. As they ran through their set, I was taken by how the songs seemed to be alive. The abstract hum and drone of electronic signals and feedback provided the ether that lulled one into a state of submission, providing a sonic stem from which the songs emerged, some with a crash, some with a whimper, all with the searching, introspective lyrics, and all possessing full individuality and independence from their predecessors.  This, says Nate, is by design, “Our songs just kind of materialize; we don’t aim for a sound as much as we just allow the song to define itself.  It’s very rare that we finish a song in a couple days or weeks.  Mostly it takes months, and in some cases, years or more.  We’re not interested in rushing the process.”

They consider their goal not to practice or merely play through the song, but to play it every day together, or in Ben’s words, “to live with it and allow the song room to grow.”

“Everything else has felt forced,” Nate says, “unless I get out of the way and let the song communicate what it wants to communicate.”

Ben described why this is most desirable: “It’s like when you wander into something.  Those are the most sincere moments.  The best things you experience in life are discoveries that happen organically, not on a schedule or a deadline.  This is a collection of our discoveries.”

This is how Iska Dhaaf started.  In the beginning, Nate didn’t know how to play guitar or piano, both of which he plays with proficiency now.  “I’ve always been secure in my taste,” he says, “and I’ve always felt confident in my songwriting, so now it’s a matter of living up to that taste and pulling it all together.”  Ben took a step back from his duties as front man in Seattle staple Mt St Helens Vietnam Band, a move he describes as being easy.

“I feel really comfortable in both roles,” he says.  “It’s more about what the music calls for.  If it makes sense for me to sing the leads I will, but it’s more about whatever works best for the music.”

Nate and Ben’s self-disclosed perfectionism was easy to see as I sat in the rehearsal space watching them play.  Nate fine tuned his guitar effects during breaks in the songs, and Ben played simultaneous keys and drums, all while singing backup, and as I watched, he adjusted the volume on the piano with the same hand that was playing it.  It’s this pervasive, obsessive search for the best version of the song that prompted me to ask how their perfectionist natures coincide with the literal meaning of Iska Dhaaf, which, in Somali, translates: “to let go.”

Nate and Ben laughed and explained that it’s a reminder for the two to sit back and relinquish musical control to the song itself, not so much guiding the destination.  It’s as if they know that it might be their own personal desire for precision that helps the ghost elude them.   “I have to be prepared for shows.  I need to be able to say that I prepared to the best of my ability,” says Ben.  It’s as if the obsession prevents them from having a bad show, and both agree that it’s the idea that they’ve been living with their music that gives them security in performance.

When asked what’s next, the duo’s eyes light up.  They speak of releasing a 7” single of their track “Happiness” this month, a video for a single to be released in September (for which they’re seeking 400 extras), and a full-length they call, Drones.  The video, for the song “Everybody Knows” will be loosely based on a Vietnam-era USO show, and their excitement is palpable as they describe it to me.

The new record, says Ben, is something completely different.  Backed by the mega-independent Brick Lane Records, Iska Dhaaf has already started work on the new album, of which Ben is already obsessed – and if there’s anything that I’ve learned by talking to the duo, it’s that when they become obsessed with something, Seattle is in for a treat.