Oklahoma City–based husband-and-wife band doubleVee are back with Periscope at Midnight (out July 25, 2025), an EP featuring four brand-new songs and two reworkings of Starlight Mints tracks. doubleVee consists of Allan Vest, formerly of Starlight Mints, and Barbara Vest, who began making music together in 2012. Their track Your Love Is It Real?, from the 2022 album Treat Her Strangely, was featured in an episode of the Netflix series Wednesday. We previously spoke with doubleVee about that album and recently caught up with them again to discuss the new EP.
It seems that you’ve been alternating between albums and EPs. Has that been an intentional pattern, or did it just happen naturally?
Allan Vest: That’s a good question. I don’t think it’s intentional, per se. It’s more like we’ll have a group of songs and think, “We just need a couple more, and then we can make an EP.”
Barbara Vest: It wasn’t intentional. We were really just testing the waters again after some things we’d been going through. We finished one song after another and decided six would be enough to share with the world.
The EP contains four new songs and two that were previously recorded by Starlight Mints. Can you talk about how that came about and what motivated you to revisit those songs?
Barbara Vest: It just felt like a good time to revisit some of Allan’s earlier material and put our own spin on it. This year marks the 25th anniversary of The Dream That Stuff Was Made Of, the first Starlight Mints album. The opening track, Submarine #3, was one we wanted to tackle first as we started working on music again [the doubleVee version is called Submarine Number Three Vee.]
Allan Vest: That song started as a demo by the Starlight Mints and was later taken into the studio, but we never really expanded on it—never added a bridge or tried anything different. This gave us the opportunity to really produce it in a bigger way.
You mentioned getting back into making music. Had you taken a break? What was the timing of that?
Barbara Vest: Well, the timing was a little unfortunate. We released the album in July 2022, and then, in September of that year, Allan received his prostate cancer diagnosis. That kind of knocked us for a loop. I mean, it wasn’t completely out of nowhere—we’d been monitoring his PSA levels, which is something every prostate owner should pay attention to.
Allan Vest: And genetics played a role. My birth father—who we met several years ago—told us, “The one thing, just be aware of your prostate.” So we were already watching it closely.
Barbara Vest: Anyway, we got that diagnosis just shortly after the album’s release. Allan had surgery that year, has been closely monitored since, and was recently moved to yearly checkups instead of every six months. It does look like the surgery completely solved the issue, so we’re breathing a little easier—and just grateful to be working on music at all, considering the alternative.
Are there ways you feel that being away from music influenced your process once you started again?
Barbara Vest: Oh, I wouldn’t say we were completely away from it—we always had a little bit of music happening. But as far as deliberately saying, “Let’s really start and finish a song,” getting back to that was so life-affirming.
Were there any major differences in your overall process with this EP—instrumentation or otherwise?
Allan Vest: We pretty much had things dialed in. We even thought about approaching Submarine #3 with horns instead of strings, but we kept it close to the original version. One highlight for me was having Barb play keyboards on Maybe Tonight [What’s Inside of Me?]—that was really cool. We had a lot of fun, especially with the last song, Everyone’s Lonely Under the Sea. That was a really cool collaboration. Want to talk about that, Barb?
Barbara Vest: Sure! It was actually the last song we wrote and recorded for the EP—four months after we’d finished the previous one. We knew we wanted to write something based on this bass-synth-and-percussion idea Allan had come up with, but we hadn’t been able to focus on it. We were dealing with an extremely volatile situation that escalated to threats to rape and murder me. I ended up being granted a VPO against the perpetrator…as a past victim of violent crime, the experience was especially unsettling.
Four days after the hearing, I locked myself in my attic office and wrote the melody, bridge concept, and lyrics for Everyone’s Lonely Under the Sea—a direct reaction to feeling silenced and a way to vocalize that we should take all the time we need, drown everything out, and rise above it when we’re ready. We finished the song within a few days, and a couple of weeks later headed to 115 Recording to mix the final three tracks of the EP with Wes Sharon.
Allan Vest: That was the first time I’ve ever been part of a project where the songs we worked on ended up in the exact order they were created—the first one we did is track one, the second is track two, and so on.
Barbara Vest: And the sixth song wasn’t even going to be a single at first. Around that time, we thought, “Maybe we should do another nautical-themed song. Maybe even an album, throw in some public-domain pieces and expand it.” But it just naturally landed on two strong nautical themes, so we went with Periscope at Midnight as the overarching concept. And, of course, all the artwork ties into that beautifully—Grant Fuhst did another phenomenal job with it.
Last time I interviewed you, there was something you couldn’t mention, and it turned out to be your song being included in the Wednesday series.
Barbara Vest: That was just an amazing opportunity. We’d heard there was interest, but for a while we weren’t sure if it was really going to happen. And then it did—our song ended up being used in a jukebox in a café scene. It’s kind of tucked under the action, but it’s still our song, and that was really, really affirming—especially since that was right around the time of Allan’s diagnosis. We were reeling from the bad news, but then we had this really good news.
Allan Vest: Yeah, literally—I had surgery in December, and the show aired the month before.
Barbara Vest: And actually, it’s kind of funny because we’re in the same position again, waiting for confirmation on a song from this EP being used—in a movie this time. Fingers crossed on that one, because those kinds of placements really help with visibility. For a band like ours, that’s huge.
Allan Vest: Shout out to Rough Trade Publishing, by the way. And Bank Robber Music.
Is that something you actively pursue with doubleVee?
Barbara Vest: I think our music is naturally cinematic—Allan’s has always had that quality. It lends itself well to supporting dramatic scenes. And like Allan said, we have a publisher who works on our behalf and keeps an ear out for opportunities where our music might fit. In this streaming era, where we’re earning fractions of a penny per stream, getting licensing opportunities is a lifeblood for a band at our level.
Last time we talked about the potential for live shows. What’s the current status of that?
Allan Vest: We were actively practicing as a four-piece.
Barbara Vest: That was during pandemic times.
Allan Vest: Yeah, it was tricky because we were testing before practices.
Barbara Vest: It was amazing, though, getting to flesh out the sound with a bassist and drummer and practice a few times like that. But ultimately, it didn’t pan out. We decided to focus on writing new music, and then the bassist who had provided the practice space couldn’t do that anymore. We’re just not in a place right now where we can afford to rent a space or pay people to practice with us.
So it became more like, “We’ll play shows someday.” But then you keep rehearsing and realize, “Okay, we’d be paying all this just to get there,” and on top of that, some venues are even taking a percentage of merch sales—which is ridiculous. It’s just harder than ever to make an income from playing live.
Allan Vest: The idea is still on the chalkboard. If we decided next week to play live, it would probably just be the two of us at first, to see how that works. We have so much instrumentation, so it’s a challenge, but it would be a lot cheaper with two people.
Regarding the singles you’ve released from the EP, was it obvious which songs you wanted to release first?
Barbara Vest: That’s actually kind of a fun story, because our plan for the second single was originally Diamond Thumb. But then we finished Everyone’s Lonely Under the Sea—again, under duress. We’d had a huge, disturbing conflict in our lives that ended with me getting a VPO against someone who had threatened me, so we were pretty distracted.
About three days after that court date, I went upstairs, shut myself in the attic, and started working with this little idea Allan had come up with.
Allan Vest: It wasn’t even really a melody—just a bassline and a hook.
Barbara Vest: Right. So I wrote a melody and lyrics to it in about fifteen minutes. I wasn’t sure it would stick, but it did. We finished that song within about ten days—two weeks at most—and said, “Okay, six songs, we’re done.” Then we thought, “Maybe this could be a single.” I was nervous because me on lead vocals isn’t something I normally envision being promoted as a single.
For more info, visit doublevee.net. Purchase doubeVee music at doublevee.bandcamp.com.
