Every Sunday at Lindbergs Tavern in Springfield, Missouri, there’s an open jam. It’s the kind of thing that sounds unremarkable until you realize how many bands it keeps producing. Navi — Jonah Rogers, Kaleb Howerton, and brothers Judah and William Evans — found each other at one of those sessions in early 2025.
Kaleb and Jonah already knew each other from a local music store that ran group lessons, where they’d briefly been in another band. William and Judah happened to be at the same jam. “After a few awkward conversations, we arranged a jam for next Saturday at their house,” Kaleb says. That week, they learned a handful of covers, including “You Ganked My Spirit Walker” by local band Pomfret.
On January 11th, 2025, Navi had their first rehearsal in Judah’s basement — Kaleb and Jonah on guitar and vocals, Judah on drums, and a different bassist at the time. They recorded and uploaded their cover of the Pomfret track. Pomfret liked it enough to offer them a show. Over the next five months, the band wrote and rewrote songs, folded in piano and synths, and William joined on bass. Their first show happened May 17th, 2025, at the Dish Pit.
Their debut EP, “Summer Vertigo, Settled Into A Different Shape,” is a bit sloppy, heartfelt thing — twinkling mathy emo with wobbly vocals that don’t try to be perfect, with zero off-key moments and that’s exactly the point. It’s the kind of stuff that owes something to Brave Little Abacus (you can hear it in the music, see it in the cover art), and it lands perfectly as a spring record.
“Songs dedicated to and about everything and everyone,” reads the band’s Bandcamp page. Kaleb frames it more specifically: “It is a record about change — both personal and environmental changes, for better and for worse. There are overarching themes of both sleep and space throughout the lyrics, as for me, these things represent change.” He’s careful to note that the songs are left open enough for listeners to bring their own meaning to them. “I think art and music are elevated when the listener can apply their own meaning to them.”
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Parts of the EP predate the band itself — some pieces go back to late 2024 and early 2025, before Navi ever formally existed. The last three songs on the record, from “Trees” through “Komorebi,” have been in the set since their very first show. “A lot of change comes with that amount of time, not just personally and artistically but also sonically,” Kaleb explains.
“We made changes to these songs until they were ready to be mastered, adding and removing various elements.”
The songs came out of a rough stretch. “I wrote them about some of my lowest moments,” he says. “However, I find that when I make art about these negative experiences, I tend to dwell on them, focusing so much that I begin to fall back into the negative emotions I was writing about. So I tend to avoid the antipathetic route and think of these situations through a hopeful lens.”
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Before Navi, none of them had done much beyond casual playing. “Navi has been our first real endeavor into creating music,” Kaleb says. He’d spent some time writing alone — two or three fully realized songs that have since been scrapped — but the band is their first proper project.
Springfield’s scene, meanwhile, deserves its own paragraph. “The Springfield scene is nothing short of a miracle,” Kaleb says. Lindbergs Tavern is the main venue, and despite being one of the few spots in town that consistently supports heavier music, the scene still pulls weekly shows averaging 200 people. Navi aren’t a hardcore band, but they’ve been welcomed without hesitation. Their biggest supporters have been Judah and William’s parents and, again, Pomfret.
“They have always been our biggest supporters, even at our very worst, always giving us amazing advice, offering us great shows, and just being cool dudes. They’re practically our band uncles at this point.”
The love and unity at those local shows, Kaleb adds, played a big part in shaping the EP and its themes.
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As for 2026, nothing is locked in yet. The plan is more shows, new music, and a tour sometime over the summer. For now, the band has been taking it easy after the release. “We are friends before we are a band,” Kaleb says, “and we have spent the past few practices just hanging out around Springfield.”
