Raised in rural Pennsylvania, Kenniff began playing music at age 10 and studied percussion at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, releasing Helios’s 2004 debut Unomia while still in school. “At first there was no intention of actually putting anything out,” says Kenniff. “Helios was just a way for me to experiment with making music without having to get in a band—I could just do it on my own whenever I wanted.” Over the next decade, Kenniff released five more albums as Helios, along with creating post-classical music under the name Goldmund, collaborating with his wife Hollie in the shoegaze-inspired pop duo Mint Julep, and frequently composing music for film and television. In his pursuing multiple musical projects over the years, Kenniff’s continually returned to Helios as a channel for his most personal and self-contained creative output. “Making music for Helios is very soothing to me,” he says. “When I sit down to write, I turn my brain off and go on autopilot, and sooner or later the songs will come to me. I don’t think about it and I don’t ever try to force anything—if something’s going to happen, then it’s going to happen on its own.”
