Captains of Entropy Take ‘Rosetta’ Into Outer Space

A song sketch inspired by a spacecraft’s journey to a comet has become a musical adventure for Captains of Entropy. On “Rosetta,” the West Los Angeles trio revisits an idea that began in 2014, developing it through live instrumentation and extending its story into a video built around everyday routines and outer-space escape.

The instrumental appears on the band’s digital EP, Beatrice Comes Home. For keyboardist Mike Kanon, bassist Reilly Wareham and drummer Jason Young, the release reflects a creative process in which older fragments find new purpose through playing together.

Captains of Entropy – Press Photo 2026

Captains of Entropy formed during the pandemic, when the three musicians began meeting for weekly jams. Their debut LP, The Flea & The Worm, recorded at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, brought that improvisational foundation into a collection drawing on ’70s textures and exploratory arrangements.

With “Rosetta,” the band gives that approach a visual world of its own.

From Daily Routines to Handmade Space Travel

The “Rosetta” video moves between scenes filmed inside Young’s house and space sequences assembled with cardboard artwork, costumes and practical effects. A spaceship built in a friend’s garage becomes the setting for the trio’s departure from ordinary life.

Matthew Mourgides directed the house sequences and developed the concept around repetition and escape.

“The music immediately gave me this feeling of repetition and escape, of being trapped in the rhythms of everyday life while dreaming of something bigger,” he says. “I wanted the three band members to almost feel like fragments of the same person, moving through this endless routine, until the world they’ve been dreaming about starts breaking through and eventually becomes their reality.”

Without lyrics to guide the narrative, the imagery carries that transformation. Below, the band explains how the song evolved, what went into constructing its space-bound setting and where its next recordings are headed.

Watch Captains of Entropy’s “Rosetta”:

Revisiting the First Spark

What sparked the idea for “Rosetta”?

Mike: The initial seed that ended up as Rosetta was born way back around 2014 when the actual space mission reached its comet destination. I read about it on the news at the time and was inspired to come up with a spacey type dance track. I had a basic sketch of a song on my computer but I abandoned it. One day while jamming with the Captains, we decided to revisit it and see if it had any legs. It began to take shape as a high-energy number with organic instruments. It’s wild to see the journey it’s taken!

The song takes its name from the Rosetta space mission. What made you connect the music with space?

Mike: I’ve always been into tone poems or instrumental sketches/fragments that evoke a time or place, etc. In this case, I was tickled by the idea that we sent a spaceship all the way to a comet. So I guess the initial idea was an attempt to portray that event musically. Little did I know we’d years later be putting on our astronaut suits for real.

How Weekly Jams Become Songs

Since the band started during the pandemic, your weekly jams have been a big part of your sound. How do those sessions usually come together?

Reilly: We have a regular day and time; we try to meet at that same time every week if we can. The sessions are pretty casual, and the agenda changes depending on what phase of the creative process we’re in.

In the early stages, we often show up with a blank slate. We may not even talk about what we’re going to play; we just settle in, somebody starts playing something, the others join, and we’re jamming – pure open improvisation. Sometimes we’ll do that for 20 or 30 minutes at the top of a session. We get a lot of good ideas from those jams.

Then we’ll work with one of those ideas or with an idea that someone brings in. That work also begins with improvisation; this is the riff, the scale, the chord change or whatever- let’s play with it and see what happens. And things happen! The ideas seem to take on a life of their own, and new parts will spontaneously arise as we play.

Over time, ideas get refined, compositions emerge, and as the cream of the crop rises to the top, the agenda shifts. The focus turns from open exploration to intentional composition and finally to plain old rehearsal, tightening up the performances as we look ahead to the next recording session.

Your music often starts with improvisation. How do you know when a jam has turned into something worth developing?

Mike: There’s no magic formula; it just sort of happens if and when it does. The voice memo app is huge for us… as one of us will often record our jam sessions and then revisit and mine for ideas that are worth developing.

Oftentimes we use the jams as a way to fill in the gaps, so to speak when one of us brings in an idea ahead of time. Ideas that need more sections or parts many times get “solved” via jamming. Other times we just start playing with no plan and see if anything cool happens and if it does, go back and figure out if there’s a song in there somewhere.

To me the earworm test is helpful. If you find yourself singing or hearing the melodies later when you’re at home or in the car then you have something.

Building the World of ‘Rosetta’

The “Rosetta” video moves between everyday life and outer space. How did that concept come together?

Reilly: We had a lot of ideas bouncing around when we first met with Matthew to discuss the video. One was to do something like a “day in the life” type video with the three of us going about our daily routines. We all liked that idea, but we also wanted to acknowledge the initial inspiration for the song by working in some space imagery too. We presented that to Matthew and he ran with it.

Honestly, we all have so many ideas about the visuals for our music, but none of us really has any clue about how to put those ideas together to make a compelling video. That’s why it’s nice to have someone who’s not in the band take the helm for the visual content on a project like this.

When I showed up to the first day of the shoot, I was not at all clear about the vision, but Matthew sure seemed to have it pretty well figured out. We just trusted him, went along for the ride, and had a lot of fun!

The space scenes use handmade sets, costumes, and a spaceship built in a friend’s garage. What was it like bringing that world to life?

Reilly: Once again, we’ve gotta give props to the video crew. Matthew and his team of creative people are remarkably talented and inventive, and the world they built for us was truly amazing. As far as I know, everything was handmade from household materials.

Sam made the entire spaceship. Ryan poked pinholes through black sheets of cardboard with lights shining from behind to look like stars outside the spaceship; he and Matthew slid them past the portal windows to make it look like we were moving through space! Watching all the practical special effects was so fun; it was like being on the set of an old B sci-fi movie from the 1950’s.

I’m happy to report that I contributed my talents by crafting the paper mache helmets that were worn throughout the video. Matthew had rented some helmets for us to wear, but when I couldn’t get one to fit over my huge head, I volunteered to make them myself. That turned out to be quite an undertaking, but I had a lot of fun, and I’m really happy with how they came out..

You worked with Matthew Mourgides on the video. How did his ideas fit with what you heard in the music?

Jason: Well we had the general space theme for Rosetta and trusted Matthew completely after his work on last year’s video for The Flea. The homemade aspect of the space stuff came from my love of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Michel Gondry

Old Ideas and the Next Chapter

The EP title, Beatrice Comes Home, came from an earlier song idea. Do you often find old ideas taking on new lives?

Jason: That’s often where ideas come from for us. An old riff that Mike wrote works its way into a jam, and then we have a new song idea.

What’s next for Captains of Entropy as you keep building this musical world?

Jason: The EP is basically the first 3rd of the music that we finished this year. While we love the EP, our favorite two-thirds of that music is currently unreleased and will be arriving next year in the form of a full-length LP.

Before we wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with your fans?

Jason: Get ready for a lot more music and videos from the Captains in 2027! We can’t wait to share all of this new work with you.

Follow Captains of Entropy through their official website, YouTube channel and Instagram.

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