Los Angeles band Inner Wave lets fans select the set list on its Jukebox Tour

Los Angeles-based indie band Inner Wave isn’t scared of change. In fact, the Inglewood-raised quintet very much embrace it.

Since inception, it has gone through various stages of musical transformation so members feel quiet comfortable heading out on yet another adventure dubbed the Jukebox Tour. The outing which kicks off at The Observatory North Park in San Diego on Thursday, Feb. 16 and winds down with hometown gigs at The Novo in Los Angeles Friday, March 17 and The Fox Theater Pomona on Saturday, March 18.

“Last year, while on tour, we all had points where we realized so much has changed in just one year,” bassist Jean Pierre Narvaez said during a recent phone interview. “There’s places and people that we have met along the way that were never important to us before, but now they are, and I think that’s something we’ve all grown to learn from it all.”

Since hardships are typically part of the game while living through your 20s, it’s that acceptance of evolving — even through the rough stuff — that has allowed the band to truly flourish. With some sudden time to spare during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the group took time to center themselves. In doing so, it focused on the inner workings of its fourth record, “Apoptosis,” its first to be recorded in an actual studio setting and was released in 2021. The album title refers to the biological process of the death of cells as part of an organism’s normal growth process, which symbolically resonated with the band in its transitioning state.

Founding members, vocalist Pablo Sotelo, guitarist Elijah Trujillo and bassist Jean Pierre Narvaez, started the band while in middle school in 2006.  The trio steadily laid the band’s foundation with daily after school practices in a garage as it experimented with sounds that would eventually lead to its current indie-psychedelic groove. Other members came and went, but the later additions of drummer Luis Portillo and keys player Jose Cruz were a “match made in heaven,” Narvaez said.

With a solid lineup, four records and a couple of EPs under its belt, the band hit the road hard in 2022 to support its latest effort, describing the tour schedule as a “crazy, beautiful long year journey” that propelled them to be more in tune with the music and as a unit. It also played shows in Europe supporting Boy Pablo, did both weekends of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, impressed at the Desert Daze Festival in Moreno Beach at Lake Perris and jumped on shows with groups like Chicano Batman, L’Impératrice and Foals.

“We had four legs (of the tour) with various openers, all based in different spots of the continent,” Sotelo explained. “Then, in the middle of that tour, we were offered to play with Boy Pablo on the other side of the world and all of Europe, which changed so much for us as a band and as individuals. We were basically in a different country every day. You’re in France one day, then the next, you’re in Italy or Hungary, and it just keeps going. We had to get used to that pace. And we definitely did, but we also learned to slow things down mentally. We’re happy to be home to wind down, but at the same time, we’re ready to make new music and memories.”