Ex-Minneapolis rocker is in a hot spot on Jack White’s label

If you were a high school student in Minneapolis in the late 2010s, there’s a good chance you had a sub who’s now recording for Jack White’s label.

“I was a substitute teacher all over the city,” Will Anderson revealed.

The frontman for the noisemaking New York City rock band Hotline TNT — some of you may also know him as “Mr. A” — recounted his teaching years and a lot more about his Minneapolis past in a phone call two weeks ago before hitting the road. He and his bandmates are due in town again Sunday at the Underground Music Venue, a site that suits the band’s DIY business ethics.

Those ethics recently earned Hotline TNT some national headlines. The band’s singer, songwriter and guitarist publicly railed against Spotify and removed all his band’s music from the industry’s biggest but lowest-paying streaming platform.

“The company that bills itself as the steward of all recorded music has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that it does not align with the band’s values in any way,” Anderson was quoted by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and other music news sites.

In our follow-up conversation, Anderson sounded surprised his anti-Spotify announcement got so much attention — a sign, he said, that more famous musicians are not making a similar stance.

“I think a lot of artists wish they could do what we’re doing, but they can’t because their labels aren’t cool with it,” he said.

“It is going to take Third Man longer to recoup their money invested in our record without Spotify revenue from it,” he added, but said the company “went along with us on it, and I don’t think a lot of other labels would have. That means a lot to me.”

Of course, getting signed to Third Man meant a lot to Anderson in the first place.

“That was one of the cooler things I was able to tell my parents: ‘Hey, Jack White’s label is going to sign my band,’ because they knew who he was,” he said.

He admitted the band has met White only once, but added, “I think part of the idea is he and his partners find bands they like and then let them do their thing.”

Anderson, 36, took a very roundabout way to indie-rock stardom. He dabbled in bands growing up in Chippewa Falls, Wis., and then got more serious about music after moving to Vancouver for college. He spent 10 years there performing with several bands, including Weed.

“When I moved to Minneapolis, I really thought I wasn’t going to play music anymore,” Anderson confessed.

Instead, he started Hotline TNT as a home-recording project. By the time he moved to New York in 2019 — where he intended to go to a work as a school counselor — he had also gotten more serious about TNT. As pandemic restrictions eased, the group starting playing out live and landed the deal with Third Man to release its second album, “Cartwheel.”

An elaborate and alluring blend of cranked-up, fuzzed-out guitars and softer, tender power-pop melodies, “Cartwheel” belied the lo-fi recording techniques behind it and wound up being named one of the best albums of 2023 by such influential music blogs as Pitchfork, Paste and Stereogum.

Many of the writeups on Hotline TNT have called it a shoegaze band, a term that Anderson sounded neither eager or embarrassed to accept.

“My understanding and interest in shoegaze music pretty much starts and ends with one band: My Bloody Valentine,” he said.

Those year-end accolades led to even more attention for the group’s newly issued third album, “Raspberry Moon.”

The band recorded it in Appleton, Wis., to work with one of that city’s scene makers as the producer, Amos Pitsch of the band Tenement. It was the first time a Hotline TNT album was made with the whole band in the studio at once, resulting in an even bigger sound in the noisier tracks but also some richer layers in a couple mellower tracks.

“Raspberry Moon” dropped in June, the same week the band opened for local faves Hippo Campus at Surly Brewing Festival Field. While Anderson heretofore has been the only permanent Hotline TNT member, the four-man lineup that recorded the new LP and played Surly is the same one headed to town on tour this weekend.

“It’s kind of been circumstantial up till now,” the frontman said of the lineup changes. “Dedicating your life to being on the road is harder to do in your 30s than it was in your 20s. ... Even if it changes again, the lineup we have now still all made this record together, and it wouldn’t be the same record without these four people.”

When: 7 p.m. Sun.