http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2014/jun/25/275658/

“I’m half here all the time, always waiting to arrive.”

This opening line from Iska Dhaaf’s “Sleepwalkers” is both the underlying theme of their debut album, “Even the Sun Will Burn,” and a plausible explanation for the two disparate spirits coming together as a psych-punk duo.

Iska Dhaaf will be one of four bands playing the No Magic debut tape release show outside of SeedCo. Studios, 826 Pennsylvania St., starting at 5 p.m. Friday.

Guitarist/vocalist Nathan Quiroga and drummer/keyboardist Benjamin Verdoes were both members of two buzzing Seattle bands when they decided to take a step back, and join forces taking their new act an entirely different direction.

A direction, they hoped, would help them discover “something more” to get rid of a “half here” feeling within.

“We were trying to discover something and understand ourselves,” Verdoes says. “It’s that existential crisis or human condition to want to understand yourself and view the world in a meaningful way.”

Verdoes, a member of rock quartet Mt. St. Helen Vietnam Band, says he was looking to learn how to make beats for electronic music, and reached out to the producer of other top band in the city, Mad Rad, the hip-hop electronic group where he’d find Quiroga. Quiroga had been looking to learn guitar to write songs from scratch. It was a perfect trade off of skills.

Verdoes also wanted another outlet for life hardships; he took legal guardianship of his 9-year-old brother, Marshall, at age 24. He ended up teaching Marshall drums to play in MSHVB (still active) by the age of 12.

“I raised my brother in that band,” Verdoes says. “It was very complicated and everything about it was difficult.”

Verdoes and Quiroga took a rigorous songwriting approach, working for two years before releasing “Even the Sun,” during which Quiroga learned to play play guitar and keys.

A mutual love for Sufi poetry, and obsessing over writing, they pore through every detail of the songwriting process. So much that the phrase “iska dhaaf” or “let it go” in Somali — a language Verdoes speaks fairly fluently — had been thrown out so many times in the early phases of the project. It eventually became the name of the band, at the suggestion of Verdoes’s Somali girlfriend.

“What it came to mean for us was that process of leaving something alone, or not wanting to do something just because a lot of people think that you’re great at it,” Verdoes says. “You make art because it helps you cope with your existence.”

The album was an exploration of each of their individual identities, addressing questions of self to purpose, and connectivity to others.

“There’s this running theme about how we’re connected all the time but we seem like it’s very difficult to connect with other people,” Verdoes says. “Whether it’s through your phone or some other preoccupation, we tend to be around other people but not necessarily be with them.”

Through writing –e specially on this next album, Verdoes says — they both hope to discover what it really is that they’re searching for.

“Music is so valuable and so beautiful because it’s intangible,” he says. “You’re saying something and it’s like a poem. You get that feeling, like, ‘Oh that describes that thing well, I still don’t know exactly what it is, but I feel a lot closer to it.'”

While it’s true they are obsessive wordsmiths, their live show is an entirely different energy you have to be present at to understand.

“We hope people are bumping up against each other and having an experience,” Verdoes says. “There’s a part of the songs that you wouldn’t just get from just the record.

Check out the video for single “Everybody Knows” below, featuring friend and fellow Seattle musician Macklemore.