Photography by Dan Monick

It can all change in a week. Life, death, love, indie rock trends—these are products of moments, not years. Everything can come together, or fall apart, in a flash. For Mikel Jollett, it all changed in March 2006. A writer, Jollett had just started his first novel. Those plans were quickly derailed in days. His mother was diagnosed with cancer, to match his terminally ill father. Jollett himself was diagnosed with a genetic autoimmune disorder, then pneumonia. And he broke up with a longtime girlfriend. “All this shit happened in the same week,” he recalls. “Everyone was sick. I felt sick. I felt everyone was dying. I thought I was going to lose my mind.” One day, Jollett picked up a guitar. He played for four hours straight. The next day, he played for six hours. Then eight hours. Everyday. For a year. “Out of nowhere,” he says, “I realized suddenly I had all this music in me.” As full-fledged songs soon developed, Jollett enlisted mutual friends from the Los Angeles area — drummer Daren Taylor, violinist Anna Bulbrook, bassist Noah Harmon, and guitarist Steven Chen — to form the Airborne Toxic Event.