Meeting with the band Brea at a table set up in CSUMB’s North Quad, it seems like the band has already made it in the music business. As I ask questions about their three-year career, a trio of students from the Brooks Institute film Brea for a documentary.

Besides being the subject of a film, the members of Brea have a lot of other good things going for them. This September, the band released an impressive and well-produced six-song EP titled The Immense Design of Things, which is available at regional CD stores like Santa Cruz’s Streetlight Records and San Jose’s Tower Records. The CD, which veers from the angular indie rock of “Hold On” to the poppier acoustic ballad “Bitter Sweet,” was produced, engineered and mixed by Paul “Polo” Jones.

Just a couple months ago, Brea played a convention for the International Music Products Association in Anaheim. The band says they saw well-established musicians like Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction and members of Korn at the event.

The sole CSUMB student in the band, Josh White, says that when Brea started out they wanted to be a “post-hardcore metal kind of band.” A month later, vocalist Leia Layus joined the group and steered Brea in a new direction—towards a more unique marriage of indie rock and pop. Guitarist Scott Schulze admits the group failed to have a distinct sound until Layus came along and penned lyrics for their song “So Long to Streetlights.” “Writing music without lyrics is like running with a blindfold,” he says of the band before Layus.

Now, the group is doing something else that usually only well-established bands attempt: they are in the midst of shooting a video for their new song “Cocaine Wedding.”