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ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Rilo Kiley reunited this year, says guitarist Blake Sennett, almost the same unplanned way the band originally broke up.

The Los Angeles indie band began its drift apart after a concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on June 18, 2008, its final performance until May this year.

By 2011, Sennett sounded in interviews as if the band was finished Jenny Lewis, Rilo Kiley's lead singer and Sennett's songwriting partner, made it official a few years later: Rilo Kiley was over.

By 2021, Sennett and Lewis, who both live in Nashville, Tennessee, were pursuing their own lives and careers, though still with a bond of friendship forged from years in the band.

"The first time I remember it coming up in any kind of way, I was over at Jenny's house helping her replace the battery in her alarm," Sennett recently on a phone call during the 2025 tour.

"Then she walked me out to go, and we got to the car and got to talking about different friends who were doing these reunions and stuff like that," he says. "That was probably the first time we even spoke of, 'Oh, that would be cool someday; that'd be fun.'"

Then, Just Like Heaven reached out last year, asking the band's members, which also include bassist Pierre de Reeder and drummer Jason Boesel, if they'd consider reuniting for the Pasadena indie rock festival held in May.

"Jenny and Duke -- we call our bass player Duke -- had talked about it, and I think they just approached Jason and I," Sennett says. "It was pretty simple. Duke said, 'Hey, there's this festival, and Jenny and I are down.' And I was like, 'Yeah, why not?'"

When that festival begat another festival offer, and then another and another, Sennett says the band realized it had a decision to make.

"We could either fly home in between each one, or play some dates in between," he says. "One thing led to another, and it became a full tour.

"So far, it's been really delightful, really fun," Sennett says. "Really a great opportunity to hang out with your old -- well, I could say old friends, but they're closer to your old family members -- and travel. And with the benefit of wisdom and all that stuff, so it so far has been a very pleasant, super fun, worthwhile experience."

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Sennett talked about why the band broke up, his fondest memories of the early days playing small clubs in Echo Park and Silver Lake, what it felt like to see the response of fans at the new tour this year, and more.

Q: After the 2008 tour, it was unclear what was happening with the band, and then it was over. What caused things to end back then?

A: We had been together for much longer than the band had been putting out music. [Debut album "Take Offs and Landings" arrived in 2001.] It was our first-ever band, Jenny and I at least, and we were the songwriters and sort of the nucleus of the initial band. Jenny and I were a two-piece before it was a band.

We'd just been playing together for so long. I think it was just life started to form and adulthood formed. I think it was time to try to step away and try a life that was less enmeshed. It was just time.

It was just time emotionally. Communication wasn't what it once was. And I don't mean there was some big problem, I just mean the band bore these symptoms of something that had been carrying a lot for a long time, and it was just time for a fresh start.

Q: You had already done the Elected side project during the band, and you and Jenny and the other guys had, or have, done other things. What was it like to go outside Rilo?

A: It probably was better in some ways and worse in others. I think I was able to come into Night Terrors [of 1927, his first post-Rilo band] with a lot more knowledge and confidence in songwriting ability. But I probably also came in with a slight ambivalence, I would say.

I mean, Night Terrors happened semi-overnight. It was a friend [James Gorbel] and I's writing project. We had been writing for a month by the time we got signed, compared to Rilo Kiley, which was like seven years by the time it got signed. So it was very different.

I think Rilo Kiley was very much a band, very much an "All for one, one for all," fueled by desperation and the wine of youth. It was very beautiful.

Night Terrors was cool too, but much more like a project. We would get together from this time to this time every day and write. So more of a professional rather than a bunch of young kids who didn't know any better, writing their hearts out and trying to be seen.

Both beautiful in their own different ways, but very, very different. One very measured and the other very sort of flying by the seat of our pants.

Q: When you think about those early days before Rilo got signed, playing small clubs and all that, what are the fondest memories?

A: It was beautiful, man. I mean, we were so galvanized and we were so broke and we were so uniquely placed in the work. Jenny and I were both former actors, and that was a time when being a former actor wasn't necessarily an asset. Especially in the indie rock world, where your currency is authenticity.

Though we felt we were 100% authentic, and we were being 100% authentic in the songwriting, there was also this notion of, "Well, you're an actor, so how authentic could you possibly be? You get paid to act like someone else." So I think we felt really us against the world, and it as beautiful, you know? It was incredible.

It was buying the [lousiest] Dodge van you could find, taking out the back two seats and building a bed platform so you could sleep through the night while someone else drove. We would never really sleep. It is so dangerous; it's so insane.

It was this very beautiful fight to roll the boulder up to the top of the mountain. Looking back on that, I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Q: When did it start to feel like it was going to work out for Rilo?

A: When "Execution of All Things" [the band's 2002 sophomore album] came out, I remember leaving on tour, our first tour, and from the time we left to the time we got to Orlando, you could feel that record sort of building. Like in Phoenix, there's 18 people, and by the time you got to the Social in Orlando, it was sold out.

Sold out in those days was like a couple of hundred people, but it felt like Wembley Stadium. It felt like, "We did it, oh my God." So it was cool, man. When you're building something like that, you don't stop to appreciate it because you're always fighting. You're always in the uncertainty: Will it happen or not?

And I still don't think I do that very well. I think I still don't savor the small victories along the way. But looking back, yeah, it was magical. Something that, I don't know, it was romantic, like something you'd read in a book when I look back.

Q: In May, you came back with small shows in San Luis Obispo and Ojai, and then a huge one at Just Like Heaven. What was it like after the long layoff?

A: [He laughs] Yeah, it was a little bit of an unknown. We put those first shows on sale, but they were very small shows, a thousand people or so, so it was unknown. But Just Like Heaven, we didn't expect 28,000 people to be watching us.

Looking at it now, when we play, I'm very proud of when you look out and people are singing all the songs, or in some cases weeping or holding each other, loved ones, and sharing a moment. I feel proud to have been a part of something that moved people's hearts and made people feel seen or a part of.

Because a lot of those songs, you know, I really see Jenny baring her soul, and it's pretty cool to see that it's moved people. Strangely, we see a decent amount of young kids now. We either see people 30-to-42 or much younger, 16 to 20. And maybe that's who it was originally written for. That sort of era, that piece of your life where you're just trying to figure out what the hell is happening after high school.

Q: I think you're right, and those feelings and memories stick around.

A: You know, man, everything is borrowed. Your body is borrowed. Just moments are borrowed. So the fact that I can live a life and borrow from an earlier version of me, and us, and borrow these moments where I get to appreciate and somehow host or curate something that people can watch and go, 'Wow, that's what I was hoping for. I was hoping to see those dudes.'

I'm kind of having my own moment up there that is unique. I'm definitely not feeling like I'm punching the clock.

Q: Before we go, I've got to ask a question I'm sure you've gotten a lot: What comes after this? More shows? A new record?

A: I don't know. I think that's the beauty of it; we truly don't know. I think we're going to do some more shows in 2026. We announced that Primavera fest [in Barcelona, Spain]. The beauty of being older and doing it is that I think we'll do it as long as it's fun. And if it becomes not fun, we won't do it anymore.

We used to do it because we needed to. Our lives depended on it. Now, I don't think that's the case. So the truth is, man, I don't know. A new record? Gosh, it hasn't been talked about. We're just taking it day by day, but so far the enjoyment's only grown from the moment we started ideating to the first practice in Los Angeles to the tour.

So let's see, you know? Let's see what the gods hold for us.

Q&A: How LA indie band Rilo Kiley reunited 17 years after walking away