!!! (chk chk chk)

THR!!!LER

!!! (chk chk chk)'s new album "THR!!!ER"is the fifth full-length from the sonically adventurous sextet and finds the band reconciling its love for building playlists from disparate dance singles with its continued devotion to the cohesive album format. Famous for its off the hinges live shows and relentless touring schedule, this time the group focused itself on lyrics and tighter song structures. To help !!! on this mission, the majority of "THR!!!ER" was recorded with Jim Eno, the drummer in Spoon and one of key forces behind the boards for the lauded indie rock band.

Coming into "THR!!!ER", the members of !!! knew that this was an album where they almost had to reintroduce themselves, showing a developed and impactful take on how they present their sound. “It’s the kind of the record that feels like more of everything,” says vocalist Nic Offer. “It’s more immediate, it’s more honest about our lives. There was a real focus in this band. We knew the lyrics had to be better, the choruses had to be better, it had to be more original. We went for everything. Everything was pushed.”

!!! began the process for making "THR!!!ER" when Offer visited Jim Eno’s Austin studio during South by Southwest in 2011 with a few hours before their plane was supposed to leave. Eventually the whole band returned for several sessions in the spring and summer of 2012. !!! and Spoon are longtime fans of each other, and guitarist Mario Andreoni explains, they were attracted to working with Jim because, “We all had a healthy respect for the sound, space, and vibe of Spoon's LP's and Jim forced us to economize...the playing...the structure...lyrics. Everything had to have a purpose and hold attention.”

Like many people, Jim was a fan of !!!’s live show, but he felt that they too often tried to capture these performances in the studio. Instead of trying to chase this feeling, Jim encouraged them to create a different type of excitement by using weirder sounds, inventing new dynamics within each song and introducing unexpected changes. “They had this working flow that was a little rigid and I wanted to break them out of it,” says Jim. “Those guys can play, and if you can play, you might as well just play your instruments and record it.” In the end, !!! say it was Jim’s input that provided the cohesion that "THR!!!ER" needed.

!!! is a bicoastal band with over a decade of history. Offer, keyboardist Daniel Gorman, and new bassist Rafael Cohen (formerly of El Guapo and Supersystem) all live in Brooklyn, drummer Paul Quattrone resides in Pittsburgh, keyboardist Allan Wilson lives in Portland, Oregon, while Andreoni remains in Sacramento, where the group was formed. Understandably this situation isn’t the easiest for creating new music. “In the past we just put albums together any way that works,” says Andreoni, “That usually meant a lot of jamming on loose ideas. For "THR!!!ER", !!! went into the studio with everything written and a strong sense of each song’s shape.”

Says Offer, “We’ve never tried to make the same record twice, we might have accidentally, but we’ve always tried to push on. For this one it felt like we definitely shoved off from the shore.”

Listen: "One Girl/One Boy" (radio edit)

blue-eyed son

shadows on the son

Singer-songwriter-surfer Blue-Eyed Son (aka Andrew Hellprin) returns with the "Shadows on the Son"EP, featuring five bar-raising ways to soar with the wind and sing a new song.

Born in Wisconsin, Hellprin grew up in sunny Santa Barbara, California. After graduation from college and in between surfing excursions to exotic locales around the globe, he worked odd jobs and eventually formed the “sonic surf smoke punk” band 40 Watt Domain with a few friends.

Domain got fairly close to breaking big, releasing the album "Short Wave" in 2000 (on the Cultivate label; reissued via Eenie Meenie sub-label Gaki in 2004), playing the Vans Warped Tour and headlining at CBGB’s. Then it all fell apart following a hellacious press- and major-label-packed CMJ show where the band blew out the bass rig and spent the remainder of their set hopelessly trying to regain momentum.

“That was a tough time for me, because we had potential but weren’t able to capitalize on it,” he says. “We hit the ceiling, weren’t able to roll with it.”

During 40 Watt’s seven-year span, the songwriting had basically fallen into Heilprin’s lap, and he’d accumulated a lot of tunes. All along he’d made raising the bar his songwriting goal, inspired in part by Elliott Smith’s very personal ways of composing a song.

“His songwriting was much more complex than the usual,” says Heilprin. “His harmonies were amazing and all the parts he played were so different. Then the subject matter, the lyrics –– his writing was on an entirely different level. Storytelling at its finest.”

An idiosyncratic charm characterized Blue-Eyed Son’s 2004 debut "West of Lincoln" on Eenie Meenie. Recorded with drummer Scott McPherson (M. Ward, Elliott Smith, She and Him), and helmed by producer Koool G Murder (Eels, Donavan Frankenreiter), with engineering and production on one song by Doug Boehm (The Vines, Elliott Smith), the album smeared the lines between whisper-sung melancholia à la Elliott Smith and hard-edged poppy fare.

Produced by Australian singer-songwriter Matt Ellis and engineered by Ronan Murphy (King Crimson, Nels Cline), the upcoming "Shadows on the Son" (out 5/28), finds Blue-Eyed Son on an ambitious voyage through uncharted sonic shapes and sparkling lyrical imagery.

The loping strut of “All Went Black,” whose trumpet and chimes shine luminous rays onto a New Orleans-like carnival of sound. The quickstepping “Good Men Die Like Dogs” (“I remember the day John Lennon died”) shuffles on with countrified banjos and curly-cueing electric guitars. The anthemic “We’re Fighting a War” is a cinematic melting pot of epic string swells, marching drums and soaring dramatic arc.

The sun shines warm on the deep blue sea…and all you have to do is listen. Says Blue-Eyed Son, “Surfing and music have ways of transporting our minds and bodies to incredible new worlds, places that are both scary and intimidating yet filled with the most profoundly ridiculous beauty you will ever experience. If my songs express a small part of that feeling, then I’m happy.”

Listen: "All Went Black"

gibraltar

storms

Vocally powerful, soulful and at times even ethereal, this stellar and athletic release from the Seattle band has been turning heads lately and deftly moves from anthemic soloing through power pop chording to punk riffing, and is why they've made one of our flat our FAVE debut recordings of the last 5 years!

+ "One of the better local EP's I've come across recently, the new Gibraltar EP is a mix of raw emotion and heart felt energy."--John Richards | APD/Morning Show, KEXP

+ "... one of the best local debuts of the year." --Seattle Weekly

+ "potent post-punk tempest of, well, loud/quiet/loud dynamics"--KEXP.org's Song Of The Day

+ "falls on the spectrum of all sounds ever made, the fairly new Northwest band pitches a changeup, leaving me with more questions than answers." --The Stranger (Seattle)

A tourbus collision of Interpol & Guided By Voices. The perfect balancing act between janky & soaring guitars held together by saloony yet crushing piano. This is modern and classic.

+ mixed by Matt Bayles (Minus the Bear, The Sword, Mastadon, Cursive)

Listen: "Death Rays"

tom odell

Songs From Another Love

Tom Odell, winner of this year's BRITs Critics’ Choice Award, not only is currently on tour in North America, but also has released "Songs From Another Love", his debut EP. As part of the tour Odell also just made his US television debut on “Late Show with David Letterman”.

The 22-year-old artist is the first male ever to win the prestigious Critics’ Choice award. Past recipients include Adele, Florence and the Machine and Emeli Sandé. He was shortlisted in the BBC Sound Poll of 2013. Odell studied piano as a child and began writing his own songs at age 13. While he grew up in the West Sussex city of Chichester, his work is deeply influenced by American authors and filmmakers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac, Woody Allen and Wes Anderson. "Long Way Down", Odell’s full-length debut album, will be released in June.

London’s Sunday Times called “Another Love,” Odell’s first single, “genuinely chilling” and praised the “gothic atmospherics, febrile melodramatics and sense of imminent collapse” of “Can’t Pretend,” another track that appears on the disc. NME predicted: “you'll be hooked by the arresting energy of his voice.”

The EP is out in the States by RCA Records / In The Name Of (the label founded by Lily Rose Cooper aka artist Lily Allen).

Listen: "Another Love"

the national

5/16 NY State Theater - Ithaca, NY
5/26 Boston Calling Festival - Boston, MA
6/04 Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel - Providence, RI
6/05 Barclays Center - Brooklyn, NY
6/06 Merriweather Post Pavilion - Columbia, MD
6/07 Mann Center for Performing Arts - Philadelphia, PA
6/08 The National - Richmond, VA
6/10 Red Hat Amphitheater - Raleigh, NC
6/11 Stage AE - Pittsburgh, PA
6/13-16 Bonnaroo - Manchester, TN
6/15 The LC Pavilion - Columbus, OH
7/14 Bunbury Music Festival - Cincinnati, OH
8/01 Twilight Concert Series - Salt Lake City, UT
8/03 Lollapalooza 2013 - Chicago, IL
8/04 Murat Theater - Indianapolis, IN
8/05 Riverside Theater - Milwaukee, WI
8/06 Roy Wilkins Auditorium - St Paul, MN
8/09 Outside Lands (August 9-11) - San Francisco, CA
8/10 Greek Theatre - Los Angeles, CA
8/11 Hollywood Cemetery - Los Angeles, CA
9/07 LouFest (September 7-8) - St Louis, MO
9/08 Ryman Auditorium - Nashville, TN
9/09 Cobb Energy Center - Atlanta, GA
9/11 The Fillmore Charlotte - Charlotte, NC
9/12 Thomas Wolfe Auditorium - Asheville, NC
9/13 Iroquois Amphitheater - Louisville, KY
9/14 Laneway Festival - Detroit, MI
9/15 Orpheum Theatre - Madison, WI
9/17 Red Rocks Amphitheater - Morrison, CO
9/19 Paramount Theater - Seattle, WA
9/20 Paramount Theater - Seattle, WA
9/21 Edgefield Winery - Troutdale, OR
10/04-6 Austin City Limits Music Festival - Austin, TX
10/11-13 Austin City Limits Music Festival - Austin, TX

the national

Trouble Will Find Me

"Trouble Will Find Me", the most self-assured collection of songs produced by The National in its 14-year career, is a tribute to fully evolved artistic vision—and, somewhat less mystically, to sleep deprivation. Last January, following a twenty-two month tour to promote the band’s previous record, "High Violet", guitarist Aaron Dessner returned home to Brooklyn, where the fitfulness of his newborn daughter threw Aaron into a more or less sustained fugue state—“sleepless and up all the time,” as he puts it. Punch-drunk, he shuffled into the band’s studio (situated in Aaron’s backyard), where he amused himself writing musical fragments that he then sent over to vocalist Matt Berninger. Recalls Matt of Aaron, “He’d be so tired while he was playing his guitar and working on ideas that he wouldn’t intellectualize anything. In the past, he and Aaron’s twin brother, Bryce would be reluctant to send me things that weren’t in their opinion musically interesting—which I respected, but often those would be hard for me to connect to emotionally. This time around, they sent me sketch after sketch that immediately got me on a visceral level."

In truth, the band, which includes bassist Scott Devendorf and his brother Bryan on drums, hadn’t planned on recording new music for at least another year or two. The "High Violet" tour represented a quantum leap in The National’s trajectory; the venues got bigger and bigger, and the band felt the pressure to deliver the shows to larger crowds. Matt says, “We enjoyed it, but it was never easy. We always reminded ourselves that all of this is really fragile—that if we don’t deliver in, say, some festival show in Europe somewhere, we could start to slide.” Nor was returning to the studio likely to be cathartic, given the fact that The National’s last two recording sessions have been emotional high-wire acts in which the perfectionism of the five members—particularly Aaron and Matt—sometimes made for a tense time all around.

That didn’t happen this time. The post-"High Violet" sound Matt was seeking, says Aaron, “was more airy, less uptight and anxious. He sent me a lot of Cat Stevens, Neil Young, Dylan and David Bowie. And Bryce and I wanted a more relaxed and open sound too. We’d been getting deeper into the world of composed music in the last few years and developing more of an interest in classic songwriting.” The Dessner twins’ pursuits dovetailed with that of Matt, who says, “I went through a big Roy Orbison phase. I listened to a lot of him. His song structures are innovative, unconventional, yet somehow still effortless.” The Devendorf brothers then supplied their insistent, intricate backbeats, and what emerged was a series of distinctlytimeless musical narratives.

This isn’t to suggest that the songs The National wrote and recorded last winter at Clubhouse studios in Rhinebeck, New York qualify as simple. In addition to the self- lacerating impressionistic scattershots that are Matt’s lyrical stock in trade, they feature time signatures, mixed meter and melody frameworks more challenging than anything the band has previously attempted. Still, "Trouble Will Find Me" possesses a directness, a coherency and—dare it be said about such an unpredictable band—an approachability that suggests The National has at long last located its emotional target.

Listen: "Don't Swallow The Cap" (radio edit)

the thermals

desperate ground

"Desperate Ground", the new LP from The Thermals, is exactly what the title implies. A dangerous path. A crucial moment. A split second in time when you must stand and defend, kill or be killed. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

No problem!

The Thermals have been through worse, and have always lived to tell the tale. Since their zero-fi pants-a-burning debut (More Parts Per Million, 2003), The Thermals have blazed their way through a decade filled with enough fear and loathing to last the rest of the century. They've survived the wrath of God (The Body, The Blood, The Machine, 2006), the fear of death (Now We Can See, 2009), even the soul-crushing torment of monogamous relationships (Personal Life, 2010)!

The Thermals' sixth LP and first for Saddle Creek, "Desperate Ground", is a true scrappy and scratchy return-to-form, with all the raw power and unhinged adolescent energy that made their early LP's so insanely enjoyable. Lyrically, the album is a brash and irresponsible ode to human violence, a black celebration of the inevitability of war and death. A dark and yet joyous affair, "Desperate Ground" tells the (murky) tale of a lone rogue in the night. One man, one path, one sword. An unceasing urge to destroy. A never-ending battle against the forces of nature. A destiny impossible to avoid. All told, "Desperate Ground" is a loud, violent thrill ride, a punk LP as bloody action film. It's The Wipers meets "Die Hard" and "Excalibur".

"Desperate Ground" was produced by John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth) in Hoboken, NJ. Agnello and The Thermals completed mixing just hours before Hurricane Sandy ravaged New Jersey. Desperate Ground indeed.

Listen: "The Sunset"

twin shadow

Confess

“A lot of Confess is about sacrificing part of your life to something you love to do,” says George Lewis Jr., the nom de plume of Brooklyn indie pop sensation Twin Shadow. “Love and commitment may not be part of my life at this point. So a lot of this record is about my relationships with people, and dealing with the sacrifices I’ve made.”

"Confess" is the gorgeous, dynamic follow-up to Twin Shadow’s 2010 breakthrough "Forget". That first record, co-produced by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor and initially released on Taylor’s Terrible Records label before getting picked up by 4AD, garnered a lot of praise from the likes of Rolling Stone (“fully-formed, haunted and haunting”), Allmusic (“lush, intricate pop”), and Pitchfork, which named it one of the best albums of 2010. Soon after its release, Lewis began amassing even more fans during a string of headlining club dates, while also opening for Florence and the Machine and playing a number of festivals, including Coachella, Sasquatch, Bonarroo and Austin City Limits.

But throughout that initial rush of attention, a lot of similar adjectives were thrown around to describe Twin Shadow: Heartfelt. Honest. Nostalgic. Lewis’s background was dissected – his birth in the Dominican Republic (as a twin, hence the band name), a lonely childhood in Florida, the eventual move to New York and the fashioning of his own stunning debut album, recording almost entirely on his own, in hotel rooms and in his cramped Brooklyn apartment.

It was, in a way, the portrait of an isolated figure. While "Confess" continues to examine relationships, loss and regret, there’s also a newfound sense of optimism in the songs, and an acceptance of the sacrifices Lewis has made to get to this point.

“There was a charm to the way I did my first record, but you can’t chase that experience down again,” says Lewis, who recorded most of the new record in a Los Angeles between a home built studio and a proper recording studio with keyboardist Wynne Bennett. “It was nice to be alone in my apartment, but now I get a sound in my head it’s nice to have the tools and people in front of me to make it happen.”

The songs on Confess do feel invigorated, as well as louder, more dynamic and certainly more adventurous. Elsewhere on "Confess", Lewis revs up the guitars, engages in some sparse, soulful R&B and goes quiet for a few mournful ballads. But even on the slower songs there’s a livelier percussive presence, thanks to an interesting new sampling technique. “I grew up in Florida, so the first musical impressions I had were from local football games,” he says. “So for this record, I’d go to football fields and record and sample the drums. It’s a fun detour away from the drum machines I used on Forget.”

“I could have done other things with my life, and I’ve wanted to do a million different things that I haven’t been able to do yet,” says Lewis. “I weigh the pros and cons of that a lot in my new record. But music is such an amazing artform -- it can be appreciated by almost anyone, and it means so much to so many different people. I think it’s still the best way to express myself.”

Listen: "Run My Heart"

vampire weekend

Modern Vampires of the City

Vampire Weekend have just premiered two new tracks, “Diane Young” and “Step" in anticipation of their forthcoming third album, "Modern Vampires of the City", which will be released on May 7th via XL Recordings.

Having just wrapped a successful final night of SXSW playing to a packed outdoor performance at Stubbs,
Vampire Weekend are set to head out on tour around the album's release, playing across North America including Coachella. More dates will be announced soon, but in the meantime, please see our tour page for more.

Listen: "Diane Young"

PoliÇa

Tiff

Poliça just premiered their brand new song "Tiff" during Coachella last weekend, where they were joined on stage by Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. Vernon has called Poliça "the best band I've ever heard."

"Tiff" is the first new Poliça music released since the band's critically acclaimed last album "Give Up The Ghost". Members of Poliça and Vernon first collaborated in indie rock supergroup Gayngs in 2010.

The song will be on their upcoming album later this year.

Poliça re-shape the intersection of pop and digitised R&B via ice cool vocalist Channy Leanagh and Ryan Olson's electronic soundscapes, revealing a tender heart beneath, pulsating with life and raw emotion.

The name Poliça refers to the word ‘policy’, meaning a definite course of action adopted for the sake of expediency, suggesting they were formed out of necessity.

Listen: "Tiff" (clean edit)

WAVVES

Afraid Of Heights

Straight from the dungeons of L.A., Wavves are releasing "Afraid Of Heights", their fourth album and first on the Mom + Pop and Warner Bros. labels. Now a duo consisting of guitarist Nathan Williams and bassist Stephen Pope, they sound bigger, brasher, and shockingly more professional than ever on "Afraid Of Heights" which positions the band to take their rightful place amongst the pop-punk gods. You know the story by now. Bored dude in his parents' tool shed-turned-room with no insulation and a record stuck to a hole in the wall to keep the mice out turns on a four-track recorder, fucks around and ends up with two of the oddest, noisiest, and downright catchiest albums in recent memory.

Those two records (the eponymous "Wavves" the eponyymous "Wavvves") were winningly, messily chaotic-grand on a small scale, but not necessarily world-beaters. Which is why when Williams, then solo, linked up with erstwhile Jay Reatard sidemen Stephen Pope (bass) and Billy Hayes (drums) and busted the door down with the stunner that was "King Of The Beach", a pop-punk blackout for the DeLonge and Deleuze crowd. After the smoke of "King Of The Beach" had cleared, Williams and Pope released the "Life Sux" EP, a testament to the crushing powers of rock n' roll and also ennui.

The product of more than a year of writing and recording, "Afraid Of Heights" expands the Wavves sound while remaining true to the band's original vision - it was created with absolutely no label involvement, a specter that nearly derailed "King Of The Beach". Working with producer John Hill (known for his work with M.I.A. and Santigold, as well as with hip-hop acts such as Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan), the band found a willing party in creating what they felt was the truest expression of what they wanted. As for the "Afraid Of Heights" sessions themselves, Williams paid for them out-of-pocket, explaining his reasoning with, "In doing so, I had no one to answer to. We recorded the songs how and when we wanted without anybody interfering, and that's how it's supposed to be."

Even when he reaches outside his own damaged psyche, Williams is still making Wavves songs, saying, "The general theme of the record is depression and anxiety, being death-obsessed and paranoid of impending doom. I feel like the narration is almost schizophrenic if you listen front to back; every word is important, even the constant contradictions and lack of self-worth. That's all a part of this record-questioning everything not because I'm curious, but because I'm paranoid." With their biggest and boldest-sounding record yet, Wavves might have finally come into their own, a fully-realized punk rock force in both sound and vision.

Listen: "Demon To Lean On" (radio edit)

kopecky family band

Kids Raising Kids

Kopecky Family Band are not a family by blood, but by bond – through the palpable sense of community and care for one another that the members share (as the new album’s title suggests), forged by time and touring. The band’s origins can be traced back to a Belmont University dorm room, circa late 2007, when Kelsey Kopecky and Gabe Simon first met and heard each other casually play a few songs. The musical chemistry was instant, and within a few short weeks the two had written the songs that would become the band’s debut EP, "Embraces" (2008). They rounded up a group of mutual friends to play with them, and Kopecky Family Band was born.

The band has amassed fans the old fashioned way: through a near-constant touring schedule that began almost immediately, with dates booked at first during breaks from school. EPs "The Disaster" and its B-sides companion "Of Epic Proportions" arrived in 2010, as did breakthrough performances at the Next Big Nashville and SXSW festivals. National tours with Devotchka, Gomez, and Givers, and performances at Bonnaroo and for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series followed, before 2011 closed out with Paste naming them one of the ‘25 Best Live Acts’ and ‘20 Best New Bands’ of the year.

Kopecky Family Band spent spring 2012 on the road with a co-headlining tour with The Lumineers and supporting Gogol Bordello, and wound down the year with festival appearances at Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits.

"Kids Raising Kids" is the sound of a band coming into its own and as a whole truly greater than the sum of its parts. The bright, irrepressible songs on the new album deal with navigating waters of change and facing challenges – like being away from home, falling in love, having perspective and seeing others’, going after what you want – and also sees the band challenging themselves by creating a bigger sound than anything they’ve done before. The album, which began as another EP but bloomed into a full-length LP, also marks the first time contributions from all six members are upfront alongside and in complement to the leadership of Kopecky and Simon.

Kopecky Family Band have just signed to ATO Records, and their debut album "Kids Raising Kids" will see a wide release through the label on April 2nd.

Listen: "Are You Listening"

queens of the stone age

...Like Clockwork

It's clear that "...Like Clockwork" isn't so much the return of Queens Of The Stone Age, as the start of something new. QOTSA 2.0, rising from the ashes of difficult times. Their first album in 6 years, it's arguably one of the best crafted rock albums of the recent era.

QOTSA have already confirmed Lollapalooza on August 2nd In Chicago, but they'll be Many More tour dates still TBA-stay tuned.

"My God Is The Sun" is the first single off the upcoming "...Like Clockwork" --out June 4th on Matador.

Listen: "My God is the Sun"

Smith Westerns

soft will

"Soft Will", the third LP from Smith Westerns, will be released June 11th on Mom+Pop.

After playing over 140 shows in support of the critically acclaimed "Dye it Blonde" in 2012, Smith Westerns (Cullen Omori, Max Kakacek and Cameron Omori) returned to Chicago and began writing the follow-up LP. Writing through the Spring and into the Summer of 2012 the band teamed up once again with producer Chris Coady (Beach House, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio) and in August began recording what would become "Soft Will" at Sonic Ranch, in El Paso, TX.

After three weeks of recording at Sonic Ranch the band headed to New York for an additional four weeks of recording and mixing all around the city. Close but not yet done, the band took a break and headed back to Chicago – there they regrouped before returning to New York for a final week of mixing with Coady in early December at DNA Studio. It was there that all the pieces came together and its final shape emerged to become "Soft Will".

“Varsity” was the final song written and appears last on the album. It will be released as a limited 7” on May 14th via Mom+Pop.

Listen: "Varsity"

purity ring

Shrines

Purity Ring make lullabies for the club, drawing equally from airy 90s R&B, lush dream pop, and the powerful, bone-rattling immediacy of modern hip hop. Megan’s remarkable voice is at once ecstatic and ethereal, soaring joyfully through Corin’s carefully chopped beats, trembling synths, and skewed vocal samples.

Despite the band’s young age (Corin is 21, Megan 24) and short gestation (they formed in late 2010), Purity Ring have delivered a most assured and anticipated debuts in "Shrines". Indeed, the album feels like anything but a first record – its vocal hooks are inescapable, its lush production futuristic and sophisticated but also as pristine as anything on pop radio. The record’s 11 tracks trace a unique aesthetic universe that is carefully crafted and fully realised – deftly walking the lines between trap-rap exhilaration and otherworldly rapture, pleasure-centre pop and diaristic emotion, childlike dread and total self-possession. Purity Ring’s is a universe that invites exploration and demands revisiting.

Corin and Megan grew up in and around Edmonton, Alberta where they were an integral part of that city’s small, tight-knit all-ages DIY music community. They toured extensively together in the band Gobble Gobble (now Born Gold), with Corin on drums and Megan singing. In the midst of a six-month-long tour, Corin’s love of R&B and hip-hop grew, and he began experimenting with beat-making in Ableton Live. He asked Megan to lay down vocals on a song called “Ungirthed”, and Purity Ring was born. The song made its way online in 2011 to immediate international acclaim, and thus the two were suddenly faced with the daunting task of turning a studio project into a real band. To meet the challenge, Megan and Corin spent nearly six months conceiving of a live show that could do justice to the unique music they were recording.

It shows. Every element of Purity Ring’s live presence has been carefully considered – from the clothes they wear (all designed and handmade by expert stitcher Megan) to the tactile, hybrid musical instrument / lighting machine that Corin built himself. The resulting spectacle can’t be overstated; infectious vocal leads chopped and screwed improvisationally, synth leads and lighting triggered live with a drummer’s precision. Purity Ring’s performance is a live synaesthesia that transcends the pitfalls often associated with live electronic-based music. Of course, perhaps the most exciting thing about Purity Ring is the overriding sense that these live performance innovations and their exceptional debut "Shrines" are merely the beginning of a collaboration whose remarkable chemistry is sure to bear much more to come – future pop, in every sense of the phrase.

"one of the year's hottest debut albums"--Rolling Stone

"The duo's debut album feels especially live and fresh."--SPIN

"A crunchy blend of laser synths, boom-bap beats and haunting vocals."--Billboard

"cute but visceral, tender but unhealthily obsessed."--NPR (First Listen)

..."played chilly and tender electro-pop, it's singer Megan James's vocals a drizzle that starts sharp and ends sumptuous."--New York Times

Listen: "Fineshrine"

Scroll

!!!

!!! (chk chk chk)

THR!!!LER

Blue-Eyed Son

blue-eyed son

shadows on the son

Gibraltar

gibraltar

storms

tom odell

tom odell

Songs From Another Love

the national

the national

Trouble Will Find Me

the thermals

the thermals

desperate ground

twin shadow

twin shadow

Confess

vampire weekend

vampire weekend

Modern Vampires of the City

poliÇa

PoliÇa

Tiff

wavves

WAVVES

Afraid Of Heights

kopecky family band

kopecky family band

Kids Raising Kids

queens of the stone age

queens of the stone age

...Like Clockwork

smith westerns

Smith Westerns

soft will

purity ring

purity ring

Shrines