AM & Shawn Lee

The partnership known as AM & Shawn Lee unites London-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Shawn Lee with Los Angeles-based singer and songwriter AM. AM first reached out to Lee after encountering the 2004 album Music and Rhythm: Ubiquity Studio Sessions, Vol. 1, and the two immediately recognized a mutual affinity for sounds from the 1960s and 1970s, among them Brazilian tropicalia, psychedelic-tinged soft rock, Italian film music, and additional styles. Their songwriting collaboration took shape across long distances through online exchanges in which the musicians traded tracks and concepts. The duo issued their first full-length studio album, Celestial Electric, in 2011 via ESL (Eighteenth Street Lounge), the label founded by Thievery Corporation member Rob Garza. They followed two years afterward with La Musique Numerique, an album steeped in analog synth textures from the 1970s and 1980s. Their third release, Outlines, arrived in 2015 and drew inspiration from the funky, atmospheric character of stock 1970s U.K. library music recordings.