Augustines

In 2009 Billy McCarthy, Eric Sanderson, and Rob Allen launched the emotionally charged, stadium-ready indie rock outfit Augustines—later rebranded We Are Augustines—in Brooklyn after the breakup of Pela. That split encouraged McCarthy and Sanderson to salvage the songs slated for Pela’s never-completed second album and channel them into a new venture. The outcome was Rise Ye Sunken Ships, issued in August 2011. The record fused the spirited expansiveness of early U2, the literature-heavy heartache of the Hold Steady, and the introspective alt-rock of the National.

In 2014 the group resumed its original name, Augustines, for a self-titled sophomore album. At the end of 2015 the band reconvened in the studio with longtime collaborator Peter Katis—whose credits include Frightened Rabbit and Interpol—to track its third album, This Is Your Life. Released in June 2016, the set adopted a poppier, more expansive direction than prior work. Within months the members announced their fall tour would be the last, and the dissolution was chronicled in the film RISE by Todd Howe and Joshua Kincaid.