Bachelorette

Annabel Alpers, based in Christchurch, New Zealand, shapes the Bachelorette project through a fusion of 1960s psychedelia, girl group pop, folk, and abundant vintage electronics. Drawing influence from the Beatles and the Smiths as well as Aphex Twin and Kraftwerk, she entered band life during the 1990s, beginning with the group Mouse before handling vocals and keyboards for the trippy surf rock band Hawaii 5-0 and the electronic noise acts Space Dust and the Hiss Explosion. After Hawaii 5-0 disbanded, Alpers spent time living in Shanghai, then returned to New Zealand to enter the University of Auckland’s post-graduate music studies program. While pursuing computer composition there, she also developed her own material, tracking it at home, in friends’ studios, and at university facilities. Bachelorette’s debut, the End of All Things EP, arrived in 2005 and earned recognition for Alpers’ singular, intimate style of electronic pop. Her first album, 2007’s Isolation Loops, took shape during three months spent alone in a cabin built by her great-grandfather in a fishing village near the Rakaia River’s mouth; its more elaborate arrangements and theme of a relationship’s conclusion represented a clear step forward. She toured Isolation Loops as a solo act, but expanded Bachelorette into a full band with the additions of Andrea Holmes and Mick Elborado for the 2009 album My Electric Family, which the group followed with a softer, more expansive sound on 2011’s Bachelorette.