An indie singer/songwriter whose atmospheric and twang-inflected material evoked Devendra Banhart, Sparklehorse, and the Mountain Goats, Benji Cossa gradually attracted listeners across the late 1990s and early 2000s through steady songwriting output and a contribution to the 2003 soundtrack for Zero Day. He began composing songs in 1995 while in his second year at college. A year afterward he secured placement on a Krebstar Records cassette compilation, which led to the label issuing his debut effort, the cassette-only Cossacabana, in the first months of 1997. Over the following seven years he continued issuing self-recorded albums and contributing tracks to various tape anthologies, among them the split 7" Rollacossa, the cassette 4 for Tour, and a track on Magic Marker Records’ Can We Still Be Friends compilation. Until then Cossa remained largely outside the recognized indie-rock circuit, lacking label support and handling most of his own tape recordings. That situation shifted in 2003 after director Ben Coccio invited him to create a song for Zero Day, the film loosely inspired by the Columbine High School massacre. The film’s intense controversy helped lift Cossa from the underground tape scene; Magic Marker Records issued the all-Cossa anthology Benji Cossa’s Vault, Vol. 1 in 2005, and the artist delivered his first proper studio album, Between the Blue and the Green, on Serious Business in 2007.
