Bobby Birdman

Originally an experimental indie folkie who gradually folded electronic pop into his sound, Bobby Birdman serves as the performing alias of Portland-area singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rob Kieswetter. In the late 1990s he launched his recording career with the short-lived band Badical Turbo Radness, whose sole album, To the Rescue, appeared in 1997. After the group disbanded the following year, Kieswetter took the name Bobby Birdman, bestowed on him by Little Wings’ Kyle Field. His earliest solo releases under that moniker remained spare and acoustic-centered, beginning with the intimate Hush Records debut Let Me In in 2001. The following year he issued Exhausted (The Cost Of), an even more stripped-down set of a cappella pieces captured while cycling around Portland. By contrast, his second full-length album, 2003’s Born Free Forever, adopted a richer palette that blended electronic accents and choral passages with conventional indie-rock textures. That same year he relocated to Los Angeles, where the States Rights-released Heart Caves EP pushed further into synth-pop territory as a deliberate homage. In 2005 the limited-edition Giraffes & Jackals EP followed, featuring YACHT’s Jonah Bechtolt. While immersed in the city’s intersecting art, music and fashion circles, he contributed to YACHT’s I Believe In You, Your Magic Is Real and modeled for Band of Outsiders’ fall 2008 collection. Around the same period he supplied a remix of Young MC’s “Fastest Rhyme” for Delicious Vinyl’s twentieth-anniversary compilation and completed work on his third album, New Moods, which surfaced in fall 2009.