Brevin Kim

Genre-bending sibling act Brevin Kim fuse pop, rock, alternative, and hip-hop into a single sound. The Boston-area brothers Brendan and Callin Paulhus, raised in the suburb of North Attleboro, absorbed their parents’ classic-rock records from an early age. Less than two years apart in age, the pair remained especially tight throughout childhood. They began creating music together while still in single digits, first drawn to rap before shifting toward indie bands such as Kings of Leon and Bon Iver. Bren handled most of the production work, whereas Cal supplied the majority of the words. Drawn to bold studio experiments, the duo freely blended elements from unrelated styles while keeping an emphasis on memorable hooks. Piano ballads driven by heavy bass lines appeared next to guitar-based pieces layered with piercing synths and programmed rhythms, and acoustic numbers featured vocals processed in the trap manner. They derived their name from fragments of their own and their parents’ names, then began posting material online in 2017; a series of free albums and EPs slowly generated online attention and accumulated hundreds of thousands of streams.

Cal relocated to Florida in 2019 to join his girlfriend, yet the brothers kept working together remotely. The EP Cliff, released later that year, marked their most visible project up to that point. In 2020 they joined Republic and issued the EP Metallic Body Language, recorded in tandem with Delaware rapper Lil West, another artist known for crossing genre lines.