Biography
Dean Wareham, singer and guitarist with Luna, joined forces with bassist and vocalist Britta Phillips to create melodic, evocative pop shaped by the folky psychedelia of Serge Gainsbourg and Lee Hazlewood. The pair first presented this approach on the 2003 album L'Avventura, produced by Tony Visconti, and refined it further on 2007’s Back Numbers. Expanding their duo activities, they composed scores for several Noah Baumbach films, among them 2005’s The Squid & the Whale and 2015’s Mistress America, and they toured while providing the music for the 2010 multimedia presentation 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. In 2020 the duo issued their fourth album, The Quarantine Tapes, and in 2024 they collaborated with Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom on the holiday release A Peace of Us.
Wareham was born in 1963 in Wellington, New Zealand, spent his early childhood in Sydney, Australia, and immigrated to the United States with his family at age 14. After an initial stay in New York City, he relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to enroll at Harvard University, where he founded the influential indie-pop trio Galaxie 500 in 1987 alongside fellow students Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang. The group existed for four years, attaining cult status and helping originate the slowcore subgenre before disbanding in 1991. Wareham then returned to New York and formed Luna with the Chills bassist Justin Harwood and former Feelies drummer Stanley Demeski; the band cultivated its own devoted following and issued several critically praised albums, including 1994’s Bewitched, 1997’s Pup Tent, and 2002’s Romantica, on which Phillips assumed bass duties from Harwood.
Phillips, daughter of musician and songwriter Peter Phillips, was born in 1963 in Boyne City, Michigan, and raised in Pennsylvania by her mother. At age 19 she moved to New York City, where her father resided, and secured the lead role of Jem in the cartoon series Jem and the Holograms, which aired from 1985 to 1988. Although another actress supplied Jem’s spoken dialogue, Phillips performed a new ’80s bubblegum-style pop song as the character in every episode. Following the series, she made her feature-film debut as the lead guitarist in the 1988 Justine Bateman rock movie Satisfaction. While continuing occasional voice-over work for cartoons and commercials, Phillips largely shifted focus to music in the late ’80s. She formed the shoegaze-influenced Belltower with guitarist Jody Porter, later a Fountains of Wayne co-founder, to whom she was married and then divorced; after the group’s sole album, 1992’s Popdropper, the band dissolved two years later, leading Phillips to start Ultrababyfat and tour briefly with Ben Lee.
Phillips and Wareham first encountered each other in 2000 when she auditioned to replace departing Luna bassist Harwood. She appeared on the 2001 release Luna Live and became an official member with 2002’s Romantica. Her vocals quickly integrated into the band’s sound, and the personal chemistry between the two sparked both a creative and romantic partnership. They debuted as Dean & Britta in 2003 with the Tony Visconti-produced album L’Avventura, titled after Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 film and containing originals plus covers of songs by Madonna, the Doors, and Buffy Sainte-Marie.
After Luna’s initial breakup in 2005, Dean & Britta assumed greater prominence in their work; the pair married in 2006, the same year they released the EP Words You Used to Say. Their second full-length, Back Numbers, arrived in 2007 and again featured Visconti at the controls, mixing new material with reinterpretations of the Troggs’ “Our Love Will Still Be There,” Donovan’s “Teen Angel,” and Claudine Longet’s “White Horses.”
Longtime friends with director Noah Baumbach, Dean & Britta scored his 2005 film The Squid & the Whale. Additional screen-related projects included the 2010 multimedia endeavor 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, for which they supplied music to silent Warhol portraits of figures such as Nico and Lou Reed, and the soundtrack to Baumbach’s 2015 film Mistress America. That same year Wareham and Phillips reunited with their former Luna bandmates for a tour that preceded the 2017 album A Sentimental Education, a collection of covers and instrumental originals.
Dean & Britta reemerged in 2021 with their fourth album, The Quarantine Tapes, assembled from home recordings and live-streamed performances made during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also that year Wareham issued the solo album I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of L.A., which included contributions from Phillips. In 2024 the duo released A Peace of Us, a holiday-themed collaboration with Spacemen 3’s Pete Kember, known as Sonic Boom.
Wareham was born in 1963 in Wellington, New Zealand, spent his early childhood in Sydney, Australia, and immigrated to the United States with his family at age 14. After an initial stay in New York City, he relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to enroll at Harvard University, where he founded the influential indie-pop trio Galaxie 500 in 1987 alongside fellow students Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang. The group existed for four years, attaining cult status and helping originate the slowcore subgenre before disbanding in 1991. Wareham then returned to New York and formed Luna with the Chills bassist Justin Harwood and former Feelies drummer Stanley Demeski; the band cultivated its own devoted following and issued several critically praised albums, including 1994’s Bewitched, 1997’s Pup Tent, and 2002’s Romantica, on which Phillips assumed bass duties from Harwood.
Phillips, daughter of musician and songwriter Peter Phillips, was born in 1963 in Boyne City, Michigan, and raised in Pennsylvania by her mother. At age 19 she moved to New York City, where her father resided, and secured the lead role of Jem in the cartoon series Jem and the Holograms, which aired from 1985 to 1988. Although another actress supplied Jem’s spoken dialogue, Phillips performed a new ’80s bubblegum-style pop song as the character in every episode. Following the series, she made her feature-film debut as the lead guitarist in the 1988 Justine Bateman rock movie Satisfaction. While continuing occasional voice-over work for cartoons and commercials, Phillips largely shifted focus to music in the late ’80s. She formed the shoegaze-influenced Belltower with guitarist Jody Porter, later a Fountains of Wayne co-founder, to whom she was married and then divorced; after the group’s sole album, 1992’s Popdropper, the band dissolved two years later, leading Phillips to start Ultrababyfat and tour briefly with Ben Lee.
Phillips and Wareham first encountered each other in 2000 when she auditioned to replace departing Luna bassist Harwood. She appeared on the 2001 release Luna Live and became an official member with 2002’s Romantica. Her vocals quickly integrated into the band’s sound, and the personal chemistry between the two sparked both a creative and romantic partnership. They debuted as Dean & Britta in 2003 with the Tony Visconti-produced album L’Avventura, titled after Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 film and containing originals plus covers of songs by Madonna, the Doors, and Buffy Sainte-Marie.
After Luna’s initial breakup in 2005, Dean & Britta assumed greater prominence in their work; the pair married in 2006, the same year they released the EP Words You Used to Say. Their second full-length, Back Numbers, arrived in 2007 and again featured Visconti at the controls, mixing new material with reinterpretations of the Troggs’ “Our Love Will Still Be There,” Donovan’s “Teen Angel,” and Claudine Longet’s “White Horses.”
Longtime friends with director Noah Baumbach, Dean & Britta scored his 2005 film The Squid & the Whale. Additional screen-related projects included the 2010 multimedia endeavor 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, for which they supplied music to silent Warhol portraits of figures such as Nico and Lou Reed, and the soundtrack to Baumbach’s 2015 film Mistress America. That same year Wareham and Phillips reunited with their former Luna bandmates for a tour that preceded the 2017 album A Sentimental Education, a collection of covers and instrumental originals.
Dean & Britta reemerged in 2021 with their fourth album, The Quarantine Tapes, assembled from home recordings and live-streamed performances made during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also that year Wareham issued the solo album I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of L.A., which included contributions from Phillips. In 2024 the duo released A Peace of Us, a holiday-themed collaboration with Spacemen 3’s Pete Kember, known as Sonic Boom.
Albums
