Feeling Figures

Blending the buoyant spirit of lo-fi pop with the raw, guitar-driven thrust of early punk and garage rock, the Canadian indie outfit Feeling Figures first came together under the guidance of Kay Moon and Zakary Slax. The pair had already spent nearly ten years collaborating before the band issued its debut, and their deliberately rudimentary style proved an ideal fit for the storied American indie imprint K Records, which put out the group’s first full-length album, Migration Magic, in 2023.

Guitarists and vocalists Moon and Slax initially crossed paths in the early 2010s in Sackville, a New Brunswick community anchored by Mount Allison University, one of Canada’s foremost liberal arts institutions. Their friendship soon evolved into a romance, prompting a move to Montreal, Quebec, where the couple’s shared musical enthusiasm led them to launch a band. Specializing in lo-fi guitar rock colored by a garage-punk edge, Dead Beat Poet Society issued four releases from 2015 through 2018. Following that group’s dissolution, Moon and Slax resolved to keep creating music; they had already teamed with bassist Joe Chamandy and drummer Thomas Molander during Dead Beat Poet Society’s final period and invited both musicians to join the new project, Feeling Figures.

After issuing a three-song single on Montreal’s independent Celluloid Lunch Records (partly operated by Chamandy), the band drew the attention of K Records, the iconic Pacific Northwest label, which expressed interest in future material. Although an album’s worth of songs already existed, Feeling Figures chose to supply the imprint with fresh recordings instead. Molander brought equipment to the rehearsal space, and across two nights the group laid down ten tracks live to tape—eight originals plus covers of Bobby Fuller’s “Don’t Ever Let Me Know” and Harmonium’s “Pour Un Instant.” Both the band and the label embraced the unpolished vitality of these performances, which formed the foundation of Migration Magic, released by K in November 2023.