Heartsrevolution

Heartsrevolution emerged as New York’s brash synth pop outfit built around Leyla “Lo” Safai and Ben Pollock, with drummer Terry Campbell augmenting the lineup for concerts. The group took its name from “Her Jazz,” the Huggy Bear track associated with the riot grrrl movement, and traces its start to 2005, when Safai enlisted Pollock to compose music for the Heartschallenger ice cream truck—an enterprise that underwrote the band’s early recordings and later earned Rolling Stone’s designation as Best Band Vehicle. Their self-released debut single, “C.Y.O.A.,” appeared in 2007; shortly afterward they issued a split single alongside Crystal Castles. A series of concise releases followed through the late 2000s, among them the 2008 Switchblade EP and Ultraviolence single plus the 2009 Hearts Japan EP. That same year “Dance Till Dawn” received airplay on the CW series Gossip Girl. While beginning work on a debut album, the pair pursued large-scale art projects that encompassed encrusting Heartschallenger with Swarovski crystals over two and a half years and mounting Street He(art), an installation of more than two thousand suspended stuffed animals displayed in New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. They returned in 2011 with the Are We Having Fun Yet? mixtape, which incorporated material by Marilyn Manson, Pink Floyd, and the Shangri-Las. In 2013 the duo marked their signing to Skrillex’s OWSLA imprint by releasing the Ride or Die EP that July—their first new material in nearly four years—followed in December by the Revolution Rising mixtape, executive-produced by Just Blaze. Their first full-length album, also titled Ride or Die, reached listeners in April 2014.