Hippo Campus

Hailing from Minnesota's Twin Cities, the indie rock quartet Hippo Campus crafts sharp-edged yet tuneful guitar pop that sits between Vampire Weekend's collegiate Afro-pop and garage rock leanings and the jittery post-punk energy of Bombay Bicycle Club. The group surfaced in 2014 via the EP Bashful Creatures before unveiling its first full-length album, Landmark, in 2017. One year afterward came the more wide-ranging and synth-leaning sophomore set Bambi. Building on the 2021 EP Good Dog, Bad Dream, the band channeled its lively experimental pop sensibilities into the third album, LP3. After issuing another EP, Wasteland, in 2023, Hippo Campus completed its fifth long-player, Flood, in 2024.

The four musicians came together in 2013 while attending high school in St. Paul, with frontman Jake Luppen, co-frontman and guitarist Nathan Stocker, bassist Zach Sutton, and drummer Whistler Allen adopting the stage aliases Stitches, Beans, Espo, and Turntan. They quickly gained traction locally through vigorous performances that drew interest from the same management behind fellow Minnesota acts Trampled by Turtles and Low. Early opportunities at South by Southwest and on Conan preceded the 2014 release of Bashful Creatures, which Low's Alan Sparhawk produced. In 2015 the band signed with Universal, which issued The Halocline EPs that combined Bashful Creatures with the additional EP South.

Landmark, the long-awaited debut full-length, arrived in March 2017 and peaked at number 15 on Billboard's Top Alternative Albums chart. Bambi followed the next year, shifting toward electronic textures and supported by the singles "Passenger" and "Golden"; it climbed to number 14 on the Independent Albums chart. The two-part Demos set surfaced in 2019, gathering alternate versions and unreleased material tracked during summer 2017 and winter 2018.

Now working from their own Minneapolis facility, the musicians put out Good Dog, Bad Dream in 2021. LP3, their third album, emerged a year later and featured the single "Boys" amid its heightened sonic palette. Strong reviews expanded their audience, prompting the April 2023 EP Wasteland.

"Paranoid," the advance single from the fourth album Flood, appeared in July 2024. Recording took place at Sonic Ranch in Texas alongside producers Caleb Wright and Brad Cook.