Hot Panda

The moniker Hot Panda sprang from a passing quip by Chris Connelly, who wondered aloud to his bandmates whether a Panda Hut billboard might promise steaming panda bear over rice. The irreverent suggestion fit the playful indie-pop quartet from Canada. Professing limited instrumental chops yet drawn to buoyant melodies, the four-piece cultivated a lo-fi sound. Although grounded in '70s punk and Brit-pop, their recordings avoided the likeness of cited touchstones the Buzzcocks and Television; instead, the haphazard tambourine, glockenspiel, and accordion textures evoked Los Campesinos! or the New Pornographers fronted by Daniel Johnston.

Hot Panda coalesced in January 2006 once Connelly and Maghan Campbell returned from Oslo, Norway, and added Mike Robertson alongside Keith Olsen. Rehearsals began inside an Edmonton, Alberta garage, yielding the 2007 EP Whale Headed Girl and a subsequent tour schedule aboard a battered 1977 ambulance nicknamed “the Pig.” More than one hundred concerts unfolded across twelve months, among them appearances at CMJ, SXSW, and Pop Montreal. Exhaustion from the road led Robertson to depart; multi-instrumentalist Heath Parsons took his place. With Parsons covering guitar, accordion, and keyboards, Olsen on bass, Campbell on drums, and Connelly handling vocals and guitar, the group resumed live work, including a set at New Music West in Vancouver. The performance attracted Mint Records, which invited the band to its Christmas party.

In February 2008 the quartet tracked its debut full-length, Volcano...Bloody Volcano, with Ryan McVeigh at Winnipeg’s Mid Ocean Studios. Mint tendered an official contract the following April, and the album appeared in February 2009 at a Valentine’s Day release show in Edmonton. November of that year brought Olsen’s exit; Catherine Hiltz, already featured on trumpet at select concerts, replaced him. She contributed to the sessions for How Come I'm Dead, released by Mint in October 2010.