Ida

Formed in 1992, the New York-based indie folk-pop outfit Ida centered on the core duo of singers and guitarists Daniel Littleton and Elizabeth Mitchell. Littleton first surfaced in 1985 within the Annapolis, Maryland punk outfit the Hated; after that band dissolved in 1989, he moved through Three Shades of Dirty, Choke, and Slack, the last of which included future Tsunami frontwoman Jenny Toomey. Mitchell, for her part, launched her performing career in an acoustic duo alongside singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb, a fellow Brown University alum. Both Mitchell and Littleton contributed to Loeb’s breakthrough single “Stay,” a major success that arrived in the same year as Ida’s first recordings.

After inking a deal with Toomey’s Simple Machines imprint, Ida unveiled its sound via the 1994 release Tales of Brave Ida, a luminous set of languid, minimalist pop songs. With Littleton’s brother Michael—previously of Baltimore’s Hassassins—added on drums, the group delivered the 1996 album I Know About You. Beekeeper bassist Karla Schickele joined prior to 1997’s Ten Small Paces, and the same configuration reappeared the following year on the EP Losing True. While still active in Ida, Dan Littleton participated in Liquorice alongside Toomey and His Name Is Alive’s Trey Many; he and Mitchell married in late 1999, not long after Michael’s departure from the lineup. Following an unsuccessful major-label period at Capitol, Ida issued the full-length Will You Find Me on the Tiger Style label in summer 2000. One year afterward came The Braille Night.

The remix collection Shhh.... stood as the band’s sole full-length effort until Polyvinyl released Heart Like a River in 2005. Three years later the group produced its seventh album, Lovers Prayers, along with the intimate EP My Fair, My Dark.