Midnight Sister

Juliana Giraffe and Ari Balouzian formed the art-pop duo Midnight Sister, whose sound carries a distinctly cinematic quality. Their first full-length album, Saturn Over Sunset, appeared in 2017.

Natives of the San Fernando Valley who attended the same high school several years apart, the pair connected after Balouzian—a classically trained musician—composed the score for a short film written by Giraffe and her sister, who already knew Balouzian. He later sent Giraffe instrumental tracks; she added vocals, and the results prompted them to continue collaborating. For Balouzian this marked his initial foray into pop music outside of prior arrangement work for Tobias Jesso, Jr. and Alex Izenberg, while it served as Giraffe’s introduction to making music altogether. The debut album’s off-kilter, retrofuturist character drew on the characters and mythology of Los Angeles, and the record was released by Jagjaguwar in 2017. Their similarly idiosyncratic follow-up, Painting the Roses, arrived in 2021 and took partial inspiration from a family visit Giraffe made to Argentina.