Mint Julep

The married duo Keith and Hollie Kenniff originated the exploratory alternative dance sound of Mint Julep, laced throughout with shoegaze textures. Hollie’s ethereal vocals ride alongside Keith’s glistening keys, guitars, and hooky bass and beats to produce a polished yet dreamy result. Their first outing, the more atmospheric Songs About Snow, appeared in 2008; beginning with Save Your Season in 2011 the project pivoted toward a dance-centered direction. Keith remained active with his longstanding Helios and Goldmund work when the fourth Mint Julep album, Stray Fantasies, surfaced in 2020. The following year’s In a Deep and Dreamless Sleep moved toward denser, hazier tendencies.

Both members also pursue solo ambient work—Pennsylvania-born Keith through Helios and Ohio native Hollie under her own name—and they launched Mint Julep in Boston in 2007. The limited Songs About Snow came out on Unseen Records the next year. The EP Adorn arrived in 2011, the same year the couple issued the children’s album The Littlest Star as Meadows. Also in 2011, Save Your Season appeared on the Village Green label. During that prolific stretch Keith released All Will Prosper, his fifth studio album under the modern-classical project Goldmund, while Helios delivered Moiety on Unseen in 2012. Mint Julep self-released the standalone track “Tame” the year after.

The duo returned on Unseen in 2016 with their third album, Broken Devotion, which Thomason Sounds later issued in Japan. Further LPs from Helios and Goldmund followed in 2018, and Hollie issued her ambient solo debut The Gathering Dawn in 2019. Mint Julep then regrouped for their Western Vinyl debut Stray Fantasies, released early the next year. In 2021 the pair’s fifth long-player, In a Deep and Dreamless Sleep, adopted a more densely textured, immersive, and free-flowing character.