Origami Angel

The songs of Washington, D.C. duo Origami Angel often explore the struggle to accept lost innocence alongside a longing for bygone simplicity. Their catalog draws on the familiar sound of turn-of-the-millennium emo and pop-punk, where rapid electric-guitar riffs and driving drums support earnest melodies that stop short of excess. The 2019 debut album Somewhere City served as an introduction that propelled the pair through a steady stream of releases even as a worldwide pandemic took hold.

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Ryland Heagy, whose listening habits ranged from Barenaked Ladies to the local emo band the Obsessives, had already been active in the group Idle Empire while still in high school. After several drummers cycled through, Idle Empire brought Pat Doherty into the fold on drums in 2015. As that project gradually wound down, Heagy chose to document an accumulation of his own material by forming a duo with Doherty. Balancing jobs and studies, they issued their first EP, Quiet Hours, in 2017. The gentler tone of that record gave way to the more defined emo-revival approach heard on the 2018 follow-up Doing the Most.

Throughout 2019, Origami Angel maintained a rapid release schedule, first joining Commander Salamander for the Holy Split EP. They continued with the Pokémon-themed Gen 3 EP before closing the year with the full-length Somewhere City. Conceived around the idea of an idealized youthful haven, tracks such as “The Title Track,” “24 Hr Drive-Thru,” and “Skeleton Key” each accumulated millions of streams, while the band’s independent performances at home and across the United States consistently sold out.

Although many comparable groups found themselves stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Origami Angel persisted through online platforms. When the Bowling Green, Ohio venue Summit Shack shifted its annual Fauxchella Festival to a virtual format, the duo assembled an atypical electronic performance that coincided with server instability; the set later appeared as Origami Angel Broke Minecraft. In 2021 they delivered Gami Gang, a double album featuring pun-filled titles, stylistic detours, and an undercurrent of disquiet that connected with listeners largely confined at home, even though much of the material predated lockdown.

The pair sustained their habit of stylistic experimentation and melodic craft. An acoustic EP titled Re:turn and the brief hardcore outing Depart both arrived in 2022, followed in 2023 by the wide-ranging mixtape The Brightest Days, assembled from pandemic-era songs that reflected on the vanished ease of summer. Their subsequent album, Feeling Not Found, arrived in 2024 and confronted the fatigue of online existence through striking songs such as “Dirty Mirror Selfie” and “Wretched Trajectory,” aided by the punchy production of engineer Will Yip, known for work with Circa Survive, the Starting Line, and Mewithoutyou.