Suuns

The experimental rock trio Suuns, based in Montreal, fuses dark electro textures, dissonant art rock edges, and plodding indie rock rhythms into an ever-mutating sonic identity. Through relentless touring, their hazy and shape-shifting method of assembling songs gained greater refinement and depth on albums such as Hold/Still in 2016, The Witness in 2021, and The Breaks in 2024.

Suuns originated in 2007 after friends Ben Shemie and Joe Yarmush experimented with musical sketches in Montreal that expanded into finished pieces. The pair recruited bassist Max Henry and drummer Liam O'Neill to complete the first version of the group, which initially performed under the name Zeroes. Their earliest recordings offered a spare, at times paranoid interpretation of indie rock and yielded a two-song 7" in 2008. With Jace Lasek of the Besnard Lakes guiding sessions at Breakglass Studios in Montreal, they captured a complete ten-track set. On Lasek’s recommendation, Secretly Canadian discovered Zeroes QC and signed the band in autumn 2010; the album appeared that October, just as the group began touring with the Besnard Lakes and Land of Talk.

Three years later, Images du Futur arrived, pushing further into the shadowed atmosphere of the debut. The record earned placement on the 2013 Polaris Music Prize long list. In 2015, Secretly Canadian issued a collaborative album that Suuns and associate Radwan Ghazi Moumneh of Jerusalem in My Heart had begun shaping during 2012 sessions. Years in the making, the project merged the band’s restrained electronic approach with Moumneh’s Arabic influences and complementary synthesizer palette. For their third studio album, Suuns worked with producer John Congleton at his Dallas studio. Hold/Still, which brought more electronics into the mix, surfaced on Secretly Canadian in April 2016. The following year they reunited with Congleton to intensify those electronic elements on Felt, released in 2018. Henry stepped away as an official member at that time yet remained active in the band’s studio work.

A comparable sonic terrain defined the moody, sometimes ambient-toned The Witness in 2021. The band recorded the set themselves at home throughout 2020, with Congleton again responsible for mixing. Their first release on the Joyful Noise label, The Witness appeared in September 2021. Before sessions for The Breaks—their second album for the Indiana imprint—Shemie relocated to Paris, shifting much of the compositional exchange to remote methods. The album was ultimately tracked at Breakglass and Mountain City studios in Montreal, with O’Neill serving as producer. Issued in September 2024, The Breaks incorporated samples, loops, and other potent studio techniques, overturning the band’s prior self-imposed ban on overdubs.