Swimsuit

Ypsilanti, Michigan is home to the four-piece Swimsuit, whose noise pop draws on the lo-fi experimentation of the Flying Nun roster, the distorted ambience of shoegaze, and the pop hooks of new wave to produce a bright, seasonal offering. Guitarist/vocalists Fred Thomas of City Center and Saturday Looks Good to Me and Dina Bankole of Secret Twins share front-line duties alongside bassist/vocalist Amber Fellows of Dos Hermanos and drummer Shelley Salant of Tyvek. The project originated as a collaboration between Thomas and Salant before Bankole joined, with Fellows completing the lineup in summer 2009. Functioning as an egalitarian unit, the members developed songs through instrumental jams that took shape as each player contributed, extending the same collective process to live sets and studio work by rotating lead roles on their own material while supporting the rest. The outcome is jangly, reverb-inflected pop lifted by contrasting vocal harmonies and exuberant energy. Although separate band obligations and tours continued to pull at the members, Swimsuit played its first show in early 2010 and, by year’s end, issued three recordings on Thomas’s Life Like label. After completing its first full U.S. tour, the band released its self-titled full-length debut on Speakertree in spring 2011; the group recorded and mixed the album together with Thomas’s former City Center partner Ryan Howard.