Teen

Taking their name from a truncated form of frontwoman Teeny Lieberson, TEEN folds psychedelic rock through '90s R&B into a framework of experimental pop. Although the band's first releases, among them In Limbo from 2012, sprawled across eclectic terrain, they later tightened their approach on the romantic synth pop of Love Yes, issued in 2014 and marked by intricate musical and lyrical layers. By the arrival of Good Fruit in 2019, TEEN had solidified a reputation for music that balanced lush textures with intellectual depth.

The project began in 2010 when multi-instrumentalist Teeny Lieberson, previously a member of Here We Go Magic, recorded and issued the lo-fi, home-made debut Little Doods as a solo endeavor. Her sisters Lizzie and Katherine soon joined, and together they developed a style echoing the era's girl-group-inflected noise pop and throbbing tribal electronics while also nodding to Galaxie 500 and the Velvet Underground. After signing with Carpark, they recruited Spacemen 3's Sonic Boom to helm In Limbo, which surfaced in August 2012. The group resurfaced in April 2014 with The Way and Color, a tighter collection that wove D'Angelo and Erykah Badu influences into its psychedelic palette. For their next album the sisters composed material in disparate settings including Woodstock, New York, and a Kentucky cabin, then tracked the results with Daniel Schlett—who had previously produced The Way and Color—at the Old Confidence Lodge in Riverport, Nova Scotia. Those sessions yielded Love Yes in 2016, extending the thematic concerns of identity, spirituality, and sensuality first explored on the prior record. The Lieberson sisters handled production themselves on Good Fruit, focusing its philosophical songs around TEEN's exuberant synth-pop core.