The Icicles

Emerging from Grand Rapids, Michigan, during 2000, the Icicles specialized in buoyant indie pop built around jangly guitars and sugary hooks that aligned them with the Softies, Let's Go Sailing, and the Concretes. From their earliest days the quartet embraced a hands-on aesthetic, appearing onstage in matching homemade attire while peddling their own knitted hats and mittens to finance an initial EP. The founding trio of Gretchen DeVault, Korrie Sue, and Daniel Lambert soon welcomed DeVault’s longtime friend Joleen Rumsey, who had already contributed to the group’s stage costumes. Drive In issued their debut EP, Pure Sugar, in spring 2002; its exposure on college radio prompted a brief Midwestern tour. Personnel adjustments followed the next year when bassist Lambert departed and Emily Kreuger stepped in, while drummer Korrie Sue was succeeded by Greg Krupp. Later in 2003 the band journeyed to Brooklyn to cut its first album, A Hundred Patterns, which was tracked at Ladybug Transistor frontman Gary Olson’s home studio and mastered by the Essex Green’s Britt Myers before appearing in 2005. Commercial traction arrived when the album’s lead track, “Sugar Sweet,” was licensed by Motorola for a national advertising campaign in fall 2006. Guitarist Rebecca Rodriguez joined for the follow-up, Arrivals & Departures, which surfaced in spring 2007 and yielded the single “La Ti Da,” subsequently placed in a Target television commercial.