Scotland's the Just Joans draw their name from advice columnist Joan Burnie of The Daily Record while crafting winsome indie pop laced with folk elements. Partial inspiration from Magnetic Fields and the Smiths helped shape an approach that balanced melancholy and playful tones, beginning with the spare 2006 debut Last Tango in Motherwell. Alternating lead vocals between siblings David and Katie Pope, the group later adopted lusher arrangements and crisper production on the 2017 release You Might Be Smiling Now.
Guitarists David Pope and Chris Elkin started the band, then brought in keyboardist Dougie Cameron, bassist Fraser Ford, drummer Rowan Smith, and Katie Pope to broaden their palette. Their intimate, homespun songs about teenage life built a devoted audience, leading to the 2006 album Last Tango in Motherwell on Ivan Lendil Music. The Just Joans next signed with London's WeePop! Records, which issued the EPs Virgin Lips in 2007 and Hey Boy You're Oh So Sensitive in 2008. Two further EPs, Love and Other Hideous Accidents and Your Pain Is a Joke Next to Mines, appeared on the same label over the following two years. In 2012 WeePop! pressed a modestly revised version of the debut as Buckfast Bottles in the Rain on vinyl, followed by the EP 6.9 Love Songs in 2013.
On Christmas Eve 2016 the band returned with the four-track EP Seasonal Greet, which contained a banjo-and-accordion rendition of Wham!'s "Last Christmas." They expanded their sound into brighter jangly indie pop for You Might Be Smiling Now, their first album on Fika Recordings. By then Rowan Smith had departed, with Jason Sweeney taking over on drums. Arion Xenos later stepped in for Dougie Cameron on keyboards, and the third album Private Memoirs and Confessions of the Just Joans arrived on Fika in 2020.
