The Lemon Twigs formed when Long Island siblings Brian and Michael D'Addario, offspring of power pop songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ronnie D'Addario, began channeling the singer-songwriter spirit of their father's 1970s era while folding in a strong affinity for musical theater and flamboyant stage presence. Each brother had already started composing material in childhood and mastered an array of instruments that ranged from guitar, keyboards, and drums to horns and strings. Growing up in a household filled with working musicians, they absorbed early inspirations that included Harry Nilsson, Todd Rundgren, Wings, the Zombies, and other Baroque-pop acts of the 1960s and 1970s. Their first recordings surfaced in 2015 as the cassette-only album What We Know. Buzz quickly followed, leading to a deal with 4AD and the 2016 release of the single "These Words" b/w "As Long as We're Together," which the band sold on the road while supporting Car Seat Headrest. Later that year they issued their debut full-length, Do Hollywood, produced by Foxygen's Jonathan Rado, and soon earned critical praise, television spots, and extensive live work.
For those concerts the brothers expanded the lineup to include Danny Ayala on keyboards and Megan Zeankowski on bass. In September 2017 they delivered the home-recorded EP Brothers of Destruction, a collection largely tracked during the Do Hollywood sessions that had already become live staples. Their sophomore album, Go to School, arrived in August 2018 as an elaborate Broadway-style production centered on a chimpanzee raised by human parents; guest appearances came from the D'Addario parents as well as power pop figures Todd Rundgren and Jody Stephens. A live fundraiser titled The Lemon Twigs LIVE appeared in April 2020 to benefit Coalition for the Homeless, drawn from tape recordings made in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and California. That August the band released the Rado-co-produced Songs for the General Public, which spent one week at number 61 on Billboard's Top Current Album Sales chart. Around the same time the brothers contributed to Tim Heidecker's Fear of Death, and over the ensuing years they also appeared on recordings by Rundgren and Weyes Blood.
Work on the next Lemon Twigs album began in 2020 and stretched across many months of refinement before the self-produced single "Corner of My Eye" surfaced in early 2023 as the first preview of Everything Harmony. Alongside their longstanding devotion to glam and theatrical power pop, the band drew on both mainstream and outsider folk sources, echoing Simon & Garfunkel on certain tracks and Moondog on others. Everything Harmony, their first release for Captured Tracks, reached stores in May 2023. Almost exactly twelve months later came A Dream Is All We Know, captured in a burst of productivity immediately after the previous album and distinguished by more extensive string arrangements.
