A husband-and-wife pop duo called The Villas issued their self-released debut album Secrets in April 2000, an effort whose critical notice quickly earned them an appearance at L.A.’s International Pop Overthrow festival later that year. Both members sing and play guitar, Angel Ali Villa supplying lead lines and harmonies to Bill Villa’s lead vocals while the pair functions as a songwriting unit.
They make their home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Bill’s birthplace, where the two first crossed paths in the late 1990s after he answered his own personals ad; at the time he served as creative director of his advertising agency and had largely suspended his musical activities. Angel Ali Villa had moved from Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to attend Moravian College and subsequently Kutztown University. Among her formative influences she lists the Beatles, the Smiths, AC/DC, and Neil Sedaka; during the mid-1980s she fronted several local bands as lead guitarist and songwriter before turning her focus to a career as an art teacher, an interval during which she seldom touched the instrument or composed.
Bill Villa grew up in a musical household—his father sang with big bands and his grandfather worked as a professional guitarist—and counts Emitt Rhodes, Tom Waits, Todd Rundgren, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis Costello among his touchstones, the last of whom critics often invoke when describing the duo’s sound. In the early 1980s he performed and wrote songs in the locally successful duo the Fops and became the father of two children; through the remainder of the decade he managed the rock band Daddy Licks, an experience that first prompted him to consider promoting Angel Ali. The pair soon began writing songs together, however, and Bill abandoned any plan to remain offstage.
Their renewed creative partnership led them back to active music-making. They married in June 1999, and in early April of the following year the Villas released Secrets, an album featuring numerous musical guests.
