Venus Hum

Nashville, TN, birthplace of American music, proved an unexpected yet fitting home for dream pop outfit Venus Hum. The group, featuring vocalist Annette Strean alongside multi-instrumentalists Kip Kubin and Tony Miracle, came together in 1999. Strean, raised by a logger father in Whitefish, MT, discovered Nashville as her true cultural home after years spent performing show tunes for enjoyment; her admiration for the Cure and Kate Bush further shaped her direction, while a taste for kitschy 1950s films later inspired her to craft clothing from vintage garments. Miracle shared a parallel path, having grown up in Cincinnati, OH’s conventional suburban setting before finding escape through England’s new wave era, with Depeche Mode and the Cure guiding him toward various 1980s electronic dance acts. Kubin, originally from New Jersey, gained early access to custom-built keyboards via a friend’s father and soon adopted the instrument himself. Once the three linked up, Miracle established Chessington Synth Labs Studio in his basement, where Venus Hum developed their lush, dynamic pop aesthetic. Their self-titled debut surfaced on Mono-Fi during spring 2001.

Local performances around Nashville quickly gained traction. Electroclash producer and scenester Larry Tee soon mentored the band, securing their slot at his Electroclash Festival in New York City in summer 2002. Stereolab also invited Venus Hum to support them in Nashville. The Hummingbirds EP accompanied a joint U.S. tour with Sing-Sing that October, followed six months later by the full-length album Big Beautiful Sky. Label complications and nodes on Strean’s vocal chords prompted a two-year hiatus, during which Strean pursued physical and vocal therapy, Kubin turned to filmmaking, and Miracle issued an album under the name Satellite City. The trio reconvened in 2005 to record both collectively and separately, yielding the acoustic and electronic explorations of their second album, The Colors in the Wheel, which appeared in summer 2006.