We Are Loud Whispers

In 2007 Sonya Westcott, half of the psych-folk duo Arthur & Yu, crossed paths with multi-instrumentalist Ayumu Haitani of the Japanese group 4 Bonjour's Parties during her band's tour of Japan. They reestablished contact several years afterward and started exchanging song ideas by e-mail. Haitani supplied Westcott with fully realized instrumental pieces, which she then adorned with lyrics and vocals. The workflow mirrored the remote method the Postal Service had followed while assembling their album Give Up. The resulting sound likewise aligned, as Westcott's fragile and sweetly melancholic vocals settled naturally against Haitani's off-kilter hip-hop beats and bedroom electronic melodicism. It therefore made sense when the Postal Service's Jimmy Tamborello contributed vocals to a track on We Are Loud Whispers' debut album Suchness, issued by Hardly Art in May of 2013.