Oh Wonder
Releasing an original song a month might be daunting for some, but for London duo Oh Wonder – made up of Anthony West and Josephine Vander Gucht – it was all part of the plan. Well, sort of. “We don’t understand how any of this happened,” joked Vander Gucht. “What we’re doing is creating an album in the public forum.” The idea started when the two first met four years ago. Back then, they were bogged down by the rigid structure of the industry. “You spend months creating an EP or album, promote it and then it’s gone,” said West, and the frustration of that set-up inspired the song-a-month quest, which began last summer and will stretch until their debut album is released in September.
The duo knew they were on to something when they got a special email. “One of the maddest things was when Rick Rubin reached out when we were still anonymous online and said: ‘Love your stuff, would love to meet you one day,’” says West. “For us, that was like – wow, he listens to our songs? And likes them? That’s the biggest compliment.” The honor is all the more impressive considering the duo hasn’t played a single show yet, which is slated to change this fall. Added West: “The funny thing is, the people who are fans of ours seem to be from anywhere except the UK. It’s a testament to how powerful the internet is, connecting people from all over the world.”
Hippo Campus
When Hippo Campus released their debut EP this past November, first the band’s home state of Minneapolis noticed it was something special, and now it’s happening worldwide. “We’re just a bunch of guys who get to travel around and do what we love to do,” 19-year-old singer and guitarist Jake Luppen explained simply. “We’ve never even toured outside the midwest until performing at South by Southwest in March, so the past few months have been surreal, inspiring and crazy.”
Luppen has good reason for using those adjectives. It was less than two years ago when he his Hippo Campus bandmates – guitarist Nathan Stocker, bassist Zach Sutton and drummer Whistler Allen – were attending the St Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists in sleepy Minnesota. Members of the Twin Cities music scene since their days in middle school, the talented teenagers joined forces to form Hippo Campus, which is named after a phrase they stumbled upon in a psychology textbook. Said Luppen: “At first it was honestly just about trying to make our friends dance.” Hippo Campus finally departed the confines of the midwest for the first time for almost a dozen buzzy spots at South by Southwest this March, earning raves thanks to their intelligent and catchy indie rock. It was at their last gig where the boys caught the attention of the music bookers for Conan O’Brien’s TBS talkshow. “They saw us and reached out the next day saying: ‘Incubus canceled. Do you want their slot tomorrow?’” said Luppen of their television debut. “We were like, hell yeah!” Since then, the quartet are on a plethora of tours, supporting acts like Walk the Moon and Modest Mouse and accumulating a ballooning fanbase. “A lot of the themes in our lyrics are about growing up,” said Luppen. “Right now we’re learning how not to worry about the future and focus on the music.”
Frankie
Getting signed by the guys who rep Bruno Mars? Check. Viral success online? Check. A fun and unique vibe? Check. If Frankie doesn’t become the next big female pop star, no one will. “It definitely makes me feel confident that what I’m doing musically could reach a lot of people and hopefully help them and make them happy,” the northern California native said from the Silver Lake neighborhood in Los Angeles. “I’m just really lucky.”
This time last year, however, pop dreams were just that – until success began to take shape when Miller started collaborating with producer Petros (whose credits including tracks for Martin Solveig and Enrique Iglesias) on a variety of Katy Perry-esque pop anthems. When the first hint at their efforts were posted online earlier this spring, in the form of the ballad Problems, Problems, it became a viral smash, netting over a million plays and counting on Spotify, sealing Miller’s future as a pop songstress. “That was so unexpected, it’s not even funny,” she notes. “When we were writing these songs, we were very quiet about it. It was one of those things where the music was received as well as we hoped.” Upon internet stardom, the industry quickly saw the potential in her radio-friendly tracks and swooped in, especially after a variety of buzzy spots at South by Southwest. “Things have been happening so quickly,” she said. “It’s actually really cool.”
Will Joseph Cook
With influences that run the gamut from Radiohead to Joni Mitchell, Will Joseph Cook’s musical maturity is well beyond his 18 years. “Most of my ideas will just come to me at inconvenient times and I tend to just record them into my phone,” the England native said of his songwriting process, which usually involves his trusty acoustic guitar. “Lyrics always seem to come last; a few phrases stick along the way, but I find it a lot easier to know what I want to sing about once some arrangement is down.”
However Cook goes about crafting his tracks, it seems to be working. After uploading a few videos of covers and originals to YouTube, he began to garner the interest of the industry, which just recently led him to getting signed by Atlantic Records. “Everything came together quite fast,” he explained, especially after the internet success of the song Message, which is about the “gross but also comfortable feeling of nostalgia”. Now Cook says he’s looking forward to festival season next summer and putting together his next EP – but first, he has to finish school in June. “I just want to keep writing and recording to make the following months as good as they can be.”
Life of Dillon
It’s been a wild ride for Life of Dillon since three childhood friends – David Kieffer and brothers Joe and Robert Griffith – came together last year, naming their project after a drifter they encountered while on a trip to Brazil. After some time “gigging around” the UK, the guys went to work putting together a unique blend of tracks they consider “acoustic house”, including the single Overload, their pulsating breakout. “At the time we had no inkling as to how big things were going to get for us,” said Joe Griffith of the band’s rise. “We weren’t trying to make a hit or anything like that, but just having fun in the studio.”
Overload helped pluck the boys from English obscurity to a meeting with LA Reid, the ubiquitous CEO of Epic Records. “Just to see him nodding along was so incredible for us, and then for him to want to work on our release, it was just such a mind-blowing moment that none of us will ever forget,” said Kieffer. “To go from our studio in London all the way to the heights of New York, it took a while to sink in.” With their debut EP under their belts and a US tour for this summer, Overload is poised to be a radio smash and, they hope, thrust them into the next level of stardom.
