Friends

Powered by percussive grooves and flirtatious vocals, Brooklyn’s Close friends find a contemporary middle surface between post-disco and ’60s girl group sounds. Fronted by Samantha Urbani and Lesley Hann, the music group started as an expansion of Urbani’s house recordings, made out of drum loops and effects-laden vocal paths, something she’d completed for a long time but held to herself because of stage fright. Attempting to obtain the tracks out of her program, this year 2010 she started writing them with close friends — included in this, potential groupmates Matthew Molnar and Nikki Shapiro — while she journeyed to Berlin for the summertime. A twist of city-living destiny (bedbugs) resulted in Hann and friend Oliver Duncan residing at Urbani’s place for any spell, and within weekly of posting her demos using the set, the band was created. Playing a reliable stream of displays through 2010 and into 2011, Close friends rated in the NME’s Greatest New Rings list and authorized to the Lucky Quantity label, where they released three singles and, in June of 2012, their full-length debut, Express! The recording was co-released by Excess fat Possum and presented all of the previously released singles.