Artist Biography

There are just so many drums. Drums above all else. The guitar, the voice: all drums. Everything acquiesces to cadence. And though escaping the urgency and magnetism of its pulse is all but a physiological impossibly, it would be misleading to simply call the music that Explode Into Colors makes 'dance music.' There's something much more sinister about it than that. With teeth cut in the dank recesses of Portland, Oregon's still-thriving basement punk scene, the female trio has surfaced with shadow intact-and in the process, become one of the brightest young lights currently whispered about in the international pop underground.

This all began some time ago, back in Olympia, WA-specifically, at that city's anomalous little incubator, Evergreen State College-when two charismatic science majors began what would prove to be a lasting and fruitful musical marriage. After working with one another in various outfits and circumstances for a number of years, Claudia Meza (vocals, baritone guitar, Bachelor of Physics; formerly of Japanther) and Lisa Schonberg (drums, Master of Tropical Entomology; presently of Olympia's Kickball) both independently made the southerly migration to Portland in 2007-where they very quickly decided to scrap everything. Drafting fashion designer Heather Treadway-an old acquaintance of Schonberg's from Evergreen's Percussion Club (so many drums!), and a recent Oly-ex-pat in her own right-as auxiliary percussionist/keyboardist/vocalist/Girl Friday, the women who would be Explode Into Colors set about reevaluating what it meant to be a band, and began to think in abstract: band as art project, band as creative catalyst (in its brief history, the collective have found time to curate art shows, as well as conceive a multimedia dance performance for Portland's prestigious Time-Based Arts Festival). More important than either of those: band as primal surrender.

Cherry-picking some essential elements from lofty and familiar touchstones-the ecstatic surge of Afrobeat, the Downtown scene's willful primitivism, the hypnotic pulse of Minimalism, etc.-Explode Into Colors' disparate tributaries coalesce into that most rarified musical animal: a sound that's as cerebral as it is atmospheric and primal; as studious as it is insistent. Which is all just a particularly ostentatious way of stating the obvious: Explode Into Colors is music that's smart enough to know when to simply let the music take over.

With international accolades pouring in from such far-flung arbiters as The New York Times, Dazed and Confused ('Coolest New Indie Group, SXSW 2009'), NME ('Top Ten Bands of SXSW 2009'), XLR8R, Pitchfork Media, Willamette Week ('Best New Band 2009'), and NPR, as well as support slots with the likes of The Raincoats, Mission of Burma, The Thermals, and Shonen Knife-and all this after releasing little more than a handful of singles-the group is currently preparing their highly-anticipated debut album for acclaimed local label Kill Rock Stars, set for release in Fall 2010.