Dirty Projectors

a project led since 2002 by American Dave Longstreh, Dirty Projectors has undergone several incarnations and taken various musical paths, in a constant creative process. Influenced by the hardcore-punk movement in his youth, the singer and guitarist born in Connecticut in 1981 produced a solo album, The Graceful Fallen Mango (2002), before creating Dirty Projectors, whose first recording, Morning Better Last! (2003), saw him surrounded by two female singers and a clarinettist/saxophonist, Hank Miller. The project, still solo, evolved with The Glad Fact (2003), Slaves's Graves & Ballads (2004), then The Getty Address (2005), before consolidating on Rise Above (2007), a hijacked tribute to the band Black Flag featuring Amber Coffman, Nat Baldwin and Brian McOmber. The now-formed band attracted the attention of critics and labels, in particular Domino Records, who signed them and let Longstreh experiment to their heart's content on Bitte Orca (2009), their breakthrough album in the indie rock world. Ranked 65th on the Billboard 200, it was followed by a collaboration with Björk on Mount Wittenberg Orca (2010). After parting ways with Coffman, the mastermind and his new collaborators Angel Deradoorian and Olga Bell set about recording Swing Lo Magellan (2012), before a lineup reshuffle on Dirty Projectors (2017). In 2018, he surrounded himself with numerous guests to concoct the album Lamp Lit Rose, then started afresh with drummer Michael Johnson and three female musicians, Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman and Kristin Slipp, present on Song of the Earth (2025), a collection undertaken three years earlier with the German string orchestra Stargaze, for a skilful blend of pop and classical composition.