Belle and Sebastian

Initially started in 1996 as a college project by Stuart Murdoch and Stuart David, the Glasgow-based Scottish band Belle and Sebastian became cult indie favourites famed for delicate melodies and meandering tales of adolescent awkwardness, teenage romance, and everyday tedium. Inspired by a love of The Smiths, Nick Drake, and Edwyn Collins, Murdoch spent years crafting his songs before the limited edition release of debut album Tigermilk (1996) soon became a collector's item loved by influential DJs John Peel, Steve Lamaq, and Jens Lekman. Dismissed in some quarters as "twee-pop," the group went on to release some of the most acclaimed indie pop albums of the era in If You're Feeling Sinister (1996), The Boy With the Arab Strap (1998), and Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2003), all of which were certified gold in the UK. Belle and Sebastian went on to play with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, curate their own festival (The Bowlie Weekender), and collaborate with Norah Jones on the band's eighth album, Belle and Sebastian Write About Love, in 2010. They later won the "Outstanding Contribution to Music" title at the 2014 NME Awards and returned to the studio to work on their ninth album, which arrived in 2015 under the title Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. A trio of EPs followed in late 2017 and 2018 under the collective title of How to Solve Our Human Problems, with the full-length album Days of the Bagnold Summer appearing in 2019. Three years later, the band returned to the Top 10 in the UK with A Bit of Previous, Belle and Sebastian's first album to be recorded in Glasgow since 1999. The band surprise-released their twelfth studio album Late Developers in January 2023, which was spearheaded by lead single "I Don't Know What You See in Me."