Thee More Shallows

Formed in San Francisco in 2001 when Michigan transplant Dee Kesler, North Carolina native Brian Fraser, and Californian Jason Gonzales met at a concert, Thee More Shallows (originally called simply Thee Shallows, a name they had to change when another group sent them a cease-and-desist order) wrote and recorded their debut, 2002's A History of Sport Fishing — Fraser and Gonzales played the drums, bass, keyboards, and added in samples, and Kesler did everything else — in rented studio space during a two-week period. For their second effort, however, they were able to build their own studio, which gave them more time to edit and tweak the songs. So much time, in fact, that it took almost three years to finish More Deep Cuts, an album that was finally released in 2005. The following year the EP Monkey vs. Shark appeared, which featured a remix by Odd Nosdam (Kesler had shown up on the producer's 2005 album, Burner), and soon Thee More Shallows had signed to Anticon, the label that issued their third full-length, Book of Bad Breaks, a decidedly less shoegazey record, in the spring of 2007.