Sugarplum Fairies are an indie dream pop

Dream pop

Dream pop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s, when bands like The Passions, Dif Juz, Lowlife and A.R. Kane began fusing post-punk and ethereal experiments with bittersweet pop melodies into dreamy, sensual soundscapes. The term was almost...

 duo based in Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

 who mix hushed, melancholic female vocals with European guitar pop and Americana folksiness. They are composed of Vienna natives Silvia Ryder (vocals) and Ben Bohm (guitars, background vocals) and supplemented by an array of rotating guest musicians.

The Sugarplum Fairies draw influence from French cultural icons such as Françoise Hardy

Françoise Hardy

Françoise Madeleine Hardy is a French singer, actress and astrologer. Hardy is an iconic figure in fashion, music and style. She is married to the singer and movie actor Jacques Dutronc.-Biography:...

, Anna Karina

Anna Karina

Anna Karina is a Danish film actress, director, and screenwriter who has spent most of her working life in France. Karina is known as a muse of the director, Jean-Luc Godard, one of the pioneers of the French New Wave...

, and Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....

, as well as the Velvet Underground, John Lennon

John Lennon

John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

, and Lee Hazlewood

Lee Hazlewood

Lee Hazlewood , born Barton Lee Hazlewood was an American country and pop singer, songwriter, and record producer, most widely known for his work with guitarist Duane Eddy during the late 1950s and singer Nancy Sinatra in the 1960s.Hazlewood had a distinctive baritone voice that added an ominous...

. Frequently mentioned as a point of comparison by critics, Mazzy Star

Mazzy Star

Mazzy Star is an American alternative rock band formed in Santa Monica, California, in 1989 from the group Opal, a collaboration of guitarist David Roback and bassist Kendra Smith...

, a similarly styled female-singer, male-guitarist duo from the 1990s, are also cited as an influence. The band has been acclaimed netwide for its songwriting skills.

The Sugarplum Fairies debuted in 1999 with Flake, released by Starfish Records. The duo's next two albums, Introspective Raincoat Student Music (2003) and Country International Records (2006), were also released by Starfish; notably, the latter album was produced in Nashville by Ken Coomer

Ken Coomer

Ken Coomer was the last drummer for the band Uncle Tupelo as well as the drummer for Chicago based-band Wilco until Yankee Hotel Foxtrot...

. The duo released Chinese Leftovers in 2009; the track Hold On To Me was featured on ABC's Grey's Anatomy and A Story on the TV show FlashForward. Their latest album - "The Images We Get" was released in April 2011 on Starfish Records.

Sugarplum Fairies' "Country International Records" was nominated for the 7th Annual Independent Music Awards

The Independent Music Awards

The Independent Music Awards is an international program that honors top-ranked independent artists and releases in more than 50 Album, Song, Music Video and Design categories....

for Pop/Rock Album of the year.

Discography

• Flake (Starfish Records, 1999)
• Introspective Raincoat Student Music (Starfish Records, 2003)
• Country International Records (Starfish Records, 2006)
• Chinese Leftovers (Starfish Records, 2009)
• The Images We Get (Starfish Records, 2011)

External links

• Sugarplum Fairies official website

An interview with Sugarplum Fairies (http://www.theredalert.com/features/sugarplumfairies.htm)

Reviews

• Review of Country International Records by Performing Songwriter (http://www.performingsongwriter.com/pages/music/94.cfm)
• Review of Country International Records by Silent Uproar (http://www.silentuproar.com/reviews/1564/sugarplum-fairies/country-international-records/)
• Review of Introspective Raincoat Student Music by Delusions Of Adequacy (http://www.adequacy.net/review.php?reviewID=3963)
• Review of Introspective Raincoat Student Music by One Times One (http://www.onetimesone.com/sound/reviews/s/sugarplum-introspective.php)