Artist

Cults

Bio
News
Media
Albums
Features
Photo Galleries

Tell the story of Cults' rapid rise to any band that's been struggling on the road for ten years, and watch them seethe. With minimal effort, the New York duo has made literal the term 'overnight success'--and all it took were three pop songs posted--without any information-- on a Bandcamp.

A couple of weeks after those three tracks were posted, some (albeit not much) information trickled out on the mysterious twosome: they were Brian Oblivion (the pseudonym a reference to Videodrome) and Madeline Fallin, two New York-via-San Diego film students who happened to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Madeline met Brian when he was tour managing the Willowz, her brother's band; Brian helped get her into a 21+ show (they are both, now, of age), thereby starting one of 2010's most fruitful pop partnerships.

Neither had ever been in a band before, but that didn't deter them from trying. They posted their first three songs to Bandcamp for their friends' amusement, and ended up picking up a couple of other friends in the process. There was Gorilla Vs. Bear, who started a record label to release Cults' first 7-inch (which sold out before it was even pressed). There was Sleigh Bells, who they toured with in the summer of 2010. And then there was The New York Times, who during the 2010 CMJ festival used them as a springboard to discuss a large swath of contemporary independent music.

The two of them did not expect any of this, and they've been dealing with the newfound attention to the best of their ability (Fallin supposedly spent the first two weeks of their blog notoriety on the perpetual brink of vomiting). As of late 2010, they were finishing up a full-length record and fielding offers from record labels.