Built By Snow is an American four-piece rock band based in

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

, Texas formed in 2006. To date, the band has released one EP, and one mini-full-length album. The band has described themselves as "Catchy keyboard indie pop rock with an explosion of velcro melodies and magnetic hooks that hit your brain like an Atari blasting out of a bazooka."

History

The band met while working together in the production department at a television station in Austin. After winning a Battle of the Bands competition, they used the prize money to record their first EP, "NOISE." Recorded during the summer months of 2007 at Music Lab Recording Studio in Austin Texas, "NOISE" is 7 powerpop songs about girls, teenage hope, dorks, NASA engineers, and robots. During the summer months of 2008, Built By Snow began working on their second album, "MEGA." Recorded at The Bubble in Austin Texas, "MEGA" is described as 9 songs of catchy keyboard rock with velcro melodies that will stick to your brain and won't let go. Following the release of "MEGA," Built By Snow performed a showcase in the 2009 (SXSW) South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, and at the 2009 (NXNE) North By North East Music Festival in Toronto.

Musical style

Built By Snow is catchy rock/pop songs built around a wave of

Moog synthesizer The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 20 ...

circuit bending Circuit bending is the creative, chance-based customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low-voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and ...

Casio Keyboards, and overdriven guitars. Reviewers have compared their sound to

the Cars The Cars were an American rock band formed in Boston in 1976. Emerging from the new wave scene in the late 1970s, they consisted of Ric Ocasek ( rhythm guitar), Benjamin Orr (bass guitar), Elliot Easton (lead guitar), Greg Hawkes (keyboards), ...

, early

Weezer Weezer is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1992. Since 2001, the band has consisted of Rivers Cuomo (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Patrick Wilson (drums, backing vocals), Scott Shriner (bass guitar, keyboards, backing v ...

and

DEVO Devo (, originally ) is an American rock band from Akron, Ohio, formed in 1973. Their classic line-up consisted of two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs (Mark and Bob) and the Casales (Gerald and Bob), along with Alan Myers. The band had a ...

Music videos

The first video released by the band was for the track "Drag Away" from the EP ''NOISE''. The video, Directed by Andy Garibay is set inside of a station floating in deep space and follows a similar plot to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The spaceship's on-board computer takes over and turns members JP and Matt into zombie robots, who fight Ben for control of the station. This video won 3rd place in the Project Breakout online video contest. In February 2008 the band released an animated

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...

for the track "Underneath' from the EP ''NOISE''. The video, Directed by Andy Garibay, was designed by Built By Snow guitarist Matt Murray who created a virtual 8-bit

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

video game world as the setting. The band, acting as space pilots, was recorded in front of a

green screen Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues ( chroma range). The technique has been used in many fields to r ...

then superimposed into the video game setting. Band members, JP, Matt, and Ben were the space pilot heroes in the video, while drummer Brandon played the bad guy. The evil robots were all Brandon clones, and the flying Medusa head at the end of the video was also Brandon.

Discography

Albums

* ''MEGA'' (2009) self-released

EPs

* ''NOISE'' (2007) self-released

Side Projects

In 2011, Built By Snow singer and songwriter JP started releasing music under the name Oh Look Out. This side project contains songs written and recorded by JP in his home studio. In 2010, Built By Snow guitarist Matt began playing with the Austin Texas band 'Red Falcon'.

References

External links

Built By Snow
(Official Site)
Oh Look Out

Red Falcon
{{DEFAULTSORT:Built By Snow American pop rock music groups Indie rock musical groups from Texas Musical groups from Austin, Texas