Fleshed-Out Fuzz: Dum Dum Girls

Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif.
Members: Dee Dee, Jules, Bambi, Sandy
Album: He Gets Me High EP
For Fans Of: Vivian Girls, The Raveonettes, Best Coast

A lot has changed since the Dum Dum Girls started making music three years ago. Gone are the days in which Dee Dee (née Kirstin Gundred) created lo-fi recordings as an emerging solo artist. These days, the band’s visionary performs with a full band behind her. Not only that, but her all-girl group struck gold with their 2010 debut I Will Be—a modern pop classic that stood out amongst a wave of similarly minded lo-fi peers.

Despite her initial success, Gundred wasn’t interested in recreating the same lo-fi approach on subsequent releases. Rather than reconjuring the same aesthetic approach found on I Will Be, she felt the need for there to be a clear-cut creative path that reflected her growth as a musician. “I knew that stepping beyond [lo-fi] could alienate the first listeners, but I wasn’t interested in repeating myself," Dee Dee explains. ”Really more than anything else, I wanted to progress. I wanted there to be an obvious moment from each release to the next.”

He Gets Me High, the group’s first new release since their debut LP, sounds substantially better than its predecessor. For Gundred, however, the improvement came through their move away from their initial lo-fi musical style. “The EP doesn’t sound lo-fi. It’s literally not low-fidelity,” she says. “It is noisy and uses a lot of fuzz, distortion, tremolo and reverb on the instruments; but that isn’t anything new or limited to lo-fi. That is just rock ‘n’ roll.”

The biggest difference this time around came from the Dum Dum Girls opting to record in a studio and work with a professional recording team. “Since I Will Be came before the band, there was a discrepancy between the two [releases]," Gundred says. Producer Richard Gotteher (Blondie, The Go-Go’s) emphasized a cleaner sound, especially with vocals. Dee Dee also recruited The Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner as a producer, in order to help strike a fine balance between preserving the raw energy inherent within I Will Be alongside higher-fidelity production.

While the songs themselves are relatively similar to those found on I Will Be, the Dum Dum Girls finally received the proper studio treatment their sound truly needed. “Recording He Gets Me High offered a chance to showcase the DDG we’d become," Gundred says in regards to the group’s progression. “I also took a big step away from burying everything, my vocals especially, under a wall of reverb.” From the rolling floor toms kicking off “Wrong Feels Right” to the pristine guitar timbre on “Take Care of My Baby,” He Gets Me High breathes a musical vivacity that I Will Be’s lo-fi approach failed to capture on a certain level. And the Smiths cover didn’t hurt, either.