Wrexham, UK · dream-pop · electronic

Art School Girlfriend

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Welsh dream-pop noir — slow-burn electronics and 3 a.m. honesty, building club pulses into songs that stay whisper-close no matter how big the room gets.

Art School Girlfriend is the project of Polly Mackey, a musician and producer originally from Wrexham in north Wales. She moved to London in 2011 to front the shoegaze band Deaf Club, whose free Bandcamp EP and cassette single on Transgressive Records led to a deal with Domino Publishing, tours alongside the band 2:54, and appearances at SXSW and Reading and Leeds before the band split in 2014.

Mackey went on to sing backing vocals on The Maccabees' final album, Marks to Prove It, and appeared with the band on Later... with Jools Holland. In 2016 she moved to Margate and began writing alone under the Art School Girlfriend name, eventually passing demos to producer Paul Epworth, who signed her to his label, Wolf Tone, and helped shape her self-produced debut EP, Measures, in 2017.

She writes, plays and produces the material herself, layering muted guitar, synthesisers and programmed percussion under a close, low-register vocal. The results sit between dream pop and electronic music, with club rhythms often present but held at a distance.

A second EP, Into the Blue Hour, followed in 2019, released around an appearance at Montreal's POP festival and backed by headline UK tours and a US run supporting The Japanese House. Her debut album, Is It Light Where You Are, appeared in 2021, followed by Soft Landing in 2023.

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