Brooklyn, NY · synth-pop

Nation Of Language

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Brooklyn's OMD-hearted synth-pop romantics — motorik melancholy that soars live, analog synths and total sincerity, romance for drum machines and the people who love them.

Ian Devaney started fooling around on a keyboard after hearing OMD's "Electricity" in his father's car, a song he'd known since childhood. He brought in his partner Aidan Noell and, initially, his former Static Jacks bandmate Michael Sue-Poi, and Nation of Language took shape in Brooklyn in 2016 as a project built around that one spark of a memory.

The band's synth-pop draws on early-1980s British and European electronic music, OMD, New Order, the more melodic end of post-punk, with sequenced basslines, analog keyboard textures and Devaney's plainspoken baritone carrying the melodies. Sue-Poi eventually left; Alex MacKay took over on bass in 2022.

Their debut album, Introduction, Presence, came out in May 2020 and found an unexpectedly wide audience during the pandemic. The follow-up, A Way Forward, leaned into Krautrock and Kraftwerk, and the band made their television debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in January 2022 playing "Across That Fine Line."

Strange Disciple followed in 2023 and topped Rough Trade's albums of the year list, and a fourth album, Dance Called Memory, arrived in September 2025. Devaney also sings for Machinegum, a side project led by the Strokes' drummer Fabrizio Moretti, alongside his work with Nation of Language.

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synth-pop