Edmonton, AB · synth-pop · future-pop

Purity Ring

2 upcoming festivals ↓

Megan James's high, clear voice over Corin Roddick's pitch-shifted, chime-heavy production — future-pop that invented a sound the 2010s ran with.

Megan James and Corin Roddick both played in the band Gobble Gobble before Purity Ring existed. While touring with that group, Roddick started experimenting with production and beat-making, and asked James to sing on a track called "Ungirthed", released in January 2011, which became the pair's starting point as a duo based first in Edmonton, later Montreal.

Roddick builds tracks from pitch-shifted vocal samples, chimes and heavy low end, with James singing in a light, high register over the top, her lyrics often turning on anatomical and bodily imagery.

Signed to 4AD and Last Gang in 2012, the duo released Shrines that July. It reached number 32 on the Billboard 200, made Pitchfork's top 50 albums of the year, and was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, alongside a collaboration with Danny Brown called "Belispeak II".

Another Eternity followed in 2015, charting higher than its predecessor in both Canada and the US, and in 2017 the pair co-wrote and produced three songs on Katy Perry's album Witness.

A third album, Womb, arrived in 2020, and a self-titled fourth album followed in 2025. Onstage, the group has continued to perform with custom-built instruments and lighting rigged by Roddick himself.

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synth-popfuture-pop