Dum Dum Girls: The Rise and Legacy of Dee Dee's Dream Pop Revolution
What began as a solitary creative experiment would eventually blossom into one of the most compelling stories in modern indie rock. Dum Dum Girls was born in 2008 as the bedroom recording project of singer and songwriter Kristin Gundred, known by her stage name Dee Dee. Working out of Los Angeles, she quietly released a five-song CDR on her own label, Zoo Music, setting in motion a journey that would take her from intimate home recordings to the stages of national television.
The band's name itself was a deliberate act of musical homage, drawing equally from the Vaselines' album Dum Dum and Iggy Pop's celebrated song Dum Dum Boys. This reverence for rock history would consistently inform the band's aesthetic, blending the raw energy of punk with the lush, reverb-soaked textures of dream pop and shoegaze. Early releases on Captured Tracks and HoZac Records quickly earned Dee Dee a devoted following, and by July 2009, Sub Pop had come calling, signing the project to their legendary roster.
The debut album, I Will Be, arrived in March 2010 and immediately announced Dum Dum Girls as a serious creative force. Produced alongside Richard Gottehrer, a veteran collaborator of Blondie, the Go-Gos, and the Raveonettes, the record dazzled critics with what Pitchfork described as "genuine earworms, both unfailingly hip and often wonderfully associative." The album carried an especially personal dimension, as its cover featured a college photograph of Dee Dee's mother, who passed away from cancer that same year. Guest contributions from Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner and Dee Dee's then-husband Brandon Welchez of Crocodiles further enriched the record's emotional and sonic landscape.
With a full touring band now assembled, Dum Dum Girls took their hazy, melodic sound on the road and continued to evolve. The 2011 EP He Gets Me High demonstrated the band's affinity for classic rock influences, featuring a striking cover of The Smiths' There Is a Light That Never Goes Out. Their second studio album, Only in Dreams, followed that same year, showcasing singles Coming Down and Bedroom Eyes, the latter of which brought the band to the national spotlight when they performed it on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in December 2011.
The momentum continued to build with the 2012 EP End of Daze, which earned both "Best New Track" and "Best New Music" honors from Pitchfork. The band's third and final studio album, Too True, arrived in January 2014, with Dee Dee openly citing Suede, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Blondie, and Madonna as guiding influences. The result was a confident, stylistically refined record that underscored the band's ability to absorb and reinterpret decades of alternative rock history into something entirely their own.
Beyond the main band, Dee Dee's creative energy spilled into a rich array of side projects. She collaborated with Tamaryn on a cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain's Teenage Lust, composed the opening theme for the animated series Beware the Batman, and was featured on a duet from Belle and Sebastian's celebrated 2015 album Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. Meanwhile, drummer Sandra Vu launched her own synth-driven project, Sisu, reflecting the broader creative vitality that surrounded the Dum Dum Girls universe.
On January 28, 2016, Dee Dee announced that Dum Dum Girls had reached its natural conclusion. Rather than a quiet dissolution, it was a purposeful transition, as she launched a solo project under her birth name, Kristin Kontrol, releasing the album X-Communicate through Sub Pop later that May. The closing of Dum Dum Girls was not an ending so much as an evolution, a final testament to the restless artistic spirit that had driven the project from its very first bedroom recording to the broader stages of the indie rock world.