Hille Paakkunainen plays a guitar two strings away from traditional open tuning and, as a result, many of her song sketches are based on melodies rather than power chords. Mike Shanley writes bass lines that serve double duty: rhythm parts and extra counterpoints that harmonize with the guitar. The former quality works well in tandem with drummer David Petrou, whose approach touches on thinking drummers such as Minutemen/fIREHOSE's George Hurley: launching patterns that contrast, but that do not contradict, the contributions of the melodic instruments, while viscerally driving the beat. As a vocalist, Paakkunainen comes across like a belter. She can wail, boiling over into screams one moment, and, at other times pulling back for a more gentle sound that keeps the intensity going.

The band came together in the fall of 2004. Shanley is a veteran of several local bands and concurrently plays with the Mofones. Before moving to Pittsburgh for school, Petrou was a leg of the 3-piece wunderkinder forming alternative-rock Barney's Bicycle in his hometown of Anaheim, California. A native of Finland, where she played in the death metal band Raven Sky, Paakkunainen also came to Pittsburgh for school after living briefly in Glasgow and performing as a singer/songwriter in Glasgow and London.