Modest Mister Heavenly

BY Travis PersaudPublished Aug 22, 2011

"I like to think of us as a superb group," says Nick Thorburn of Mister Heavenly. The three-piece outfit, made up of Thorburn (Islands), Ryan Kattner (Man Man) and Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse) carry considerable indie cred, which had people proclaiming them the latest super group before they even released a song. "It's a compliment, so I'll take it," Thornburn says, sounding somewhat unsure of the title. However, the trio's quite proud of their own self-proclaimed label: doom wop.

"It's a Rorschach," he says of the tongue-in-cheek genre. "People know it's invented, but they hear whatever the fuck they think doom wop is. They can easily say, 'What bullshit! Their heads are so far up their asses that they think they've coined a genre and made it sound like that.'" The mix of gloomy overtones with soaring '50s R&B-influenced melodies found on their Sub Pop debut Out Of Love somehow makes the label fitting. "This is just us having a little more fun than we afford ourselves in our main projects," he says.

Latest Coverage