Beach House

Baltimore

Victoria Legrand was born in Paris in 1981, the daughter of the painter Olivier Legrand and the niece of the composer Michel Legrand, and moved to the United States at six. She studied drama at Vassar and spent time at the Lecoq theatre school in Paris before turning to songwriting. Alex Scally, born in Baltimore in 1982, studied geology at Oberlin and worked as a carpenter with his father. They met in Baltimore in 2004 in a band called Daggerhearts, and after it broke up began writing together; Scally said they started their first record without even thinking they were a band. Their first show was at the Talking Head Club in Baltimore in November 2005.

Their sound was built around cheap keyboards, especially the Thomas Troubadour home organs of the early 1970s that Scally grew up with and the band still buys secondhand; he says every keyboard has one thing on it that is unique. The self-titled debut (2006), recorded on a four-track in Scally's basement for about a thousand dollars, and Devotion (2008) came out on the small Carpark label.

Teen Dream and Bloom

In May 2008 Norwegian radio asked them to write a song from their surroundings, and on a train from Bergen to Oslo they wrote Norway. They signed to Sub Pop in 2009 and, with the producer Chris Coady, made Teen Dream in a converted church in upstate New York, their first record with an outside producer and their breakthrough. Sub Pop paid for a film for every song. Bloom (2012), made at Sonic Ranch in Texas, went to number seven in America. Kendrick Lamar built Money Trees on Silver Soul, and The Weeknd sampled them twice.

They have deliberately stayed mid-sized, turning down advertising money; when Volkswagen used a soundalike of their song Take Care after they had refused to license it, Scally said a feeling and an energy had been copied. Legrand has sung with Grizzly Bear and Air.

Depression Cherry and after

After the Bloom tour they took six months off. Depression Cherry (2015), recorded in Bogalusa, Louisiana, returned to drum machines; Legrand summed up its themes as love, pain, getting older, dealing with loss and letting go. A surprise second album, Thank Your Lucky Stars, followed seven weeks later. 7 (2018), co-produced with Sonic Boom, was heavier, and the double album Once Twice Melody (2021-22), released in four chapters, added a string orchestra arranged by David Campbell and made James Barone a full member.

In 2021 Space Song became a sleeper hit on TikTok, six years after its release, and its use in Netflix's Wednesday in 2022 sent it higher still; Depression Cherry went platinum in 2026. After a pause in 2025 the band returned in autumn 2026, supporting The Strokes in Queens and covering Robert Lester Folsom's April Suzanne.

On stage

They tour constantly and in long runs, often in dark rooms lit with elaborate stage designs, and they have staged installation shows. setlist.fm logs Myth and Silver Soul as their most played songs, each well over four hundred times. Notable sessions include La Blogothèque in Paris in 2009, NPR's World Cafe in 2010 and 2013, and Later... with Jools Holland in 2012. In January 2014 they joined members of Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, Wye Oak and The Walkmen to perform Gene Clark's No Other in full. Scally has said that night is where music happens.

Standing

They cite the Zombies, Brian Wilson, Big Star and My Bloody Valentine, and meant Bloom to share the vision of Pet Sounds, Disintegration and Violator; critics compare Legrand's voice to Nico and Hope Sandoval. Teen Dream is twenty-first in Pitchfork's list of the best albums of the 2010s. Legrand dislikes the dream-pop label and has asked why the band cannot simply be Beach House.