Pale Seas

The bedroom-based dream pop project of Southampton, U.K. songwriter Jacob Scott — originally known as Netherlands — had been renamed Pale Seas by early 2012, and soon expanded to a group featuring Graham Poole on guitar and Matthew Bishop on bass. Commentators on their early gigs, and reviewers of their debut single — March 2012's "Something or Nothing" — heard the influence of both Elliott Smith and Beach House in their sound, as Scott's compositions at that point betrayed a similar combination of thoughtful sadness and a pop-focused sensibility. That single also coincided with their first national headline tour, and they went on to support acts such as Stornoway, the War on Drugs, and Beach Fossils. By the time of the release of September 2012's double A-side "My Own Mind/Bodies," the band had enlisted the help of Bees' linchpin Paul Butler, who invited them to record at his studio on the Isle of Wight. Next, drummer William Hilliard was recruited before they readied a 2014 EP entitled Places to Haunt.