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Husky Gawenda and
Gideon Preiss grew up in Australia and developed a love of music, writing songs and listening to records together throughout their teenage years. In 2008, the two started a band, enlisting Melbourne scenesters Evan Tweedie on bass and vocals and Luke Vollins on drums, augmenting
Preiss' keyboard and vocal duties and
Gawenda's vocals and guitars. Taking the name Husky, the band was born. The group drew on
Preiss and
Gawenda's shared love of literate classic rock staples when developing its sound, melding artful songwriting inspired by the likes of
Leonard Cohen and
the Doors with
Gawenda's poetic lyrics. The bandmembers worked tirelessly on songwriting and live performance, eventually setting up a makeshift home studio to record the basic tracks for their debut album. After working for months on the basic tracks, Husky handed over their raw materials to producer
Noah Georgeson (famed for his work with artists like
the Strokes and
Joanna Newsom) to handle the final mixing process. The end result was their hauntingly folky debut album,
Forever So, released in late 2011 on Liberation Music.
In 2011 the group also won the Pushover talent competition hosted by Australian radio institution Triple J. This opened many doors for Husky, and the band quickly gained new fans as well as landing support slots for established artists such as
Gotye,
Devendra Banhart, and
Noah and the Whale. Husky began negotiating a deal with U.S. indie mainstay Sub Pop, which planned a global re-release of
Forever So for 2012. Husky was the first Australian band to be signed to Sub Pop. Their 2014 follow-up album,
Rucker's Hill, was also released through Liberation Music down under and Sub Pop in the U.S. In June 2017 Husky dropped their third LP,
Punchbuzz. The band set out on an Australian tour in support, though several dates had to be postponed when
Gawenda was diagnosed with glandular fever. ~ Fred Thomas