Clay Hips

A melodic and jangly indie pop band whose two primary members live on opposite sides of Europe, Clay Hips is the project of Kenji Kitahama and Andrew Leavitt. First appearing in the mid-2000s as part of a Matinee Records compilation, Clay Hips' gentle guitar pop is a natural outgrowth of their previous work as the Fairways, a highly regarded San Francisco outfit whose music earned acclaim in the U.S., Europe, and Japan at the turn of the millennium. When Kitahama and Leavitt disbanded the Fairways in 2004, their geographical paths soon diverged from the Bay Area to Germany and Finland, respectively. While they pursued other musical endeavors, the two friends talked about forming another project together and, with Leavitt now living in Ireland, started putting new songs together during their annual visits to one another. A handful of tracks appeared, the first being "Failure," which landed on Matinee Records' The Matinee Hit Parade compilation in 2007. Subsequent offerings showed up on Matinee collections in 2010 and 2013, while Clay Hips slowly put together additional material as long-distance collaborators. In 2018, at the behest of Barcelona label Annika Records, Kitahama and Leavitt recut new versions of their three existing singles and completed work on the remaining songs for their self-titled full-length debut which arrived in the summer of that year. ~ Timothy Monger