Lastlings

Some collaborators discover their musical chemistry by accident; for Lastlings, it’s coded right into their DNA. Born to a Japanese mother and Australian father and raised on the Land Down Under’s Gold Coast, siblings Amy and Josh Dowdle got their start as a duo in the early 2010s, when Amy was still in high school and Josh was a college student. Informal jam sessions led to a collaboration formalized with the 2015 singles “Wavelength” and “Chills,” in which ethereal atmospheres swirled atop downtempo beats. The duo’s name comes from “The Lastlings,” a post-apocalyptic short story that Josh wrote in high school about the last beings on Earth; though their music is far more hopeful than that origin story might suggest. Following a string of lush, house-influenced singles in 2019 and 2020, remixes from Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and RÜFÜS DU SOL helped cement Lastlings’ name on the festival circuit. Their debut LP, 2020’s First Contact, encapsulates the fusion of introspective moods and immersive electronic textures that makes their music so striking.