Dirty Projectors

Dirty Projectors is an American indie rock band from Brooklyn, New York, formed in 2002. It is the project of singer and songwriter David Longstreth, the only permanent member despite many line-up changes. The band is currently a trio made up of Longstreth, Karl McComas-Reichl (bass) and Christopher Bear (drums).

Since its formation, Dirty Projectors has released ten studio albums. Singer and guitarist Amber Coffman, a principal co-vocalist, contributed greatly to the band from 2006 to 2013. After Rise Above (2007), an album of Black Flag songs reinvented from memory, the band released Bitte Orca in 2009, its breakthrough album. Carried by the vocals of Longstreth, Coffman and Angel Deradoorian, it received widespread critical acclaim and markedly raised the band's profile. Its successor, Swing Lo Magellan (2012), was also praised by critics.

After Coffman's departure in 2013, Longstreth refocused the project on largely studio-based work, with the albums Dirty Projectors (2017) and Lamp Lit Prose (2018). In 2018, the group became a full band again with the arrival of principal co-vocalists Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman and Kristin Slipp, for the Lamp Lit Prose tour. Inspired by the chemistry of this line-up, they recorded and released five EPs in 2020. In 2024, former member Olga Bell returned ahead of concerts for the orchestral song cycle Song of the Earth, released as a studio album in April 2025 on Nonesuch Records. At the end of 2025, Longstreth reduced the group to a trio with bassist Karl McComas-Reichl and Christopher Bear, drummer of Grizzly Bear.