Dehd

When: 1st April 2025
Location: Oran Mor

Dehd are the DIY punk outfit bringing minimalism to the masses. Coming to Glasgow’s Oran Mor on 1st April 2025.

Chicago indie-punk trio Dehd aren’t a band to shy away from the painful aspects of their lives, but they’re also keen to strike a balance. Drawing from a colourful palette of influences that range from Dolly Parton and James Brown to Cocteau Twins and Broadcast, the band channel their love of twangy surf guitars, ethereal shoegaze, and “do-do-do’s” into playfully slack, but earnest anthems that have a welcome hint of pop.

Forming in 2015, Emily Kempf (vocals/bass), Jason Balla (vocals/guitar), and Eric McGrady (drums) quickly recorded their self-titled debut album the following year, with a six-track EP, Fire Of Love, coming in 2017. Dehd self-recorded its release with borrowed gear in a room in an old Frank Lloyd Wright warehouse – they wanted to keep it simple, and wanted to get their message out there. 

An international tour slot alongside Twin Peaks in 2019 broadened their audience and introduced Europe to the band’s blend of melancholic and minimal indie-punk. They had an emphasis on minimalism, with Kempf later remembering the motive for 2019 album Water was: “How minimal can it be? What’s the minimum that a song requires to succeed?”

Not long after, guitarist Balla experienced profound loss and Kempf struggled with what could be considered an identity crisis. As co-vocalists in the band, they bounced each other’s anguish off of one another and directed it into their lauded breakthrough album, Flowers Of Devotion.

Major creative strides

Named ‘Best New Music’ by Pitchfork, the 2020 full-length saw the band take major creative strides. While they were writing the album, Kempf says, “we both went through hell, literally, and the world seems to be going through hell, too”, but the album wasn’t bogged down in self-seriousness. “It’s okay to be lighthearted in the face of despair,” said singer Kempf, with Dehd slightly polishing the scrappy sound that had defined the band until this point. 

Flowers Of Devotion was so well-received, a move to Fat Possum records beckoned for their 2022 follow-up, Blue Skies. But with greater visibility and resources, Dehd chose not to tamper with their formula too heavily, continuing to write and record every part of the album themselves and book out the same studio once again. With Blue Skies, the band were more refined and more powerful than ever, giving themselves the time to add more flourishes to their sound which resulted in the anthemic lead single ‘Bad Love’ and the infectious second track ‘Stars’.

Future Islands caught wind of the trio and invited them to be main support for a stint of major UK shows after the band had recently toured Europe themselves. A host of festival appearances at Pukkelpop, All Points East, End of the Road, Rock en Seine came later in the year before Dehd were revealed as Dry Cleaning’s main support for the duration of their 2023 European headline tour.