What started as three archetypical genres, incarnate — late-night college hangs, musical orgies, if you will — have yielded a fully formed collaboration. Melding jazz, soul, indie rock and hip hop, Bien Bien have created their own brand of groovy, easily digestible tunes. Their debut EP, She Grooves Me, released in November, 2016. The 4-track EP and their next two projects are mastered by Anderson Paak’s Grammy-nominated Malibu engineer, Jared Hirshland.

These works were completely self-recorded and produced in Bien Bien’s apartment, dubbed Fort Knocks Studios, in their hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. This allowed for the band to record in a nontraditional and spontaneous manner, creating music that has listeners under their reverberant and colorful spell. An $18 thrift shop keyboard even made its way onto the tracks, most notably heard from the synthesizer in the title track “She Grooves Me.” It is clear that their level of sonic authenticity reaches further than what’s expected from their creative environment.