Flasher

Hailing from Washington, D.C., Flasher are a band who specialize in sparkling indie pop that’s tuneful and smart, with just enough melodic turns and pointed lyrical observations to make their songs challenging without robbing them of accessibility. On their debut album, 2018′s Constant Image, they were a trio with plenty of rough energy to go along with their clever tunes. After fate put the band on hold for several years, they returned as a duo for 2022′s Love Is Yours, a more polished effort with a post-punk feel that revealed their skills as songwriters had only grown during their time off.
Flasher was formed in 2015 by bassist Daniel Saperstein and drummer Emma Baker, longtime friends who played in a band called Sad Bones while in high school. Late in the band’s run, Sad Bones played a show with a group featuring guitarist Taylor Mulitz, and the three musicians kept in touch. Over the next several years, academic and professional aspirations took all three outside Washington, D.C., and they all played in a variety of projects. Baker was a member of Big Hush, Saperstein worked with a group called Trouble (not the doom metal pioneers), and Mulitz earned popularity as a member of the group Priests and co-founder of the indie label Sister Polygon Records. In 2013, Baker and Mulitz started a punk band, Young Trynas, and in time Saperstein also signed on, and in 2015, they adopted a new name and outlook as Flasher. They released a self-titled debut EP through Sister Polygon in 2016 which earned good reviews and helped make them a band to watch in D.C. Initially, Mulitz divided his time between Priests and Flasher, but when Flasher signed a deal with Domino Records, he quit Priests to make Flasher his priority project.
Domino issued Flasher’s first full-length album, Constant Image, in 2018, and the band set off on tour to support the release, which included a number of dates opening for the Breeders. However, the pressures of life on the road didn’t agree with Saperstein, and he resigned from the group in 2019. Baker and Mulitz opted to continue, and they each took on additional instrumental roles in Flasher, with Baker adding guitar and bass parts and vocals as well as drumming, while also expanding their sonic influences to include post-punk and art rock accents. In 2020, they went into the studio with producer Owen Wuerker to begin work on their second LP, but by the time it was finished, the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to tour, and they chose to postpone the release of the album. While they waited, Mulitz moved to the West Coast, where he hoped to attend business school and landed a job with a marketing firm. Mulitz chose to leave his day job and make music his primary career in time for Domino to finally bring out Love Is Yours in June 2022. Ready to play for their fans again, a new touring edition of Flasher hit the road, with Baker and Mulitz joined by producer Wuerker on guitar, bass, and samples, and Shawn Durham on drums and guitar. ~ Mark Deming