About this artist
An indie folk outfit with a soulful rock bent, Mt. Joy take their name from a peak inside a Pennsylvania national park near where founding members Matt Quinn and Sam Cooper grew up. The band rode a series of self-released singles to viral streaming success in the late 2010s before joining the Dualtone label for their eponymous 2018 debut and its follow-up two years later.
Quinn (vocals, guitar) and Cooper (guitar) were high school friends from Philadelphia. The duo had a history of playing music together in their younger days, but life and circumstances pulled them apart for many years. Reconvening in Los Angeles in 2016, they recorded four songs with producer Caleb Nelson using the name Mt. Joy. Released online with little fanfare, one of their songs, “Astrovan,” began to pick up steam digitally, eventually logging over three million streams. Buoyed by their success, Quinn and Cooper decided to quit their day jobs and enlist a full band to complement their live shows. Issued in 2017, their follow-up singles “Sheep,” “Cardinal,” and “Silver Lining” fared similarly well as the group’s reputation grew.
Mt. Joy kicked off 2018 with the understated, slow-building single “Jenny Jenkins,” followed a few months later by their self-titled full-length debut. The band made the rounds of the festival circuit and toured heavily in support of the record before returning to the studio, this time in Oregon with producer Tucker Martine. Appearing in October 2019, the chill-grooved “Rearrange Us” was the first fruit from these sessions. Mt. Joy’s sophomore album, also titled Rearrange Us, arrived in June 2020. ~ Timothy Monger