Artist Biography
by Jason Ankeny
Centered around singer/guitarist
Tammy Ealom's angular melodies, Denver indie pop band
Dressy Bessy
emerged in the late '90s and stuck to their colorful, dreamy rock sound
as they rode the waves of the next several decades. Loosely affiliated
with the Elephant 6 collective, the band represented the more
streamlined pop side of a group known best for outsider perspectives.
The band grew from '60s kitsch and bubblegum influences into a more
punky form on their 2005's
Electrified.
Before forming
Dressy Bessy, guitarist/vocalist
Tammy Ealom
began her musical career as a member of the little-known 40th Day. In
time she left the group to focus on writing her own material, eventually
joining the earliest incarnation of
the Minders. A series of short-lived projects (including a stint in
Sissy Fuzz) followed before a frustrated
Ealom befriended drummer
Darren Albert, and with bassist
Rob Greene they formed
Dressy Bessy, issuing their debut single, "Ultra Vivid Colour," in mid-1997.
Ealom's boyfriend,
Apples in Stereo guitarist
John Hill, signed on for 1998's You Stand Here EP; the full-length
Pink Hearts Yellow Moons
followed early the next year on venerable indie pop label Kindercore.
Their colorful, childlike aesthetic fit very well with the band's
twee-pop musical style.
Ealom and
Hill's relationship continued with 2003's self-titled album. Two big changes happened after that;
Albert left the band and was replaced by
Craig Gilbert, and Kindercore effectively ceased operations. That left
Dressy Bessy
to look for a new home, and in 2005 they signed with Transdreamer
Records, soon releasing their fourth album, the tougher, more
punk-influenced
Electrified. Their next album, 2008's
Holler and Stomp,
went even further in that direction, adding some post-punk and no wave
to their bubblegum pop. The result didn't make the band's fans too
happy, and a scheduled tour didn't do well thanks to the global economic
collapse. These factors led
Ealom and
Hill (who were at this point married) to put the band on hiatus. Bassist
Greene left the group during the break and only the occasional show or digital single proved they were still around.
In 2016,
Dressy Bessy returned with a new label, Yep Roc, and a new album,
Kingsized. It featured appearances by
R.E.M.'s
Peter Buck,
Wild Flag's
Rebecca Cole, and indie rock jack-of-all-trades
Scott McCaughey, and showed the band to be firmly back on track. Three years later, the group returned with
Fast Faster Disaster, injecting even more confrontational punk energy into their melodic template.
