No Vacation

No Vacation began their journey in 2015 with a pair of successful mixtapes that quickly established an identity of twangy nostalgia and cruisey shoegazing. Not long after the release of the Amo XO and Summer Break Mixtape mixtapes, the budding San Francisco group disbanded indefinitely, playing among different lineups under various monikers before rebanding in 2017 under the name No Vacation. Impressively, No Vacation has maintained its core lineup over the years, keeping in tact the quintessence of their sound—a calm, warm exuberance draped with Sab Mai’s signature subdued vocal style mixed with Nat Lee's classical string and piano background and Harrison Spencer's distinct shoe gaze guitars. It’s a balancing act that was first widely recognized when No Vacation broke through the noise with the pulsating, pop number, Yam Yam. The three have since relocated across both coasts while still collaborating together. Their newest EP, Phasing, is in some ways the purest distillation of this journey, featuring songs whose writing processes varied from week to years-long, demonstrating an artistic patience you can’t quite teach or learn, resulting in an instrumentally dynamic, multigenre foray that calls on the sounds of shoegaze, 90s alt rock, and Romantic Era string arrangements.