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Listening to the band’s incredibly tight, über-polished debut album, Manners, it’s hard to believe Passion Pit has been around for such a short time. But fact is, it hasn’t even been three years since frontman and songwriting mastermind Michael Angelakos conceived of the project. Back then, it was a solo effort on his laptop in an Emerson College dorm, intended as a valentine for a girlfriend. The girlfriend eventually moved on, but the material stayed. Angelakos played the songs for friends, fleshed out the band’s lineup, and eventually turned the tracks into part of the group’s first release, the EP Chunk of Change.
Though considered by both label and band to be simply “pop,” Passion Pit’s sound is hardly so easily identified. Undoubtedly, it has one foot firmly rooted in pop, but it boasts a more progressive twist that also leans heavily on electronic music. It’s evidenced on the group’s breakthrough hit, “Sleepyhead,” a Mary O’Hara-sampling bit of genius that has been featured everywhere from Palm’s Pixi commercial to YouTube.
