How to Dress Well
| How to Dress Well | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Tom Krell |
| Born |
September 10, 1984 Boulder, Colorado, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, songwriter |
| Years active | 2009–present |
| Labels | |
| Website | howtodresswell |
How to Dress Well is the stage name of American singer-songwriter Tom Krell.
Krell was born in Boulder, Colorado.
Krell graduated from The New School with an MA in Philosophy in 2009. He then moved from New York City to spend a year in Berlin, Germany. He then returned to the United States, moving to Chicago and joining the philosophy department at DePaul University where he is writing a doctoral dissertation on nihilism and German philosophy in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
Beginning in 2009, Krell started to turn out free EPs on his blog under the name How to Dress Well. He didn't release his name or his photo, but critics quickly picked up on Krell's music and brought him out of the shadows.
How to Dress Well's debut album, Love Remains, was released in 2010 on Lefse in the United States and on Tri Angle in Europe and Asia. The album assembled the best of Krell's early EPs and garnered vast critical acclaim. It received a score of 8.7 and the "Best New Music" designation from music review site Pitchfork Media.Stereogum recognized How to Dress Well as one of its "40 Best Bands of 2010".Spin gave the album 8 out of 10 stars, calling it "as meditative as it is evocative... conjuring fractured memories of Shai or TLC".
In 2011, How to Dress Well released the Just Once EP — a four-song suite of "Suicide Dream" songs set against a string quartet. The EP collects two previously released tracks bearing the name "Suicide Dream", adds a third with that title, and throws in a new version of "Decisions". The set was inspired by and is dedicated to a friend of Krell's who died. Limited to 1000 copies, the 10" vinyl release donated $1 of every record sold to a nonprofit working to raise awareness about mental illness.
On the heels of the success of Love Remains, Krell signed a deal with Weird World Records, an imprint of Domino Records. Total Loss was released on September 18, 2012 in North America by Acephale Records and worldwide through Weird World Records. Krell wrote the album over the course of 15 months or so, in Brooklyn, Chicago, Nashville, and London. The album received a “Best New Music” nod from Pitchfork Media, where Ian Cohen wrote that it is "a work of poignant and devastating art." It was also named by Pitchfork as one of the "Top 50 Albums of 2012".
...
Wikipedia