Max Kakacek

Whitney
Whitney performing at the Pitchfork Music Festival at Union Park in Chicago, Illinois on July 15, 2016
Background information
Origin	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Genres	Indie rock, psychedelic pop
Years active	2015–present
Labels	Secretly Canadian, Lead Riders
Associated acts	Smith Westerns, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Foxygen
Members	Max Kakacek Julien Ehrlich Josiah Marshall Will Miller Malcolm Brown Print Chouteau Charles Glanders
Past members	Ziyad Asrar

Whitney is an American indie-rock band from Chicago, which formed in 2015 and is signed to Secretly Canadian. The band was formed shortly after the breakup of member Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich's band Smith Westerns in late 2014. They released their debut album, Light Upon the Lake, in June 2016 and have toured internationally.

After the demise of Smith Westerns in 2014, guitarist Kakacek joined with drummer Julien Ehrlich, who also played drums for Unknown Mortal Orchestra, to form Whitney. As roommates, the duo shared songwriting duties while Ehrlich became the main vocalist. Initially the band featured members of the Touching Voids, Ehrlich's previous band. In June 2015, the band made the song "No Matter Where We Go" available digitally through the Lead Riders label. It included former Smith Westerns member Ziyad Asrar on rhythm guitar, Malcolm Brown on keyboards, bassist Josiah Marshall and brass player Will Miller.

During 2015, the band played around thirty shows, mostly in support of other artists. This included Tobias Jesso Jr. who got the band in contact with Jonathan Rado, the producer of the album. In September of that year, they joined Rado at his Los Angeles home studio to record. In January 2016 the band released the single "No Woman" supported by a video and toured Europe in anticipation of the new album. They also featured on the 2016 edition of the SXSW festival.

On June 3, 2016 the album Light Upon the Lake was released. In support they embarked on their first headlining European tour.

Ehrlich outlined the approach to songwriting as "when we were writing for Whitney, we were doing what we wanted to do, the music was really freeing". Paul Lester in the Guardian described the band as "think Bon Iver, with elements of folk and country, only given a Chicago soul makeover". They cite Levon Helm and Allen Toussaint as inspiration.