Fiancée is the DIY collaboration of Erica Dunn (Tropical Fuck Storm, Palm Springs) and Tommy Norton (Galaxy Hop). The duo concocts a sparkling collision of synthesised loops, real-time handclaps, utensil percussion and heart on your sleeve vocals. 

Described by the pair as “a rhapsody for suburbia… a prenup, a pleasure; a love language for a sad world,” the project began in 2023 spiritually and technically when Tommy got down before Erica on one knee atop a mountain. However, the project took shape on New Year’s Day 2025 with two hangovers and a shared vision to make new music in the incoming lunar year of the snake.

The album was written and recorded at The Biscuit Tin, their lovingly restored home shed studio filled with pianos, keyboards, guitars, lutes, flutes and talismans. Early deluge drum sequence ideas arrived via an email entitled “Wanna?” which Dunn first opened while stuck in an immigration queue at LAX. Lyrics and melodies were written later in hotel rooms, on the road, and between touring, working and raising kids.

Influences flowed freely, Broadcast’s posthumous Distant Call encouraged them to commit to ideas and keep things raw, while Smiling C’s outsider couples compilation American Dream Reserve shaped the project’s “anything goes” spirit with oddball harmonies and wonky drum machines.

A later discovered shared upbringing in Forest Hill underpins the album’s emotional world: a complicated love/hate for the suburbs that raised them. The record’s cover features the 1970s promo shot of Forest Hill Chase, once a suburban utopia where Dunn marvelled at the perceived glamour of the food court and where Erica and Tommy unknowingly both did shift work as teenagers, perhaps crossing paths between ciggie breaks in the carpark.