X-Communicate

Sometimes you have to rip it up and start again. It was a tough call for Dee Dee. Dum Dum Girls was her guise for the better part of a decade, an outlet through which she had crafted an instantly identifiable body of work. As her music evolved, Dee Dee found that she would be forever refracted through the prism of Dum Dum Girls' early work: retro-leaning female harmonies, a backdrop of lo-fi, fuzzed-up guitars. At the top of 2015, she decided to shed her skin, ditching Dee Dee for her real name, Kristin, and adding Kontrol. "The first music I felt was mine was classic 80s pop and 90s R&B, from Tiffany and Debbie Gibson to Janet Jackson and Madonna, to TLC and SWV," she says. "But for years I was hellbent on the rock'n'roll thing, revering Joan Jett, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde" — a rebellion against her classical vocal training — "but with Kristin Kontrol I just wanted to try it all....I thought I'm Kate Bush covering Mariah." Arguably the biggest shift beyond the music is