About
Dent May writes
and records homemade pop music in Mississippi, where he was born in
1985. He began songwriting at age 12. The following year, he started a
band called Flood, who covered Creed and 311 and sold homemade cassettes
to classmates. In high school, heavily influenced by Elvis Costello and
The Cars, Dent fronted a power-pop band called The Rockwells. Feeling
like an outsider in Mississippi, he retreated to the Internet, where he
spent his time soaking in pop music and culture from around the globe.
After dropping out of NYU film school, Dent founded Oxford,
Mississippi's self-proclaimed "infotainment cult" Cats Purring. Since
then, his musical endeavors have included a debut LP of ukulele tunes on
Paw Tracks, dance recordings under the Dent Sweat moniker, and a
mysterious unfinished psych-country rock opera called Cowboy Maloney's
Electric City. He throws notorious DIY shows at his home, a former Boys
& Girls club now deemed the Cats Purring Dude Ranch.
Recent singles on Forest Family and Paw Tracks have found Dent
abandoning the ukulele in favor of cosmic synths, funky guitars, analog
drum machines, loopy bass lines, and massive vocal harmonies. He played
all the instruments on his new album Do Things, which was recorded at the Dude Ranch and in a friend's rural cabin by a cotton field. Do Things will be released by Paw Tracks on June 12, 2012.
