walking upstream…
ODESZA
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sourcesWikipedia · Village Voice · 303 Magazine · NYLON
Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight met at Western Washington University in Bellingham, trading beats as bedroom producers Catacombkid and BeachesBeaches before merging into ODESZA during their senior year. Their free 2012 debut, 'Summer's Gone,' built a template of chopped vocal samples, live-band horns, and widescreen drops that turned laptop production into something scaled for outdoor festival stages. 'In Return' (2014) sharpened that formula into anthems — 'Say My Name' went platinum and later earned the duo a Grammy nomination for its RAC remix — while 'A Moment Apart' (2017) and 'The Last Goodbye' (2022) layered in live horns, choirs, and increasingly cinematic arrangements as ODESZA became one of American electronic music's biggest festival draws. Their name comes from the sunken boat of Mills's uncle, itself named for the Ukrainian port city of Odesa.
the sound in question
2014
Say My NameODESZA
walk the tributaries ↓
Four Tet2000s-2010s · Folktronica / Electronic / IDM / Ambient
Harrison Mills has described how he and Clayton Knight bonded almost immediately over Four Tet and Animal Collective when they first started trading tracks at Western Washington University, drawn to Kieran Hebden's habit of building songs from small, warm, chopped-up samples rather than conventional verse-chorus structure. That folktronica instinct — treating a vocal snippet or acoustic loop as a rhythmic building block to be looped and layered — carries into ODESZA's earliest, more collage-like material, before their sound scaled up toward festival stages.
listen: upstream & here
2010
Angel EchoesFour Tet
2012
iPlayYouListenODESZA
listen forPlay Four Tet's 'Angel Echoes' against ODESZA's 'iPlayYouListen' — both loop a warm, granular vocal fragment as the track's central hook, letting it drift in and out of the mix and pile up in layers rather than resolving into a traditional verse and chorus.
Flying Lotus2010s · Electronic / Nu jazz / Avant-hip hop / Wonky
Clayton Knight has named Flying Lotus's 'Los Angeles' one of his favorite albums of all time, recalling it on repeat during an early tour through areas with no cell service — its jazz-inflected, off-kilter drum programming and hip-hop-rooted low end feeding directly into ODESZA's own beatmaking, especially on the duo's more instrumental, rhythm-forward tracks.
listen: upstream & here
2008
Auntie's HarpFlying Lotus
2014
KusanagiODESZA
listen forCompare Flying Lotus's harp-sampling 'Auntie's Harp' with ODESZA's 'Kusanagi' — both let a syncopated, stuttering drum pattern push and pull against a melodic sample, favoring rhythmic surprise over a steady four-on-the-floor pulse.
Boards of Canada1990s · Electronic / IDM / Downtempo / Psychedelia / Folktronica / Hauntology
The Village Voice's account of the duo's early days notes they 'bonded over left-field artists like Boards of Canada and Four Tet' before ODESZA existed — the Scottish duo's warped, tape-warm synths and hazy sense of half-remembered childhood registering as a mood ODESZA would chase in its own quieter, more wistful material, particularly on the nostalgia-themed 'Summer's Gone.'
listen: upstream & here
2005
Dayvan CowboyBoards of Canada
2012
We Were YoungODESZA
listen forSet Boards of Canada's 'Dayvan Cowboy' beside ODESZA's 'We Were Young' — both build a widescreen, slow-motion swell out of simple, softly detuned synth chords, evoking nostalgia for a moment that already feels like it's slipping away.