Introducing: Rubies

Name: Rubies
From: Santa Barbara, California
Story: Santa Barbara by way of Oakland, Paris, Stockholm, Bergen, Tokyo...
Sound: Homemade disco-folk

After a decade playing in forever-overlooked indie-pop outfit Call and Response, Simone Rubi found herself in a bad position. "There’s this thing about San Francisco, they call it the Bay Area Curse," offers Rubi. "Which is: if you play so long, you start having this local following, and then you only play local shows, and then you become this local band."

Feeling "way more of a connection to the music coming out in Sweden than [the music] in the States," Rubi decided she needed to expand her horizons. Literally speaking. So, she became a traveling songsmith, recording with Eirik Glambek-Bøe of Kings of Convenience in Bergen, Karl-Jonas Winqvist of Blood Music in Stockholm, and electronic producer Shinichi Osawa in Tokyo. Along the way, she collaborated with friends old and new, from her suddenly-famous old pal Feist (for whose breakout The Reminder record Rubi did the artwork) to members of The Concretes and Kommode, with former Call and Response band-mate Terri Lowenthal on hand as second-in-command.

"What it really comes down to is this: all the time you meet people, and you say 'we should work together sometime!'" laughs Rubi. "Even if you mean it with the best of intentions, you just never do it; you never can, or the moment fades. Well, this time, I wasn’t going to let that happen. Instead of working together ‘sometime’, I was like: ‘how’s next Thursday?’"

With this 'internationalism' becoming the project's identity, Rubi gave it a close-to-home handle —Rubies— and collected these cuts on her debut Rubies record, Explode from the Center. The disc dabbles in disco, rainy-day folk, and '70s soft-pop, but it's an indie record at heart. Having toured with The Whitest Boy Alive, Jenny Wilson, Jamie Lidell, Feist, and Devendra Banhart, and released the record on piles of cool Euro-pop labels (Tellé in Norway, Hybris in Sweden, Modern Soul in Germany), Rubies have, finally, issued Explode from the Center in their homeland. It totally rules. Listen below and feel the love.

• Listen: Rubies, "I Feel Electric"
• Listen: Rubies, "Stand in a Line"