It’s a shame that Gothenburg’s Douglas Heart are so little-known that their Apple Music bio offers the most comprehensive backgrounder on the early aughts dreampop outfit, but at the same time, hats off to K. Ross Hoffman for managing to compile as much information as he did. I’ll refrain from repeating the whole bio, but will crib his description of their sound:

Though their style has continued to evolve over several incarnations, their defining sound, as heard on their self-titled debut, marries the glacial, spacious swoon of shoegaze with a calm, meditative clarity, gentle country inflections, and a keen melodic sensibility filtered through Malin Dahlberg’s distinctively limpid vocals, not unlike Mazzy Star or a humbler, rootsier Sigur Rós.

Douglas Heart @ Apple Music

Both their 2004 self-titled debut and the I Could See The Smallest Things EP which followed later that year were in heavy rotation in a period where I was obsessed with Swedish pop and held the band’s labelmates and aesthetic cousins The Radio Dept. as my platonic ideal of a band (and some days I still do).

“Komplex” was one of the more standout tracks from the short-player – though really all five songs are gold – blending a sort of swoony, Scandi-soul retro vibe with fuzzy, choppy guitar lines.

The band split not long after these releases. Singer Malin Dahlberg continued on for a bit as We Are Soldiers We Have Guns and drummer Max Sjöholm and guitarist Pontus Wallgren released some very noisy/shoegazey records as Afraid Of Stairs.