Throughout the ’00s, Kristin Welchez was known as Dee Dee – the lead singer, song-writer and guitarist of Dum Dum Girls, an all-female noir-pop band whose retro vocal harmonies and lo-fi guitar riffs merged a ’60s girl group aesthetic with New York proto-punk and contemporary indie pop. After spending nearly a decade on Sub Pop records with the band, releasing three albums, four EPs and numerous singles, Dee Dee shed her alt-rocker skin in 2015 to work on solo material under the name Kristin Kontrol. Harking back to her young loves of bombastic ’80s pop songs and sleek ’90s R&B harmonies, the Kristin Kontrol project puts down the guitar and picks up the keyboard to focus on a blend of new wave, cosmic disco and electronic pop, re-figuring herself as aesthetically more severe and dancefloor-orientated than her previous work.
