New Buffalo

New Buffalo is Melbourne-based singer, songwriter, and performer Sally Seltmann (born 1975) - otherwise known as Sally Russell before her marriage to Darren Seltmann of The Avalanches. Sally grew up in Sydney where she was the vocalist and one of the founding members of power pop group Lustre 4, as well as playing guitar in Spdfgh in the 1990s. She then moved to Melbourne and re-invented her musical style to create New Buffalo. She adopted a sound that replaced guitars with keyboards over smooth paced bass and soothing beats. New Buffalo's debut release was in February 2000 via Ben Lee's web site by way of a MP3 download of the track "16 Beats". The following year she signed with Modular and released the debut EP, About Last Night, featuring the aforementioned track. It was also released in the United Kingdom through Heavenly Recordings, which saw New Buffalo invited to tour throughout the UK supporting Ed Harcourt. In 2002, Sally recorded some songs in Los Angeles with Jake Davies, but after Heavenly withdrew their financial support, she decided to set up her own home studio in Melbourne. This where she wrote, arranged and produced her debut album, The Last Beautiful Day, which was released in Australia in September 2004 on Dot Dash and August 23, 2005 on Arts & Crafts in North America. The album features special guest appearances by Beth Orton on backing vocals and Jim White of Dirty Three on drums. In July 2005 a self-titled EP was released featuring two new songs - a collaboration with composer Rae Howell, and a duet with Sweden's Jens Lekman - plus re-mixes and re-worked versions of songs from the debut album. On 24 March, 2007, Sally released her second LP, Somewhere Anywhere in Australia, and to North American audiences on August 28, 2007. Sally also co-wrote the song 1234 (originally called Sally's Song) with Feist which was released on Feist's album The Reminder. The song was featured in a 2007 iPod Nano commercial and transformed Feist's career. By proxy, Sally's New Buffalo project became better known as she was mentioned in a number of publications, including Entertainment Weekly, which named her as an artist to watch in September 2007.