Hippo Campus are four Minnesotan boys making music that is infectious, joyful, and thematically soaked with the sense of cynicism accompanying the youthful search of self-meaning.
About
The band met in High School and following an explosive SXSW – which marked their first shows outside their native town – the four teenagers that make up Hippo Campus released their debut EP ‘Bashful Creatures’ (produced by Low’s Alan Sparhawk) in 2015.
The buzz around the band at the Austin music festival was also noticed by the producers of Conan O’Brien’s television show who booked them to perform single ‘Suicide Saturday’ at the soonest opportunity.
Their signing and television appearance served as exciting markers in what was a lightning quick but considered ascent for the band, who – having completed their first tour of the US – made a debut trip to the UK for The Great Escape festival. They then returned shortly after for a run of dates with Modest Mouse, and also played at Reading & Leeds festival.
Since the very beginning, with their debut album, 2017’s Landmark, to 2022’s LP3, Minneapolis’ Hippo Campus have tried to make sense of the world around them. Hippo Campus still embraces and is guided by the ethos of shaking it up, sonically or otherwise. Early Hippo Campus records wanted to be cerebral, heady, to use poetic language and obscure their feelings – now, they want to be understood.
