Dots Per Inch Music (DPI) is a New York City record label founded in 2016. It is a pop and experimental outfit that focuses on exploring new means of audience engagement through hands-on release campaigns in varying media. The artists we work with are breaking molds for sonic relief and (most often) to prove a point.
We are offering something real.
Feats of Engineering - Out 09.27.2024
Each song on feats demonstrates a deep, swooning sophistication, experimenting with form while remaining committed to accessibility. Singles like “Ur Heart Stops” and “Loss” alternately skip and shred along with a jauntiness reminiscent of Destroyer’s Kaputt, while “AFV” dusts off the cathartic indie rock developed by New York rock bands around the turn of the millennium.
-Jordan Darville for THE FADER
Feats of Engineering is styled similarly, plucking the poppiest of melodies as freely as it changes time signatures. Think Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen with its honey-sweet hooks and shifting song structures, Microcastle-era Deerhunter with its driving downbeats and metronomic riffs. Notes, too, of Animal Collective’s cascading synthesizers and energetic vocal cacophony. They have the shameless ambition of an arena band with the musical chops of prog-rock veterans, underscored with a healthy flair for the theatrical.
-Gianni De Falco for PITCHFORK
"Loss" - Out 07.17.2024
You can place the new song from fantasy of a broken heart somewhere between the epic dreamy prog of Mew, Destroyer’s loquacious troubadour stylings, and the jaunt of Randy Newman. In lesser hands, this would usually result in a curious heap of competing sounds and styles, but foabh make it all feel fascinatingly natural.
-Jordan Darville for THE FADER
“Loss” is one of those songs that is so Vaudevillian that the cycle quickly loops around into something terrifically contemporary and uncategorical. This is the kind of unpredictable pop music I crave, as it oscillates through various levels of distortion, choral harmonies and swirling, multi-patterned chord progressions and tempo-shifts. “I raze my wrists in Camelot, hoping that the sting will ease the ringing,” Bailey sings out, before Al’s light-touch of “Loss won’t cure you” comes sweeping in. It’s all very baroque, surreal and heart-warming, in the kind of way that feels as much like a road-trip through a century of music as it does a modern-day discovery of something plentiful, handsome, ornate and shockingly new.
-Matt Mitchell for PASTE
Elegant Ensemble - Out 05.16.2024
It’s a format that works for her, spotlighting her vocals to spellbinding effect. Even on the concrete, Rio sounded like a star.
-Simon Vozick-Levinson for Rolling Stone
“Ur Heart Stops” - Out 05.08.2024
"It's life-affirming"
-Jon Pareles for The New York Times
“Ur Heart Stops” is full of hooks, jamming keys that flutter with glitter and, most emphatically, a core duo of voices from Nardo and Wolowitz. They bounce off of each other as they seize every sound they can, and it’s positively enthralling at every turn and triumph.
-Matt Mitchel for PASTE
Read the Stereogum Band To Watch Feature
“AFV” - Out 03.06.2024
Spring is kind of peeking through the winter gloom—the light fades later, there are a few flowers in the park near my house—which means this lush, effusive dreampop song arrived right on time. Although it begins sparkily, things really ramp up when strings get introduced. A true treat!
-Shaad D’Souza for PAPER
Mother Engine - Out 02.09.2024
The Amiture formula is as follows: one part skittering, industrial breakbeats; one part New Romantics gothicism; and another of buzzsaw blues guitar—it shouldn’t work but it does. Darker, seedier, and sexier than previous EPs, Mother Engine sees the NYC duo of Jack Whitescarver and Coco Goupil honing in on their particular sound. If you are to listen to one track let it be “Billy’s Dream,” a lurid, skulking nightprowler of a song that lives somewhere between Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand,” The Cramps’s “Human Fly,” and Prodigy’s “Breathe.” […] Never forget that goths can party too.
-Stephanie Barclay for Bandcamp Daily
“Glory” - Out 10.04.2023
“From the spaghetti western guitar licks of opening song “Glory,” Mother Engine finds the band embarking on a road movie through the darkest human impulses, depicted through both aesthetics that intertwine expressionist abstraction and a kind of classic Americana romanticism.”
-Jeff Terich for Treble Zine
French Bath - Out 06.16.2023
"Don’t be mistaken by her subject matter of choice: May Rio does not need saving. She is a heroine unto herself.” -Olivia Treynor for Document Journal
“Aspartame” - Out 04.05.2023
There's a snarky twinkle, yet heart-on-your-sleeve earnestness, to the New York-based singer born May Sembera's music, singing wryly of toxic relationships, "unemployed model types," behavioral patterns, and seeking out levity in a voice that calls back Lizzy Grant-era Lana Del Rey over indie-pop with slight trip-hop influence. In many ways, May Rio is at the literal center of the New York music scene. -Sadie Bell for Alt Press
“Need You Like” - Out 03.01.2023
“…her off-kilter pop songs about '20s hedonism are only getting weirder and better.” Alessandra Schade for Paper Magazine
Devoted - Out 05.20.2022
“No other musical artist operates at quite the level of unfiltered irreverence that Lucy (aka Cooper B Handy) does while still projecting an unshakeable cool.”
-Raphael Helfand for THE FADER
“The fun factor in Lucy’s music is so oddly specific, it’s hard to put my finger on why it pops so hard. I find myself unbrokenly dumbstruck by how original his songs are – despite working with a limited palette of GarageBand plugins. His lyrics frequently border on the cliché, but they’re sung with such guileless, celebratory conviction that you believe each and every word.”
-Jasper Willems for Beats Per Minute
Easy Bammer - Out 06.25.2021
“Rio leaned more into pop production, pulling in experimental sounds, funky pop loops and eclectic arcade game effects to compliment her whimsical voice. Unafraid to explore “goofy” topics, Rio admits that an online shopping addiction developed during the pandemic on “Everything Must Go!” while “Gravy Baby” is an edgy pop homage to playing the lottery.” -Cillea Houghton for Audiofemme
Archive.
“Party Jail” - Out 06.02.2021
“I clicked this by an accident and I don't regret it” -Alex idjk from the Youtube comment section
Tidal Indie Rising Playlist Cover
“Lucky Stars” - Out 04.16.2021
Second single from The Music Industry is Poisonous campaign.
