Built to Spill

Since 1992 · United States

Built to Spill formed in Boise, Idaho in 1992 around Doug Martsch, who kept the band's name while rotating almost every other member across three decades of records. Their story

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Keep It Like a Secret (1999)

Doug Martsch pulled back from the sprawling song lengths of Perfect from Now On without losing any of its layered, interlocking guitar lines, landing on the tightest and most immediate record of his career. 'Carry the Zero' rides a descending guitar figure through verses of quiet dread into a chorus that opens up like a widescreen shot. The interplay between Martsch's multiple overdubbed leads gives even the simplest chord changes a sense of scale. It remains the commercial and critical high point of a catalog built almost entirely on guitar tone and patience.

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Built to Spill

Keep It Like a Secret · 1999

Built to Spill formed in Boise, Idaho in 1992 around Doug Martsch, who kept the band's name while rotating almost every other member across three decades of records. The early albums — Ultimate Alternative Wavers (1993), There's Nothing Wrong with Love (1994) — established a lo-fi, literate indie-rock sound before Perfect from Now On (1997) took a sharp turn toward long-form, guitar-forward suites, songs stretched to six or eight minutes and built from multiple interlocking lead lines.

Keep It Like a Secret (1999) pulled the ambition back into tighter, more immediate songs without sacrificing any of that guitar interplay, becoming the band's commercial and critical peak on a major-affiliated indie label. Martsch's wandering, unresolved melodic instincts and his habit of overdubbing several guitar leads at once gave Built to Spill a sound that influenced a generation of indie and emo bands built around extended, patient guitar work — a quieter, more melodic cousin to Dinosaur Jr.'s wall of noise. The band has continued recording steadily since, with Martsch as its only constant.