Wake the President Radio

Twin brothers Bjorn and Eric Sandberg, bassist Mark, and drummer Scott formed Wake the President in 2005 while the twins were students at Glasgow University. Informed by a number of shambly indie pop acts from the '80s and '90s (the Go-Betweens, Arab Strap, and Orange Juice among them), the group put together a group of demos that welcomed comparisons to the Shout Out Louds, Je Suis Animal, and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. The band was eventually picked up by Douglas MacIntyre and Ken McCluskey's Electric Honey Records, a student-run label (manned by the music industry management students of Glasgow's Stow College) that gained some attention in 1996 for releasing Belle & Sebastian's Tigermilk. Wake the President's debut single on that label, "Sorrows for Clothes," was released in 2007; another single, "Remember Fun," came out on Norman Records soon after. In 2008 the singles caught the attention of BBC Radio 2's Stuart Maconie and Mark Radcliffe; the singles were put into rotation, and each song went on to earn the coveted title of single of the week. Wake the President's debut full-length, You Can't Change That Boy, was released in the U.K. and the States the following year, on Electric Honey and Magic Marker Records, respectively. They followed it up in 2011 with an album titled Zumutung! on We Can Still Picnic records. ~ Margaret Reges