With his second album Cantarell, Secret Dakota Ring mastermind Andy Ross steers his project towards beautifully realized stylistic extremes of pop. Each track reveals a bevy of musical surprises. From the multi-layered summer-of-love psychedelia of “Losing Eyeballs” to the stark strings-only arrangement of “They Got The Wrong Guy” to the Hitsville USA pep of “The Fade to Black,” SDR have crafted a uniquely detailed and completely individual half-hour of ultra-catchy and unpretentious pop music out October 28 on No Office/Serious Business Records.

Ross wrote Cantarell in tour buses and hote... (+) expand

With his second album Cantarell, Secret Dakota Ring mastermind Andy Ross steers his project towards beautifully realized stylistic extremes of pop. Each track reveals a bevy of musical surprises. From the multi-layered summer-of-love psychedelia of “Losing Eyeballs” to the stark strings-only arrangement of “They Got The Wrong Guy” to the Hitsville USA pep of “The Fade to Black,” SDR have crafted a uniquely detailed and completely individual half-hour of ultra-catchy and unpretentious pop music out October 28 on No Office/Serious Business Records.

Ross wrote Cantarell in tour buses and hotel rooms as he toured the world as OK Go’s guitarist. Every time he found himself in New York City, he’d head to work at Serious Business, the recording studio and record label he co-founded in 2004 with longtime pal, SDR drummer and co-producer Harrison. The sessions began as fun and informal, but as the months progressed, the songs started to pile up.

It had been more than three years since SDR released its debut, Do Not Leave Baggage All The Way, a record that sold out of its first and only pressing thanks to strong word-of-mouth and with virtually no promotional effort or live support, and Ross and Harrison felt it was time to release this new collection of songs.

With Ross living in LA and constantly touring, and the nexus of Serious Business remaining in NYC, the process developed as a bi-coastal, FTP-assisted, postal-service-indebted effort. Along the way, they enlisted the prodigious talents of producer/multi-instrumentalists Josh Kaufman (Rocketship Park, Caithlin DeMarrais) and Assaf Spector (Penniless Wilds) to help separately on a few tunes. (-) collapse