The Echo Friendly

Shannon Esper and Jake Rabinbach are married, and they also lead the Echo-Friendly, a band whose songs run indie rock and garage rock through a smart pop sensibility. The two met in 2009 while working on an independent film called Open Five, hit it off, became close friends and dated on and off. In 2010 Rabinbach started a band called Jump Back Jake and the Echo-Friendly, with himself on guitar and vocals, Jake Vest on bass and Greg Faison on drums; Vest and Faison had played together in the Memphis bands Tiger High and the Bulletproof Vests. That version of the group put out a four-song EP, Still Not Sorry. In 2011 the name was shortened to the Echo-Friendly, Esper joined on vocals and guitar, and they released a pair of singles, "Same Mistakes" b/w "There's Part of Me Nobody Sees But You" and "Boats." Esper and Rabinbach knew the actress and filmmaker Lena Dunham through their film work, and when she heard "Same Mistakes" she used it over the end credits of a first-season episode of her HBO series Girls. In May 2014 the band released their first full-length, Love Panic, which included a re-recorded version of that song. December 2015 brought Echo Presley, a set of covers, outtakes and rarities and their first release after moving from Memphis, Tennessee to Brooklyn, New York, where the two finally married. Their second full-length, Surveying the Damage, arrived in December 2017.