dragon inn 3 — Current Clients

Led by Philip Dickey, co-founder of Midwestern early aughts indie-pop phenomenon Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Dragon Inn 3 began as an experiment more than a decade ago. In 2012, Dickey wrote the theme song for a short film, Ghoul School, a teen horror-comedy hybrid told through an ’80s look and feel. This synth-centric instrumental eventually doubled as a jumping-off point for the infectious, pulsating sound heard throughout Dragon Inn 3’s stellar 2018 debut on American Laundromat Records, Double Line.

Enlisting his sister, Sharon Hamm, and his wife, Grace Bentley, for vocals and co-writing, the group took a DIY approach to tracking, recording in fits and starts over six years amid busy work-life schedules spread across Los Angeles, Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri. Double Line flew quietly under the radar, nonetheless earning heaps of praise from critics, music supervisors, and devoted fans who considered it one of the best synth-pop albums of the decade.

The band returns with Trade Secrets, a striking sophomore effort, in 2023. Not only does Dragon Inn 3 not suffer from the infamous sophomore slump on its second album, but the band delivers some of its best songwriting and studio craft to date. Like Double Line, Trade Secrets is a lovingly-crafted take on the sultry, mysterious and rhythmical sound heard in 2011 action-drama Drive, and the soundtrack of television’s breakout cultural phenomena “Stranger Things,” at once nostalgic and futuristic, familiar and foreign, a pleasing amalgam of foxy Italo disco, sidelong experimentalism and commercial ’80s pop.