The Austin 100: The Ophelias

By Stephen Thompson

Published March 5, 2019 at 5:01 AM EST

Hometown: Cincinatti, Ohio

Genre: Rock

Why We're Excited: The four women in The Ophelias got their start in high school, when each labored quietly as the "token girl" in a different band of boys. Soon, they'd get together to start their own project and develop a sound that meets somewhere between girl groups of the '60s and dream-pop bands of the '90s. "Fog" captures that approach perfectly, as it arrays irresistible blended voices against a few purposeful strings and strums, returns to a giddy and emotionally generous chorus ("I want to be warm / I want you to be warm") and gets out in exactly 104 glorious seconds.

Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)

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