Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Binki Shapiro first gained notice in 2006 when she appeared in a series of videos made by Beck to promote his album The Information. The next year she met Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti and Los Hermanos singer/guitarist Rodrigo Amarante, who had become friends when meeting the previous year in Lisbon, and were hanging out during breaks in sessions Amarante was playing on for Devendra Banhart’s Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon.
Shapiro suggested that the two friends work together on some new songs and they asked her to join the band they decided to form. Featuring her angelic vocals, the band was called Little Joy and they released a self-titled album on Rough Trade Records in late 2008. The album gained some favorable press but it turned out to be the group’s only recording. Shapiro appeared on Megapuss' album Surfing and Sia’s Some People Have Real Problems in 2008, then Beck’s Record Club covers album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, in 2009. Soon thereafter she met New York City-based singer/songwriter Adam Green and the two began collaborating on songs together, often flying to meet in one city or the other in order to work on lyrics. The breakups each writer was going through informed the finished songs, the first of which were released in 2012 on the Fall EP (released by venerable label Rounder). The duo’s folky Nancy & Lee-styled duets and incisive lyrics were on full display on their debut full-length, Adam Green & Binki Shapiro, which was released by Rounder in early 2013.