Candy Claws was a dream pop group from Fort Collins, Colorado, consisting of Hank Bertholf and Karen & Ryan Hover and most active from 2008 to 2013. Ryan, the founder of the group, produced all the music in his “Flashy Storm” home studio. Their sonic approach is focused on translating natural landscapes into a wall of ethereally crunched and electronically supplemented indie rock.

Their debut album, In the Dream of the Sea Life is a crunchy noise pop journey inspired by Rachel Carson’s book The Sea Around Us. Their second album, Hidden Lands, was also inspired by a novel, Richard M. Ketchum’s The Secret Life of the Forest.

Their third and final album, Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time, would be their most critically acclaimed, coming to be known as a staple of indie noise rock in the 2010s.

The group disbanded shortly after the release of their third album, with Karen & Ryan Hover going on to form sonically-adjacent band Sound of Ceres. Candy Claws would eventually reunite in 2023 to release a single for the album’s 10th anniversary reissue, “Distortion Spear.”