Hippo Campus is an indie pop-rock band from St. Paul, Minnesota. The band is comprised of Jake Luppen (lead vocals, guitar), Nathan Stocker (lead guitar, vocals), Zach Sutton (bass, keyboard), Whistler Allen (drummer, vocals) and de facto member DeCarlo Jackson (trumpet, percussion, bass). The five met in high school at Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, playing in two seperate bands (Jake & Zach; Nathan, Whistler & DeCarlo) before the four core members combined forces in 2013. The band name comes from Stocker, who was reading a psychology text book and split the word hippocampus in two to “give it sort of a double entendre”.

Early years of the band saw members often using nicknames: Luppen became (The) Turntan, Stocker was Stitches, Sutton: Espo, and Allen: Beans.

Hippo Campus' first EP was a self-released and recorded, titled Tarzan Reject. The EP has long been “retired,” becoming unavailable on the only streaming platform it was posted to (bandcamp). The lead single of Tarzan Reject “Little Grace” became Hippo Campus' first official release, featuring on EP Bashful Creatures. Paired with South, released under Grand Jury Records in 2015, the two EPs became known as The Halocline EPs. The band’s debut full-length album Landmark, was released in the dawn of 2017 before Warm Glow was released in September of 2017.

2018 saw a slight change to Hippo Campus' music, with the single “Passenger” dabbling more into the ambient scene. The second single, “Bambi” mimicked this style, and also announced the band’s sophomore album, Bambi. During this tour, the band was joined by DeCarlo Jackson, who had occasionally played in the band since 2015. From the release of Bambi onwards, the band was referred to as a five-piece and DeCarlo was present during promotional events, although he states he is not an “official” member of the band.

In mid-2019, fans saw Hippo Campus release two albums of demo tracks, created in 2017 and 2018.
Demos I consisted solely of tracks from Bambi, giving listeners some insight into eight of the initial ten tracks from the LP.

Less than a month later, Demos II was released, featuring tracks that had never been heard by fans before, aside from three songs which had been sporadically added to the band’s setlist.