'Pop' Bands // p 1 of 7

Alice Phoebe Lou

Alice Phoebe Lou (born 19 July 1993) is a Berlin-based South African singer-songwriter. She has released three EPs and four studio albums. In December 2017 her song "She" from the film Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story was included on the Oscars shortlist for Best Original Song. Since 2019 she had also been active in her side project Strongboi.

She has released four studio albums to date — Orbit (2016), Paper Castles (2019), Glow (2021) and Child's Play (2021) — alongside two live albums and various singles.

Early life

Lou spent her childhood in Kommetjie on west coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa and attended a Waldorf school. Her parents are documentary filmmakers. She took piano and guitar lessons as a child. When she was 14 years old she was fond of trance music and started to take photographs from concerts, sometimes even getting paid for them. In 2010 she spent her summer holiday in Paris living first with her aunt but soon moved to live with a friend and started earning money by fire-dancing.

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Andy Shauf

Shauf was a drummer in the Christian pop punk band Captain until 2006.

He released his debut album, Darker Days, in 2009, and followed up with the EPs Waiting for the Sun to Leave (2010) and Sam Jones Feeds His Demons (2012).

He released the album The Bearer of Bad News independently in 2012. The album was rereleased in 2015 on Tender Loving Empire and Party Damage Records.

In 2015, Shauf signed to Arts & Crafts Productions in Canada and ANTI- internationally, releasing the non-album single "Jenny Come Home" as his first release on both labels. "Jenny Come Home" was Shauf's breakthrough on Canadian radio, charting on both CBC Radio 2's Radio 2 Top 20 and CBC Radio 3.

Through early 2016, he toured Europe as an opening act for The Lumineers. He moved from Saskatchewan to Toronto in April, and his album, The Party, was released in May. After some experimental recordings with a group of musicians, Shauf ended up playing almost all of the instruments on the album himself, recording the tracks sequentially.

His song "Wendell Walker" from The Bearer of Bad News was shortlisted for the 2016 SOCAN Songwriting Prize, and The Party was a shortlisted finalist for the 2016 Polaris Music Prize. Following the release he toured throughout 2017 accompanied with a five-piece band that included multi-intrumentalist Karen Ng.

In 2018 Shauf recorded an album with D.A. Kissick, Avery Kissick and Dallas Bryson, under the band name Foxwarren. The album was released on November 30, 2018.

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Angel Olsen

Angel Olsen (born January 22, 1987) is an American singer-songwriter and musician from St. Louis, Missouri who lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Early life and education

Angel Olsen was born on January 22, 1987 in St. Louis, Missouri. At age three, Olsen was adopted by a foster family that had cared for her since shortly after her birth. The difference in years between her and her parents left an impression. "Because there are so many decades of difference between us, I became more interested in what their childhood was like," she says of her parents, both of whom still live in St. Louis. "I fantasized about what it was like to be young in the ’30s and ’50s, more so than other kids my age." Olsen explained that "my mother just has this capacity for children."

Despite early adolescent aspirations to be a "pop star", her interests later shifted in high school. Olsen became more introverted, regularly attending punk rock and noise music shows at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center and the Creepy Crawl as well as Christian rock shows throughout the city. She began learning the piano and guitar and writing her own music. At the age of 16, she joined a local band called Good Fight, self-described as "a meeting of early No Doubt and punk rock." Two years after graduating from Tower Grove Christian High School, Olsen moved to Chicago.

Career

After releasing her first EP, Strange Cacti, and a debut studio album, Half Way Home, on Bathetic Records, Olsen signed with Jagjaguwar, ahead of her first full-band record, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, which was released on February 17, 2014. The closing track of the album, "Windows", was featured in the final episode of the Netflix original series 13 Reasons Why in 2017.

Olsen's third studio album, My Woman, was released on September 2, 2016. In a review for Consequence of Sound, critic Ciara Dolan described the album as a "startling record of unimpeachable strength and honesty", while Pitchfork's Jenn Pelly described it as "her best record yet".

In addition to her work with Bonnie "Prince" Billy and the Cairo Gang, Olsen has collaborated with a number of other notable figures of American indie rock, including Tim Kinsella of Cap'n Jazz, LeRoy Bach of Wilco and Cass McCombs. Her collaboration with Kinsella and Bach, as well as with Chicago poet Marvin Tate, resulted in the album Tim Kinsella Sings the Songs of Marvin Tate by Leroy Bach Featuring Angel Olsen which the group released on Indianapolis label Joyful Noise Recordings on December 3, 2013.

Olsen's fourth studio album, All Mirrors, was released on October 4, 2019 to critical acclaim. Laura Snapes of Pitchfork described the album as "breathtaking", and a "strong wind" that blows in and "leaves you undone", while Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "challenging and intriguing", and Luke Saunders of Happy Mag described it as a change of "theatric transcendency", when compared to her previous releases.

Olsen plays a vintage Gibson S-1 guitar from 1979.

On August 28, 2020, Olsen released her fifth studio album Whole New Mess through Seasick Records.

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Angus & Julia Stone

Angus & Julia Stone are an Australian folk and indie pop group, formed in 2006 by brother and sister Angus and Julia Stone. Angus & Julia Stone have released four studio albums: A Book Like This (2007), Down the Way (2010), Angus & Julia Stone (2014), and Snow (2017). At the ARIA Music Awards of 2010, they won five awards from nine nominations: Album of the Year, Best Adult Alternative Album, Best Cover Art and Producer of the Year for Down the Way, and Single of the Year for "Big Jet Plane". The siblings have issued two solo albums each.

Angus and Julia Stone were born in Sydney to Kim and John Stone in 1986 and 1984, respectively. Kim was a marine biologist, singer and high school teacher. She then spent 20 years in institutional funds management. She now goes by the name Kim Jones and serves as a non-executive board director. John Stone was a builder and high school teacher, as well as a musician in his own right. Kim and John were a folk duo before Angus and Julia's older sister, Catherine, was born in October, 1982. Catherine, Julia and Angus grew up in the suburb of Newport on Sydney's Northern Beaches. They attended Newport Primary School and then Barrenjoey High School. They were all taught by their father with their mother singing to them, which helped them develop their musicality. At family gatherings, when the Stones performed, Catherine was on saxophone, Julia on trumpet and Angus on trombone; with Kim singing and John on keyboards or guitar.

During their teen years, their parents separated amicably. The children spent equal time with their mother and father, as both parents lived in the same suburb. During this time, Angus started writing pop songs. After finishing school, Angus worked as a labourer while Julia taught trumpet. Angus learned guitar and while recuperating from a snowboarding accident, Kim and Angus travelled to South America to join Julia and then go on to meet Catherine who was travelling in Italy.

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Ariel Pink

Ariel Marcus Rosenberg (/ˈɑːriɛl/ AR-ee-el; born June 24, 1978), also known as Ariel Pink, is an American musician, singer, and songwriter whose work draws heavily from 1970s–1980s pop radio. His lo-fi aesthetic and home-recorded albums proved influential to many indie musicians starting in the late 2000s. He is frequently cited as "godfather" of the hypnagogic pop and chillwave movements, and he is credited with galvanizing a larger trend involving the evocation of the media, sounds, and outmoded technologies of prior decades.

A native of Los Angeles, Pink began experimenting with recording songs on an eight-track Portastudio as a teenager. His early influences were artists such as Michael Jackson, the Cure, and R. Stevie Moore. The majority of his recorded output stems from a prolific eight-year period (1996–2003) in which he accumulated over 200 cassette tapes of material. Virtually all of his music released in the 2000s was written and recorded before 2004, the same year he debuted on Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label with The Doldrums (2000), followed with House Arrest (2002) and Worn Copy (2003). The albums immediately attracted a cult following.

In the 2000s, Pink's unusual sound prompted a renewed critical discussion of hauntological phenomena, for which he was a central figure. Until 2014, his records were usually credited to "Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti", a solo project sometimes conflated with his touring band. His fame and recognition escalated following the success of his 2010 album Before Today, his first recorded in a professional studio. Since then, he has recorded three more albums: Mature Themes (2012), Pom Pom (2014), and Dedicated to Bobby Jameson (2017). He has also collaborated with a variety of other artists.

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Banes World

Banes World is a group coming out of Long Beach, CA, lead by singer/songwriter and guitarist Shane Blanchard, who writes and records the music, with other members which help perform the shows live consisting of Michael Seyer, Vincent Reyes, Eric Baisa, and Antonio Aiello. Their music is often described as synth infested Alternative/Indie Pop, with a somewhat 60’s/70’s rock vibe, and 80’s/90’s aesthetic.

^{Source last.fm}

Beabadoobee

Beatrice Laus[a] (born 3 June 2000), known professionally as Beabadoobee (/biːbəduːbiːˈ/; stylized in all lowercase), is a Filipino-born British singer-songwriter. Since 2018, she has released four extended plays under the independent label Dirty Hit including Lice (2018), Patched Up (2018), Loveworm (2019) and Space Cadet (2019). Her debut studio album, Fake It Flowers, was released in October 2020.

Beabadoobee served as a supporting act for labelmates The 1975 during several legs of their Music for Cars Tour, as well as American singer Clairo during her Immunity Tour. She was nominated for the Rising Star Award at the 2020 Brit Awards, and was presented with the Radar Award at the 2020 NME Awards. Beabadoobee was also predicted as a breakthrough act for 2020 in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2020.

Early life

Laus was born in Iloilo City, Philippines on 3 June 2000 and moved to London with her parents at the age of 3. She grew up in West London listening to original pinoy music as well as pop and rock music from the 1980s. While she was a teenager, she listened to indie rock including Karen O, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Florist and Alex G. She was expelled from Sacred Heart High School before completing her thirteenth year at Hammersmith Academy. Laus spent seven years learning to play the violin, before getting her first guitar second-hand at the age of 17. She taught herself how to play the instrument using YouTube tutorials. She was inspired by Kimya Dawson and the Juno soundtrack to start making music.

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Beach House

Beach House is an American musical duo formed in Baltimore, Maryland in 2004. The band consists of vocalist and keyboardist Victoria Legrand and guitarist, keyboardist, and backup vocalist Alex Scally.

Their self-titled debut album was released in 2006 to critical acclaim and has been followed by Devotion (2008), Teen Dream (2010), Bloom (2012), Depression Cherry (2015), Thank Your Lucky Stars (2015), B-sides and Rarities (2017), 7 (2018), and Once Twice Melody (2022).

2004–2007: Formation and Beach House

Vocalist and organist Victoria Legrand, who graduated from Vassar College in 2003, and guitarist Alex Scally, who graduated from Oberlin College in 2004, formed the band in 2004 after meeting in Baltimore's indie rock scene, producing music composed largely of organ, programmed drums, and steel guitar. Of the origins of the band name Scally said: "We’d been writing music, and we had all these songs, and then there was that moment where you say ‘what do we call ourselves?’ We tried to intellectualize it, and it didn’t work. There were different plant-names, Wisteria, that kind of thing. Stupid stuff. But, once we stopped trying, it just came out, it just happened. And it just seemed perfect." In an interview with Pitchfork, Legrand addressed their being a two-member status thus: "It's a way to challenge ourselves: What do you do when it's just the two of you? ... One of the reasons this has been such a fulfilling experience for me is that with two people, it's so much easier to achieve things that feel exciting and new."

In August 2006, their song "Apple Orchard" was featured on a Pitchfork MP3 mixtape. By October 2006 the band's self-titled debut album, Beach House, was released through Carpark Records, and was ranked 16th on Pitchfork's Best Albums of that year. The album was recorded on a 4-track over a two day period in Scally's basement.

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Beck

Beck Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970), known professionally as Beck, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide genre styles. Today, he musically encompasses folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia. He has released 13 studio albums (3 of which were independently released), as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music.

Born in Los Angeles in 1970, Beck grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and clubs. He moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the city's small and fiery anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single "Loser," which became a worldwide hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold, the same year. Odelay, released in 1996, topped critic polls and won several awards. He released the psychedelic Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious Beck, and 2005's Guero returned to Odelay's sample-based production. The Information in 2006 was inspired by electro-funk, hip hop, and psychedelia; 2008's Modern Guilt was inspired by '60s pop music; and 2014's folk-infused Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards on February 8, 2015. His thirteenth studio album, Colors, was released in October 2017 after a long production process.

With a pop art collage of musical styles, oblique and ironic lyrics, and postmodern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, Beck has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being among the most idiosyncratically creative musicians of 1990s and 2000s alternative rock. Two of Beck's most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, both of which were ranked on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks.

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Beirut

Beirut is an American band which was originally the solo musical project of Santa Fe native Zach Condon. Beirut's music combines elements of indie-rock and world music. The band's first performance was in New York, in May 2006, to support its debut album, Gulag Orkestar.

Condon named the band after Lebanon’s capital, because of the city’s history of conflict and as a place where cultures collide. Beirut performed in Lebanon for the first time in 2014, at the Byblos International Festival.

Early years

Zach Condon was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 13, 1986. He grew up in Newport News, Virginia, and in Santa Fe. Condon played trumpet in a jazz band as a teenager and cites jazz as a major influence.

Condon attended Santa Fe High School, until dropping out aged 17. Santa Fe's proximity to Mexico exposed Condon to mariachi music. Work at a cinema showing international films piqued his interest in Fellini arias, Sicilian funeral brass and Balkan music.

Cordon attended community college for a short period, before traveling to Europe at the age of 17 with his older brother, Ryan. Condon's exploration of world music developed Beirut's melodic sound. Zach's younger brother Ross Condon played in the Brooklyn-based band Total Slacker.

Gulag Orkestar

Returning from Europe Condon enrolled at the University of New Mexico, where he studied Portuguese and photography. Condon recorded most of the material for Gulag Orkestar alone in his bedroom, finishing the album in a studio with Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk and a Hacksaw) and Heather Trost (A Hawk and a Hacksaw), who became early contributors to the band.

Ba Da Bing! records signed Condon on the strength of the recordings. Condon recruited friends to play Gulag Orkestar's first live shows in New York in May 2006.

Beirut's first music video was for "Elephant Gun". The second video, for "Postcards from Italy", was directed by Alma Har'el. Lon Gisland EP was the full band's first release, in 2007.

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Bertrand Belin

Bertrand Belin is a French singer, guitarist and writer, born on December 7 , 1970 in Quiberon ( Morbihan ).

Bertrand Belin was born and raised in Quiberon, along with four siblings, a stay-at-home mom and a fisherman's father.

In 1989 , he met the Cajun band and zydeco Stompin 'Crawfish, with whom he toured for six years and recorded two albums. In 1996, he toured with the British group Sons of the Desert, for the release of the second album Greedy, then recorded with him the album Good night noises everywhere, at Universal Jazz.

His debut album, Bertrand Belin, was released in 2005. La Perdue, his second album, appears in 2007. In addition to his career as a singer-songwriter, he also composes music for shows and films, including Marinette by Blandine Lenoir, prize for best music at the 1999 Clermont-Ferrand festival. He is also seen in the stage adaptation of Olivier Libaux 's Imbécile, directed by Olivier Martinaud, alongside JP Nataf, Armelle Pioline and Barbara Carlotti. It has also been seen since 2007 in Philippe Decouflé's show Sombreros alongside Sébastien Libolt .

He published in 2010 Hypernuit, critically acclaimed album. He received for this third opus the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles-Cros 2010.

In 2011, he writes and interprets a musical fiction, Cachalot?, whose action takes place around the Grosbois counter-tank. Bertrand Belin directed in 2013 the 4 tracks Sunnight by Fiodor Dream Dog, released on the label La Gosse Productions. On May 27, 2013, Betrand Belin unveils Parks, his fourth album.

October 9, 2015 released his fifth album, Cap Waller. He is laureate in 2016 of the price Raoul Breton, awarded by SACEM.

In 2018 , he participated in the album Shadow People of The Limiñanas on the title Sunday where he lends his voice.

He has also published three novels at POL: Shark, Littoral and Large carnivores.

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Björk

jörk Guðmundsdóttir (/bjɜːrk/; Icelandic: pjœr̥k]; born 21 November 1965) is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, actress, record producer, and DJ. Over her four-decade career, she has developed an eclectic musical style that draws on a range of influences and genres spanning electronic, pop, experimental, classical, trip hop, IDM, and avant-garde music.

Born and raised in Reykjavík, she began her music career at age 11 and first gained international recognition as the lead singer of the alternative rock band the Sugarcubes, whose 1987 single "Birthday" was a hit on US and UK indie stations and a favorite among music critics. After the band's breakup, Björk embarked on a solo career in 1993, coming to prominence as a solo artist with albums such as Debut (1993), Post (1995), and Homogenic (1997), while collaborating with a range of artists and exploring a variety of multimedia projects.

Several of Björk's albums have reached the top 20 on the Billboard 200 chart, the most recent being Vulnicura (2015). Björk has had 31 singles reach the top 40 on pop charts around the world, with 22 top 40 hits in the UK, including the top 10 hits "It's Oh So Quiet", "Army of Me", and "Hyperballad". She is reported to have sold between 20 and 40 million records worldwide as of 2015. She has won the 2010 Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in recognition of her "deeply personal music and lyrics, her precise arrangements and her unique voice." Björk was included in Time's 2015 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was ranked both sixtieth and eighty-first in Rolling Stone's 100 greatest singers and songwriters lists respectively. Björk also won five BRIT Awards, and has been nominated for 15 Grammy Awards.

Outside her music career, Björk starred in the 2000 Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I've Seen It All". Her 2011 album Biophillia was marketed as an interactive app album with its own education program. Björk has also been an advocate for environmental causes in her home country Iceland. A full-scale retrospective exhibition dedicated to Björk was held at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2015.

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Black Dub

Black Dub is the debut album by the Daniel Lanois-instigated collaboration Black Dub, an amalgam of dub, blues, soul and rock. Allmusic gave it three and a half stars out of five, praising singer Trixie Whitley's "deeply soulful contralto." All songs are written by Lanois, save for two, the group effort "Last Time." and the song "Ring the Alarm" written by Tenor Saw.

Black Dub consists of Daryl Johnson (bass), Trixie Whitley (vocals), Brian Blade (drums), and Daniel Lanois (piano, guitar).

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Blonde Redhead

Blonde Redhead is an alternative rock band composed of Kazu Makino (vocals, keys/rhythm guitar) and twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace (drums/keys and lead guitar/keys/vocals, respectively) that formed in New York City in 1993. The band's earliest albums were noted for their noise rock influences, though their sound evolved by the early 2000s with the releases of Misery is a Butterfly (2004) and 23 (2007), which both incorporated elements of dream pop, shoegaze and other genres. They have released nine regular studio albums and have toured internationally.

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Bodywash

On the song “Sunspots”, Bodywash vocalists Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter sing, “When everything is so serene, it’s hard to see/We miss the cracks that open up beneath our feet.” It’s the perfect distillation of the Montreal band’s new full-length record, Comforter, both in mood and sound. Long Decter and Steward’s harmonies rise over an icy sheet of programmed drums and a fog of synth and guitar, deceptively peaceful on the surface, hiding the roiling chaos underneath.

Bodywash was formed in 2014 when Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter began jamming in a basement rehearsal room at McGill University. Bonding over a shared affection for shoegaze and dream pop, the two found an immediate chemistry. “There is an excitement that comes from having people of diverse backgrounds and personalities in one room,” says Steward, “trying to make something beautiful together.” Tom Gould joined soon after on bass, and they recorded an EP in 2016.

When it came time to make a full-length album, Bodywash enlisted Nigel Ward to record the LP. However, the road to Comforter wasn’t easy. The recording process spanned two years and five recording studios, with the band constantly rewriting, reworking, and rearranging songs, until every note and tone felt exactly right. Drummer Ryan White joined the band mid-way through the recording process. “The album evolved as we were evolving as a band,” says Long Decter. “You can hear us grow and change with each song.” The final product was mixed by Taylor Smith and Austin Tufts of the band Braids, and was mastered by Evan Tighe.

“The joy of experimentation is everything,” says Steward. “The whole thing is alchemic, trying to combine a bunch of ingredients together to make gold, or whatever gold is.” Long Decter agrees. “We’re perfectionists,” she says, “but it comes from a place of feeling.”

The result is the perfect insomniac’s record, a late-night album of emotional extremes, from the enveloping warmth of shoegaze to the stark electronics of 90s trip-hop and IDM. Guitars blur in and out, melodies vanish and appear, synths blinking like lights in a fog. It’s an album of obsessive detail buried in a blur of reverb. It draws you in and pushes you away in equal measure.

Album standout “Twins” began as a thirty-second guitar loop, with Steward adding layer after layer of synths. It careens from despair to an exhilaration, a manic scream of a song that reaches a full catharsis. “We deal a lot in sonic moments of anxiety,” says Long Decter, “but the goal is to live in that space between extremes, between worry and comfort.” The band’s restless experimentation can best be seen on the shimmering “With Heat.” Initially a guitar-driven indie rock tune Steward wrote for a contest, the song took on new life when Long Decter broke the song into spare parts on a computer, slowing it down, changing the key, adding layer after layer until something entirely new emerged, and the song took its final form.

The album closes with the epic “Another Plane.” Built on a combination of krautrock-style rhythms and breakbeats with a haze of guitars and synths hovering above, it glimmers with possibility. The song is a harrowing account of the frantic moments when reality begins to blur, a gaze over the emotional edge of things. With its increasing emphasis on electronics, “Another Plane” is also a look into what sonic possibilities might lie ahead for the band.

Comforter is a document to a band’s own becoming, the exhilaration that comes from constant exploration, the drive for perfection and the joy of learning how to let things just be. It’s a mix of contradictions, the smothering warmth and the frigid cold, the chaotic and the peaceful. It’s a testament to the way that from many familiar ingredients something new can be formed, the joy and wonder of what’s possible when four people are in a room together, trying to make something beautiful.

– Jimmy Cajoleas

^{Source luminellerecs.com}