Chicago indie-pop upstart Damacy fits the serene vibe of the city’s young rock scene on Sun Spot EPLeor Galilon May 22, 2020 at 4:42 pm

Multi-instrumentalist Yuto Winston Kanii moved to Chicago a couple years ago, and he’s kept busy with his easygoing solo indie-pop project, Damacy. He grew up in the Louisville area, where he began playing in bands in high school, and by his early 20s he’d achieved a smidgen of local popularity as the front man for a good-natured indie-rock band called Ranger; their recordings are endearingly rough around the edges, and they assembled their 2013 debut album, The Bard, out of jam sessions recorded in an abandoned candy factory. Now 28, Kanii hasn’t found any Chicago collaborators since settling in Logan Square, but Damacy’s recent debut, Sun Spot EP (on his own Tanuki label), fits comfortably into the city’s contemporary indie-rock landscape: his laid-back, tropical vibes mesh well with the serene style loosely mapped out by the likes of Paul Cherry, Whitney, and Divino Nino. Kanii’s gentle vocals and sweet slacker guitar riffs on “Gvn n’ Lvn” feel like a gentle ocean breeze–and given that actual ocean breezes are out of reach for most us now, Sun Spot is the next best thing. v

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