The Boy Least Likely To is an English indie pop duo, composed of composer/multi-instrumentalist Pete Hobbs and lyricist/singer Jof Owen. Here's the short bio they provided me with:
Mince Pies and Brandy Butter, Morecambe and Wise, Bert and Ernie; some things were just meant to go together. And so, it is with The Boy Least Likely To and the holiday song. They go so perfectly together it is as if the Christmas song was a concept thought up especially for them.
Songs from their full-length album The Boy Least Likely To Christmas Special have become staples of alternative holiday soundtracks and playlists since its release in 2010. Like Christmas itself, the band’s songs are brimming with joy and excitement, at the same time as being undercut with a melancholy and a feeling of sadness, a longing for something absent or seemingly lost.
"The First Snowflake" was the first of their big festive hits and even turned up in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.
The duo met when they were still at school and grew up together in the middle of the English countryside in the small Buckinghamshire village of Wendover. They spent their teenage years scouring countryside car boot sales for rare Dexys seven inches and Lee Hazelwood albums. Reading Carson McCullers, Anne Sexton and Smash Hits magazines. Watching John Hughes films and old videos of Top of the Pops. All the time putting together a collection of weird and wonderful instruments found in second hand shops, craft fairs and the Early Learning Centre. They released their debut album, The Best Party Ever, in 2005 to widespread critical acclaim, earning spots in both Pitchfork's Top 50 albums and in the Rough Trade Shop top 10 of that year.
Their song Be Gentle With Me became one of those breakthrough songs that lent itself to a myriad of contexts. With a video starring Rashida Jones, their songs featured in everything from Greys Anatomy to Juno, from Coca Cola to car adverts.
With their trademark glockenspiels and banjos, the songs from that first album have remained in the public consciousness through television and film syncs and placements long after the album's release. They were one of the last wave of mid-noughties indie bands who could happily play the Pitchfork stage at SXSW and appear on KEXP at the same time as enjoying mainstream success back home with appearances on Popworld, GMTV and the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party.
The band’s second album The Law Of The Playground, resonated just as quickly as the first, with Stringing Up Conkers featuring in an Apple iPhone advert and When Life Gives Me Lemons on the soundtrack to the hit Emma Stone movie, Easy A and more recently the Peter Rabbit movie. Between then and now they released the Christmas album and their fourth studio album The Great Perhaps, which includes a duet with indie pop legend Gwenno, followed by a Greatest Hits compilation in 2018 and a B Sides and Rarities compilation called The Wrong End Of A Rainbow this summer.
‘The only true twee pop heirs to Belle and Sebastian.”
- Spin
"The Boy Least Likely To's child's eye perspective on English anorak pop, sunny west coast harmonies, Belle and Sebastiany folk, country, and soul, is now certifiably theirs, just theirs."
- Pitchfork
"If all your childhood stuffed animals got together and started a band, it might sound like the boy least likely to "
- Rolling Stone Magazine
from
Have Yourself A Merry Indie Christmas Volume I,
track released December 15, 2008
Mince Pies and Brandy Butter, Morecambe And Wise, Bert and Ernie; some things were just meant to go together. And so it is with The Boy Least Likely To and the holiday song. They go so perfectly together it is as if the Christmas song was a concept thought up especially for them.
Songs from their full-length album The Boy Least Likely To Christmas Special have become staples of alternative holiday soundtracks and playlists since its release in 2010. Like Christmas itself, the band’s songs are brimming with joy and excitement, at the same time as being undercut with a melancholy and a feeling of sadness, a longing for something absent or seemingly lost.
‘The First Snowflake’ was the first of their big festive hits and even turned up in and episode of Grey’s Anatomy.
The band, made up of Peter Hobbs and Jof Owen met when they were still at school and grew up together in the middle of the English countryside in the small Buckinghamshire village of Wendover. They spent their teenage years scouring countryside car boot sales for rare Dexys seven inches and Lee Hazelwood albums. Reading Carson McCullers, Anne Sexton and Smash Hits magazines. Watching John Hughes films and old videos of Top of the Pops. All the time putting together a collection of weird and wonderful instruments found in second hand shops, craft fairs and the Early Learning Centre. They released their debut album, The Best Party Ever, in 2005 to widespread critical acclaim, earning spots in both Pitchfork's Top 50 albums and in the Rough Trade Shop top 10 of that year.
Their song Be Gentle With Me became one of those breakthrough songs that lent itself to a myriad of contexts. With a video starring Rashida Jones, their songs featured in everything from Greys Anatomy to Juno, from Coca Cola to car adverts.
With their trademark glockenspiels and banjos, the songs from that first album have remained in the public consciousness through television and film syncs and placements long after the album's release. They were one of the last wave of mid-noughties indie bands who could happily play the Pitchfork stage at SXSW and appear on KEXP at the same time as enjoying mainstream success back home with appearances on Popworld, GMTV and the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party.
The band’s second album The Law Of The Playground, resonated just as quickly as the first, with Stringing Up Conkers featuring in an Apple iPhone advert and When Life Gives Me Lemons on the soundtrack to the hit Emma Stone movie, Easy A and more recently the Peter Rabbit movie. Between then and now they released the Christmas album and their fourth studio album The Great Perhaps, which includes a duet with indie pop legend Gwenno, followed by a Greatest Hits compilation in 2018 and a B Sides and Rarities compilation called The Wrong End Of A Rainbow this summer.
‘The only true twee pop heirs to Belle and Sebastian.”
- Spin
"The Boy Least Likely To's child's eye perspective on English anorak pop, sunny west coast harmonies, Belle and Sebastiany folk, country, and soul, is now certifiably theirs, just theirs."
- Pitchfork
"If all your childhood stuffed animals got together and started a band, it might sound like the boy least likely to "
- Rolling Stone Magazine
