Boyskout

Over time, it seems like plenty of bands first came together because someone got offered an opening band slot somewhere and needed an actual group to go with it. The San Francisco-based Boyskout carry on in this fine tradition, with two local band veterans — singer/guitarist Leslie Satterfield and drummer Caroline Mills — getting a chance to open up for the Need at a 2001 Bay Area show. Necessity became the mother of invention, and Boyskout was the end result, eventually filled out with keyboardist/singer China Lajczock and bassist Hannah Reiff. With Satterfield also contributing to the band's visual image in her work as an independent filmmaker, the quartet started building up a reputation as a crisp, dark-side-of-New Wave monster of a group, in the vein of such acts as SF forebears Romeo Void, and further afield performers such as Bauhaus and Nina Hagen. After debuting with the "Secrets" single in 2003, the group joined forces with Alive Records, first contributing songs to that label's The Sound of San Francisco compilation, then releasing a full-length, School of Etiquette, in 2004.