Dva Damas

As one of the first acts signed by Karl O'Connor's offshoot label Downwards America, DVA Damas are California duo Taylor Burch and Joe Cocherell. Starting out as Burch's solo project in 2009, she soon began working with Cocherell shortly thereafter and a fruitful creative partnership was born. The pair's exhilarating and raw sound of minimal post-punk electronics mixed with jaded Spaghetti Western twangs caught the attention of Juan Mendez (Silent Servant) — a long term co-conspirator of O'Connor in the form of the pair's Sandwell District project — who was at their first live show in 2009 and offered to put out their first release on Downwards as part of the label's DO series, which served to introduce new artists such as themselves, Tropic of Cancer and the KVB, to a wider audience. Their debut self-titled single was released on O'Connor's label in 2010 and featured three tracks. The following year, they released a split 7" with the band Le Face on Psychic Handshake Recordings. In 2013, their debut album, Nightshade, was released on the newly created Downwards America — whose operations would be overseen by Mendez — and they toured America and Europe.