When The M's rose from their basement studio and released their eponymous debut album in 2003, it quickly garnered critical praise and a few thousand fans and pushed them to the forefront of the always eclectic and ever-burgeoning Chicago music scene. The record made many Chicago and national year-end best-of lists and perked up ears around the world. The tunes were dense and lush, driven by rich vocal harmonies and shambling beats Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune described as "back-alley lovers loaded on cheap wine." (Dec. 2004) The M's began recording almost immediately after they met in the summer of 2000 and with the aid of many, many beers, they recorded a hundred or so songs over the next few years never intending or wishing to be a rock band. Most of those tunes will never be heard, but some stuck and thus, the band was born. Their first album, The M's, was an amalgamation of three distinct recording sessions and creative intents, blended together in a bombastic happy accident with soaring highs and soaring lows. In between the release of The M's and the completion of Future Women, the band's Polyvinyl debut, The M's experienced such highs as touring with fellow windy city rockers Wilco and signing to Polyvinyl Records while overcoming such lows as­ their van being stolen and losing their home studio to the always-hungry urban-gentrifier. Through it all, the quartet stuck to its guns -- songwriting, collaboration, and sound, unmoved by the hype or setback. Never content to repeat themselves, the band expanded their sound on Future Women, broadening their boisterous brand of psych-flecked power-pop, with plangent touches of strings and brass. For Future Women, The M's maintained careful control, again self-producing with a sincere and patient dedication to the expansion of ideas wherever they're born. Fueled by the flames of critical approval and a fan in Hollywood film director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) who personally approached the band with an idea for a music video, Future Women pushed The M's further out of anonymity and into cult status. Following such whirlwind success, in late 2006 Polyvinyl Records re-released The M's on vinyl with a bonus 7". In June of 2008, The M's released their most personable album to date in Real Close Ones. Harmonious and familiar, yet expansively testing the boundary of listener expectation, Real Close Ones is a confident work from one of Polyvinyl Record's most influential acts.