Over the past decade, Bats & Mice has quietly crept through the music world with a measured but growing presence. Three members of Sleepytime Trio, Jonathan Fuller, David NeSmith, and Ben Davis, originally formed the band in the late nineties. They began writing songs together in a style that pursued and explored dark, meandering melodies while retaining the vitality and drive of their previous efforts. This trio produced Bats & Mice's first work, a self-titled CDep released on Lovitt Records in fall 2000 to critical acclaim and mass popularity with college radio and fans alike.
After Jonathan Fuller's departure to focus on Engine Down and Denali, Lovitt Records released Believe It Mammals in the spring of 2002. The line-up on this full-length featured the talents of Daron Hallowell and Ash Bruce, both from Four Hundred Years. Bats & Mice's stylized blend of not-so-saccharine pop and propulsive rock captivated audiences as they toured the country and released another EP, "A Person Carrying a Handmade Paper Bag is Considered as a Royal Person," in 2004.
Six years, several personnel changes, and a lengthy hiatus later, Bats & Mice re-emerged with its original members and released the 7" "Back in Bat" in 2010, an extension of the haunting themes and soaring harmonies of their prior releases.
Years earlier, the band had begun tracking what would eventually become PS Seriously at Salad Days Studios with producer Brian McTernan, whose all-analog DC studio was responsible for landmark records by Milemarker, Darkest Hour, and Frodus, among others. Those sessions sat dormant for the better part of two decades before the band returned to finish the record. PS Seriously was completed and released in 2024, a long-delayed document of old sounds meet new!
