Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, Har Mar Superstar returned in fall 2009 with Dark Touches, his first album since 2004’s critically acclaimed The Handler. The new Har Mar retains his defiant sexiness and uncanny knack for irresistible R&B hooks, but fans his colorful wings in the spirit of inclusion. “Har Mar has always represented the most out-there and outrageous and in your face aspects of me,” says Sean Tillmann, the Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter and producer behind the Har Mar Superstar moniker. “I’ve gone through phases where there’s been angry Har Mar and different versions of this guy, but lately it’s all been this vibe that everyone’s included and everyone’s part of this thing, and you feel like you added something to it just by being there. It’s about me going out and getting as sweaty as possible, moving around as much as I can, and in a sense glamour-ing everybody for the night and making them feel better about themselves.”

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Tillmann spent the previous several years playing music with his other projects – Sean Na Na and Neon Neon, whose album Stainless Style was nominated for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize. But he also found time to launch a new career as an actor and screenwriter, earning roles in the feature films Whip It (directed by Drew Barrymore, and starring Juno’s Ellen Page and Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat) and Lovely, Still. “I kind of got sick of the Har Mar persona for a little while,” says Tillmann. “I thought it was time to go away for a little bit, so hung up the Har Mar jacket and went back in my shell and made a new Sean Na Na album and had fun doing that and toured a lot with Neon Neon, and started these film projects with my friends out here.” But Tillmann kept writing tunes throughout those years, and after awhile he found himself feeling much the same way he had when he started Har Mar Superstar. “I just got sick of playing guitar music again,” he says. “I realized that I really missed Har Mar.”

Har Mar Superstar was born more than ten years ago, when Tillmann was living in Minneapolis, playing guitar-based indie rock. The Har Mar idea, he says, was “a reaction to boring indie rock and how people were taking themselves way too seriously, and any aspect of playing and touring was no fun after a while, and I realized if I go to a dance party and sing an R. Kelly song on a couch, the girls are going to go fucking crazy. So I started transferring that to the stage and doing more R&B-oriented songs, and it really was a no-brainer after I’d done it a few times. Like, ‘why don’t I just make this gross, why don’t I just start writing songs like that?” And as soon as I did, it was obvious, it was like a light bulb went off and I went on my way and got more and more aggressive, and the shows became this weird exercise in sexual tension, and I really learned how to play with that fire and make it work for me.”