POLIÇA (pronounced po-lisa) began as a collaboration between fellow Gayngs' members Channy Casselle and Ryan Olson in June of 2011. By July they had completed 11 songs, made the key additions of drummers Ben Ivascu and Drew Christopherson, bass player Chris Bierdan, and headed into the studio. After Mike Noyce (Bon Iver) lent his voice on "Lay Your Cards Out" and "Wandering Star," the record was brought to Austin, TX to be mixed with Jim Eno (Spoon). In a few days, the LP was completed and the band Poliça was formed. On stage, the original beats composed by Olson play amongst Channy’s passionate vocals & an intense rhythm section, that lead to a description somewhere in the area of electro-r&b goth-pop.

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Many will recognize Channy Casselle as the singer from popular roots band Roma di Luna, which disintegrated in 2011 when she and her husband-bandmate Alexei Moon separated. But Poliça is a far cry from Roma di Luna's folk-based, guitar-driven approach. Casselle says the idea for starting a new project came about when she began collaborating with Ryan Olson for his massive recording project, Gayngs, and was particularly intrigued by the vocal manipulators she used while performing and touring with the group last spring. "The interesting thing about this project is there are a lot reasons for people to hate it," Casselle says brazenly, reflecting on the stigma surrounding Auto-Tune in popular music. But both Olson and Casselle are comfortable operating in a post-Auto-Tune world, one in which vocal manipulations have trickled down out of Top 40 music and into more experimental territory. Olson created many of the band's grinding electronic beats (some of which were left over from his days working with Digitata and Mel Gibson and the Pants), but he doesn't actually perform with the group live; instead, he recruited dextrous bass player Chris Bierden and dueling drummers Drew Christopherson (Digitata, Solid Gold) and Ben Ivascu (Marijuana Deathsquads) to flesh out the songs and create a booming, post-apocalyptic vibe with a razor-sharp attention to detail. [Andrea Swensson, October 2011]