Hexes & Ohs

Biography by Andrew Leahey Featuring two high school sweethearts with a mutual affection for '80s electro-pop, Hexes & Ohs is a Montreal-based duo whose music embraces synthesizers, programmed percussion, and co-ed vocals. The band's roots date back to the '90s, when Edmund Lam and Heidi Donnelly joined a pop quartet named Jolly Bean. The band gradually transformed itself into A Vertical Mosaic, embracing more electronic influences along the way, before splitting up in late 2004. Lam and Donnelly then banded together as Hexes & Ohs, melding the electronic aspects of their latter band with Jolly Bean's emphasis on melodic hooks. Originally released in 2005, Goodbye Friend Welcome Lover marked the band's debut with 60 minutes of smart, danceable pop, while the self-released Motion K'Motion EP expanded the band's audience in 2006. Bedroom Madness arrived two years later, sporting an infectious single ("H-H-Highschool") whose music video found the band an audience on MTV Canada.