Bear Hands
American post-punk and indie rock band

Bear Hands is an American post-punk and indie rock band, consisting of Dylan Rau (vocals and guitar), Val Loper (bass), and TJ Orscher (drums). Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, United States, and formed in 2006, with Ted Feldman (guitar) the band signed with Cantora Records in 2010 upon the release of its single "What a Drag".
After releasing their debut LP Burning Bush Supper Club in 2010, Bear Hands toured as the opening act for Passion Pit, GZA, and We Were Promised Jetpacks. Their single "Giants" became a top-ten hit on the Alternative Songs chart in mid-2014.
History
Dylan Rau met Ted Feldman while the two attended Wesleyan University, and were later joined by Loper and Orscher through their previous band (In Pieces), who were involved in the local Connecticut ska & hardcore punk scene.
During an interview at SXSW 2010, Orscher was quoted saying "Dylan had some material he wanted to put with a band, and a project Val and I were working on for the last half decade just ended. He said he knew the perfect guitarist and when we met up and played for the first time, as cliche as it may be, everything just clicked. We started writing material together, fleshing songs out and started playing some local shows around NYC."
A few months after forming, the band released their first EP, Golden, and became a "New York buzz band" due to popular blog features. Three years later, the group released their 11-track album, Burning Bush Supper Club.
In 2019 they released the single "Blue Lips".
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This entry incorporates text from “Bear Hands” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.