Cut Copy
Australian electronic music group

Cut Copy (sometimes stylised as Cut/Copy) are an Australian synth-pop band formed in 2001 by Dan Whitford (vocals, keyboards and guitar). Originally a home-recording project, the band now includes Tim Hoey (guitars), Ben Browning (bass guitar), and Mitchell Scott (drums).
The band achieved breakthrough success in 2008 with their second album, In Ghost Colours, which included well-known singles "Lights & Music" and "Hearts on Fire".
History
Formation
Cut Copy was established in 2001 in Melbourne, Australia as the solo project of Dan Whitford, a DJ and graphic designer. Whitford was educated at Scotch College and studied graphic design at Monash University. During his studies he became interested in dance music and began DJing while hosting a radio show. Around this time he bought a sampler and keyboards to experiment with. Musically he was "inspired by indie low-fi stuff as much as dance". Upon graduating Whitford co-founded the design agency Alter, who continue to produce all of the graphical material for the band.
According to Whitford, the band's name was a random choice: "I was in the edit menu [of my computer] and I moved down in the document to the few words that didn't make sense together, and at that particular day and time the words 'cut' and 'copy' really stood out to me.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q573168. VIAF identifies the subject as 168584757. The Library of Congress control number is no2005115031. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cut Copy” 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.