Originally from the tough streets of Mendota Heights, Minnesota, Scott studied bassoon and lute at the Peabody Conservatory before going to UCLA. There he earned a degree in ethnomusicology studying musical function, aesthetics, and performance contexts in various societies. Still his focus remained primarily in his own culture, which is often overlooked as a culture altogether, yielding control and change to a manipulative industry. Scott Alexander’s music recognizes the power and meaning of American musical traditions by maintaining an intelligible pop-sensibility, but offers a new aesthetic and structure that celebrates everyday wandering thought processes: embracing mistakes, imperfection, and instability. The result is consonant and playful, but seldom repeats a single riff or verse. Scott Alexander’s songwriting demands the listener’s full attention by rarely settling into a sense of “groove”, which has saturated most of the music of the past 400 years.