Dumblonde is a pop duo that has risen from the ashes of the failed  2013 Danity Kane reunion, as Aubrey O’Day and Shannon Bex have decided to form their own girl group. The duo released their self-titled debut album "dumblonde" on September 25, 2015, and the full-length album included the hits “dreamsicle,” "white lightening," and "love blind."

 

“We started out this project knowing that visually we wanted to create a different story behind each song,” says O’Day. “Each video is in a different stylistic format that, when combined, create the full picture of the many facets that create 'dumblonde'.”

 

Danity Kane’s too-simple songs were clearly designed more for mass consumption than artistic vision. But in spite of their success (two gold records, both of which debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 200), Founded by Sean "P.Diddy" Combs on his hit MTV reality show Making The Band, Diddy disbanded them in 2009, kicking off an unusually protracted and ugly demise.

 

Four of the five members reunited in 2013, another left, and they recorded one last album and released a single with Tyga. Then Dawn Richard apparently punched Aubrey O’Day in the back of the head last August, thus sealing the group’s fate – O’Day and Shannon Bex decided to move forward as a duo. Teaming up with Candice Pillay and Dem Jointz, whose names are all over Dr. Dre’s Compton, and R8DIO (whose father is George Johnson, a.k.a. half of the Brothers Johnson), they gave themselves the incredibly cheeky name Dumblonde. Whereas Dawn Richard, post-Diddy-Dirty Money, has delved further into future-alt-R&B to much critical acclaim, O’Day and Bex have gone hard in an electronic/dance-pop direction with equal acclaim as well.

 

All but one of Dumblonde’s 11 tracks are credited to Bex, O’Day, and Pillay, and together they’ve made a  self-assured (electro-)pop album in the vein that could get Kylie back on the charts in 2015 (she’s making music in a similar ballpark, but not quite so hooky as this). Dumblonde’s debut looks back to look forward: “white lightning” does include a couple of builds/drops, but they sound organic rather than shoehorned in for EDM co-opting. (And there’s something delightful about the goofy couplet, “You’re white lightning / So enlightening.”) An elastic bassline underpins “eyes on horizon,” complementing Bex and O’Day’s vocals, which in their semi-anonymity — akin to those of a disco diva like Andrea True, say — fit these songs perfectly.

 

Dumblonde is a clever collection of smart tunes that rarely flags and frequently excites, presented with a wink and a sly grin. It’s designed for mass consumption and artistic vision. In late 2015, it was announced that the groups second album is expected to be released in April 2016.