Panama

Panama started in Sydney in 2010, the next move for Jarrah McCleary once his old band, The Dirty Secrets, had run its course, and it sounds like a songwriter loosening his collar. The project gave him room to chase something more electronic, with a house pulse ticking under the songs, and it found a home on Future Classic.

McCleary sings and plays keys and guitar at the center of it all, with Tim Commandeur on drums and Tom Marland on keys and guitar, while other players have drifted in and out around that core. The music is glossy and nocturnal, soft-focus synths and a vocal that sounds like it's leaning against a cab window at 3am, half dreaming.

The Always EP, their second, was the one that opened doors: spins on BBC Radio 1, a place in Triple J's Hottest 100, millions of SoundCloud plays, and years later, in 2020, a platinum certification in Australia. They cut an EP in Los Angeles, took the show abroad to SXSW in 2014 and Primavera in 2015, and the video for "Stay Forever" doubled as a showcase for Seafolly swimwear.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.