Squirrel Nut Zippers

Squirrel Nut Zippers came out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1993 sounding like a band that had fallen through a trapdoor into a Prohibition-era speakeasy. Jimbo Mathus and Tom Maxwell sang and played guitar, Katharine Whalen sang and picked banjo and ukulele, Chris Phillips drummed, Don Raleigh played bass and Ken Mosher rounded out the crew, and together they cooked Delta blues, gypsy jazz, '30s swing and klezmer into one gloriously ramshackle stew.

Hot, in 1996, was the one that crossed over. "Hell", written by Maxwell, is a rollicking, calypso-tinged swing number, horns honking and voices hollering like it's the last night on earth, and it caught the swing revival of the late '90s just as it was cresting. "Put a Lid on It" slinks along in a lower, smokier gear. Hot became their biggest seller, and Perennial Favorites followed in 1998 with "Suits Are Picking Up the Bill".

The lineup came and went, with Andrew Bird among those who passed through, and after a few years apart the original members reunited for shows in the US and Canada in 2007. In 2016 Mathus and Phillips put together a new lineup to mark 20 years of Hot, and the band has kept touring since, releasing Beasts of Burgundy in 2018.

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