"Dave Longstreth ‘05 has a cell phone greeting unlike any I’ve ever heard. When you call, all you hear is Dave taking a breath, and then singing a single long, long note: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Then the standard recorded voice asks you to please leave a message after the tone.   On tour this spring, Dirty Projectors played 47 states in two months.
I know indie rock aficionados who speak of Longstreth as a gifted, if sometimes incoherent, avant-garde visionary. He first drew attention with the 2005 album The Getty Address, which he started recording as a sophomore at Yale. In its deliberately off-center, often discordant, but meticulously crafted tracks, one can hear influences ranging from jazz and plainchant to koto music and minimalism. One track features a haunting melody performed by a choir of women who sound as if they were singing from the bottom of a deep stone well; to create the sound, Longstreth had a group of singers sit in a circle on the floor of the Pierson College gym, with a microphone in the center."