Sera Cahoone

To play connect the dots with the post-grunge Seattle music scene, it's best to start with a little outfit called Carissa's Wierd, whose membership includes not only Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke of Band of Horses and the Grand Archives, but also plaintive singer-songwriter Sera Cahoone. Cahoone's stint with Carissa's was at the drum kit (and she manned the drums on Band of Horses' big debut, Everything All the Time), but her ambitions as a songwriter helped earn her a deal with Seattle's SubPop. The label distributed her self-released 2005 debut and issued Only as the Day Is Long in March 2008.