south west londoners and lifelong friends oliver sim and romy madley croft formed the xx in 2005.  however, they can trace their musical relationship back to an early 1990's photo of three year-old oliver and romy sharing a xylophone.

"the enveloping vocal partnership of romy and oliver is one that would've dropped-jaws in any decade this century, and set amidst a shivering soundscape of beats and plucks, their bedroom-reared concrete-soul is being justly heralded as the uk's most original and treasured alt-pop artifact of late."

they became a proper band at the elliott school, also the birthplace of burial, four tet and hot chip.  "me and oliver were sitting typing on word. and i was like 'i like x's, i really like x's'. i just thought it was aesthetically pleasing. x is a really nice symbol," romy said.  "people always laugh at me picking out x's in like shadows and train bridges."

the band is rounded out by jamie smith and baria qureshi (who recently quit due to exhaustion) and find influence in the smiths, siouxsie sioux, aaliyah, the cure, fever ray and the cocteau twins.

the band released xx, their debut lp october 06, 2009. the album, according to their website "is an inadvertent second nature marriage of 2009's urban/guitar tribes, in one corner fluttering new wave indebted reverberation, in the other, plumes of post-dubstep sub-bass and figuratively, their defining core of rich r&b vocal textures".