La Dispute

La Dispute formed in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2004, started by cousins Jordan Dreyer and Brad Vander Lugt with Kevin Whittemore, Derek Sterenberg and Adam Kool. Early on the band played house shows and the Division Avenue Arts Collective, a volunteer-run DIY venue in the city, before settling into the lineup built around Dreyer's writing.

Dreyer had never sung or written music before starting the band; he came to it as a writer of poetry and short fiction. That background shapes his delivery, which sits closer to prose or recitation than conventional lyrics, half-spoken and half-screamed, while the band shifts between quiet passages and sudden hardcore intensity behind him.

The group released the EP Vancouver in 2006, then signed to No Sleep Records, issuing a run of Here, Hear. EPs alongside its 2008 debut album, Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair. That record loosely follows an Asian folk tale about a prince and princess separated by a river, used as a starting point for other stories of separation.

Albums since have tended to be conceived as complete works rather than song collections, taking on subjects such as grief, illness, and the histories attached to particular houses and streets, across Wildlife, Rooms of the House, Panorama and, in 2025, No One Was Driving the Car. The group is frequently grouped with the post-hardcore and screamo revival of the late 2000s, though its spoken-word approach set it apart from most peers.