The musical arrival of Duluth’s Willem Dafoe Fan Club
June 26, 2026
Hollis Sparhawk and Noah Ruona matched on Tinder in August 2023. Soon after, they started making music while hanging out in their hometown of Duluth, Minnesota.
“We didn’t really have major intentions of being a band. It was fun,” says Ruona.
“It started with the ’80s instruments,” says Sparhawk.
“I was in a moment of being really inspired by ’80s stuff,” Ruona continues. “The Omnichord. I had a Casio digital guitar. I got a DX7 synthesizer and old drum machines. The original idea of the band was using ’80s defunct instruments. We didn't really make a distinct turn into making slower music, but that's kind of what naturally just came out when we jammed together.”
After a few months of playing music together, they decided that it would be fun to play a Christmas show, with Sparhawk on vocals and Omnichord and Ruona on guitar. “Sometimes looking back on that, I’m surprised that I agreed,” Sparhawk says, chuckling. On a rainy Wednesday at Dovetail Cafe in Duluth’s craft district, Sparhawk sits beside Ruona and their other bandmates, Angel Marshall and Kenny Bressler, in the coffee shop and folk school’s vendor loft. “It doesn’t seem like something that I’d want to do. But I really wanted to hang out with you and do whatever you wanted to do.”
That 2023 Christmas show at Prøve Collective, a nonprofit gallery and performance space, marked the unofficial debut performance for Willem Dafoe Fan Club. The setlist that night was light on originals and heavy on holiday material.
Prøve is a special place to Hollis Sparhawk. She has been volunteering there for four years. “It filled a creative outlet,” she says. “It connected me with the community. It felt really good, and I’ve been doing it ever since.” (The band returned to play a fundraiser there this past May, which raised enough money to keep Prøve Collective open well into 2027.)
Hollis and her younger brother Cyrus were raised on live music stages as the children of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low. Their names have occasionally popped up in the Duluth slowcore band’s liner notes. Following Parker’s passing in 2022, both Cyrus, on bass, and Hollis, contributing vocals, have joined their father in performance and recording.
When it comes to Willem Dafoe Fan Club’s official debut, the group members point to a February 2024 performance opening for synth-y Twin Cities band Alonzo at White Squirrel Bar in St. Paul. “We learned some things,” remembers Sparhawk. “We didn’t bring cymbals. I had to improvise the drum parts on the toms and bass drum. But we always bring them now. Always. Never make that mistake again.”
Later that spring, Sparhawk and Ruona applied to play at the 2024 Homegrown Music Festival, the annual weeklong marathon of local music overtaking Duluth and Superior, Wisconsin. The Willem Dafoe Fan Club moniker became permanent. It originates from a T-shirt Ruona made while dabbling in screen printing. “I was watching a lot of Willem Dafoe movies,” says Ruona. “Like Antichrist and [The Last] Temptation of Christ.”
“Just the Jesus ones!” laughs Marshall.
“I was like, ‘Man, this guy’s pretty goofy,’” says Ruona. “So I wanted to make the Willem Dafoe Fan Club shirt.” That original T-shirt design is still sold as their official merch.
Angel Marshall first encountered the duo playing an opening set for Duluth punk band Roadside Casino at a clown-themed house show in September 2024. “I watched these two play, and the entire time, I was writing basslines in my head,” Marshall remembers. “It was really cool, but it needed some depth to give it some movement.”
“We had always talked about adding bass, but we didn’t know many people,” says Ruona. When Ruona mentioned their bass dilemma to a mutual friend at a house show, he waved Angel Marshall over and introduced them. After chatting, Ruona and Marshall set up a date to jam.
“I was jokingly calling it my audition,” says Marshall.
“Yeah,” Ruona says with a laugh, “I think at the end of the jam you said, ‘Did I get the gig?’”
With bass, Willem Dafoe Fan Club’s sound became more deliberate, and they started developing a setlist. “It started to come together,” says Sparhawk. “It was stable with three people.”
“I made a schedule of practices!” says Marshall.
“Having Angel in the band, we got tighter,” Sparhawk says.
“People would tell us, ‘You’re getting better and better every time we see you,’” says Ruona.
After a month of practice, Willem Dafoe Fan Club’s first performance as a three-piece lineup was a Halloween show at Duluth DIY venue Incline Stares. “Someone told us we were like [‘90s lo-fi rock band-turned-TikTok sensation] Duster at that show,” remembers Sparhawk. “We were like, oh okay: slowcore.”
Sparhawk is a longtime employee at Duluth specialty deli Northern Waters Smokehaus, and Kenneth Bressler began working there in 2024. Sparhawk and Bressler soon connected over music, and “synth wizard” Bressler shared several local bills with a three-piece version of Willem Dafoe Fan Club. By the spring of 2025, they were planning their first Midwest tour as two separate acts.
“That first tour was rough,” says Ruona. “We tried getting shows in Wisconsin, and we didn't hear back from any of the venues. I think we must have emailed probably 20 places.” One popular DIY-adjacent venue in Minneapolis booked Willem Dafoe Fan Club that summer, but canceled.
“We did get that Cole’s Bar Chicago show,” says Sparhawk. “It wasn’t a successful show. We made $25. But we had a really good time. Then we decided to go back, and the show was bigger; it was really cool. We saw the friends we made at the first show.”
After touring with Bressler as separate acts, Ruona began thinking about updating the band’s lineup one more time. Bressler became an official member of the group in December 2025.
“Kenny was maybe gonna move away,” Sparhawk says, laughing.
“We were like, ‘Kenny can’t move,’” says Ruona. “We had talked about adding more synth to the band. Maybe make it a bit dreamier. And Kenny is THE synth guy in town.”
With the addition of Bressler, the band started dabbling in sampling and experimenting with different drum machine beats. Bressler explains his process as crafting a sonic environment for each song, adding more atmospheric elements.
“Noah and I got together one day, and we made a tape loop out of a cassette,” says Bressler. “I’d bought this Christmas music cassette, and we opened this thing up. I got to a random point in the tape, cut out a section of it, and taped it back together so that inside the cassette is just one little five-second lead line. It’s very warbly and kind of janky-sounding. It’s kind of hard to tell exactly what it is. We sampled it, and now we use it in the song ‘Sign.’”
When the band started experimenting with pedals and keyboards, their sound entered the shoegaze realm they’ve become known for. Sparhawk notes she’s influenced by the sound her parents created in Low. “Their slowcore, softer music has influenced the tempo of our music and kind of the haunting part of it,” says Sparhawk.
In April, Willem Dafoe Fan Club released their debut album, Be My Muse. The recordings were created at Ruona and Sparhawk’s home and Salon Sonics in northeast Minneapolis.
Willem Dafoe Fan Club’s origins tell a story about the DIY music landscape, legacy Duluth musicianship, love, and community – a tale they weave and share over the record’s nine tracks. It’s a reminder that the buzzy shoegaze group was once just a pair of 23-year-old Duluthians who fell in love on a dating app.
“It kind of wraps up that arc of the band,” Marshall says.
“The tracks ‘Falling Faster’ and ‘Waltz’ were done when [Hollis and I] were just a duo still,” says Ruona. “It felt cool to release it before Kenny was really in the band because it’s kind of a story of a duo, and then adding Angel … It felt like a nice story.”
Sparhawk exults Willem Dafoe Fan Club as an expansive experience. “I've grown as a musician a lot writing music with all of us, learning how to create art together with people that you really care about.”
Willem Dafoe Fan Club will perform at Cloudland Theater in Minneapolis with Malamiko and Plumstar on Friday, July 10, and at Sturgeon Music Fest with Alan Sparhawk, Otter Heist, Israel Malachi, Mud Puppies, and Obleek at Clyde Iron Works in Duluth on Saturday, July 25. Details
