The Mistress is Wisconsinnative Alex Schaaf's voice. On The Mistress it gets looped and layered, stretched and manipulated; it's stacked up several high and, most often, it's used as an instrument, fleshing out the empty spaces in his bare, searching songs. The album was originally recorded (largely by Schaaf himself with occasional help from a few friends) and given very limited release online for free via his Bandcamp site before he hooked up with now-fulltime bandmates Jon Natchez (bass, horns, vocals) and Michael Tapper (drums, vocals) in New York. The Mistress has now been partially re-recorded and fully re-mastered with the addition of 3 new tracks!