Overview
Secretly Canadian is an American independent record label based in Bloomington, Indiana. Secretly Canadian is a label included in Secretly Group, which also includes Dead Oceans and Jagjaguwar. Secretly Group includes the three record labels as well as a music publisher known as Secretly Publishing, representing artists, writers, film makers, producers, and comedians.
History
Secretly Canadian was founded in 1996 by Chris and Ben Swanson, Eric Weddle, and Jonathan Cargill while they attended Indiana University. The Swanson brothers, originally from Fargo, North Dakota, decided to move to Bloomington after a Billboard article painted the Midwestern college town's scene as the next Seattle and an incubator for up-and-coming bands.
Before Secretly Canadian was founded, Chris Swanson and Eric Weddle met in 1995 as sophomores involved in Indiana University's campus radio station, WIUX. Then Chris met Jonathan Cargill through a job at the Collins Living-Learning Center cafeteria on campus. Soon after, Chris' younger brother Ben Swanson moved to Bloomington to earn his undergraduate degree from the Jacobs School of Music in ethnomusicology.
In 1996, Secretly Canadian was founded out of the Swansons' house. They had little experience and spent months researching how to make a CD.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).