The name U.S. Girls is at once generically simple yet loaded with layers of obfuscation. Since 2007, it’s served as the moniker of Meg Remy’s one-woman avant-pop revue. And it’s a deceptively patriotic appellation for an American-born artist who’s not only called Canada home for the better part of a decade, but whose work has become increasingly critical of her home country—even the nice presidents.

Remy moved to Canada before it became hip again: She met her future husband, Max Turnbull (aka Slim Twig) in 2010, and relocated to his native Toronto shortly thereafter. There she found a community of musical collaborators that inspired her to move beyond the noisy tape-loop manipulation of her early records, toward the outspoken disco provocation that emerged on 2015’s Half Free and fully flourishes on her new album, In a Poem Unlimited. As Remy recently told Exclaim, “From a young age, I suffered abuse, and I was basically told, ‘Deal with it. It’s part of life’… and it wasn’t until I moved out of the U.S. that I identified that anger. Having a border between me and my past made me fearless. And being in a new family, my chosen family—my husband and his family and my friends and collaborators—made me realize how much better it could be.”

Just as Remy’s immersion into Toronto’s experimental indie-rock scene provided her with a renewed sense of purpose, she has become the nexus for an eclectic cast of musicians from all corners of the city’s underground. Where U.S. Girls’ preceding albums have featured some degree of collaboration with her Toronto peers, In a Poem Unlimited feels like a celebration of her surrounding community—both in Remy’s decision to record with a proper backing band and in her choice of cover songs. With the new album earning Remy the most high-profile notices of her career, it’s an opportune time to pull back the spotlight and shine it toward her support crew. This list is by no means comprehensive—by Remy’s count, her new album alone features some 20+ co-conspirators—but highlights some of the recurring characters in U.S. Girls lore.

Max Turnbull, aka Slim Twig

Remy’s musical and matrimonial partner

Turnbull debuted his Slim Twig persona—part Alan Vega synth-punk preacher, part RZA-style goth-hop beat-splicer—in the mid-2000s while he was still a teenager, positioning it as an artful antidote to his trash-punk duo Tropics. Since coupling up, Turnbull and Remy have enjoyed a symbiotic John-and-Yoko creative partnership, one that’s yielded split releases and song dedications, while allowing them to nurture their own chameleonic musical personalities. “The number-one influence she’s had on me is that she finally made me comfortable with pop music,” Turnbull told NOW magazine a few years back, and the effects can be felt in the chandelier-rattling baroque ‘n’ roll of 2012’s Sof’ Sike and the glam-damaged grooves of 2015’s Thank You For Stickin’ With Twig. Recently, Turnbull’s unveiled a new project, Badge Epoque, that wades into ’70s prog funk.

Ice Cream

Features frequent U.S. Girls backing vocalist Amanda Crist

On their 2016 debut, Love, Ice Cream, the duo of Crist and Carlyn Bezic triggered an atomic fusion of frigid post-punk minimalism and hot ‘n’ bothered R&B. But their severe surface is undercut with sly humor, whether they’re pushing the arch eroticism of Kraftwerk’s “The Model” one step further by fetishizing mannequins (“Veronica”) or singing of romantic chemistry in the language of actual chemistry (“Science”).

Ben Cook

Appeared on Half Free, released a U.S. Girls EP on his label

Best known as the guitarist for Fucked Up and the frontman for recently reunited hardcore heroes No Warning, Ben Cook is also the Toronto underground answer to Jimmy Iovine—a seasoned song doctor, producer, and label impresario. On top of providing a home for his own Young Guv and Yacht Club projects, Cook’s Bad Actors imprint has served as an incubator for everyone from the aforementioned Ice Cream to rising rapper Clairmont the Second. In 2013, he released U.S. Girls’ crucial transitory EP, Free Advice Column, which served as a bridge between Remy’s lo-fi past and her current mirror-balled radiance. (The EP’s gritty standout track, “Incidental Boogie,” reappears in more polished form on In a Poem Unlimited.)

Simone Tisshaw-Baril

Appeared on U.S. Girls’ GEM and Half Free

Simone T-B was the Meg White to Turnbull’s Jack in Tropics, and has since become one of the Toronto’s busiest (not to mention hardest-hitting) time-keepers. In addition to her credits on various U.S. Girls and Slim Twig records, she’s currently a member of noise-pop outfit Fake Palms, played on Partner’s 2017 debut album In Search of Lost Time, and has backed roots-rock radical Fiver, whose smoky strut “Rage of Plastics” receives a luxe makeover on In a Poem Unlimited.

Darlene Shrugg

The Toronto supergroup featuring Remy and all of the above

In a Poem Unlimited is actually only the second most grandiose album Meg Remy has released in the past year. In late 2017, her budding supergroup Darlene Shrugg—featuring Turnbull, Ice Cream, and Simone T-B, with some backing vocals from Cook—dropped their gloriously gonzo self-titled debut, which revels in the most over-the-top aspects of ‘70s glam, prog, and proto-metal. Monstrous and majestic in equal measure, it imagines a world where Royal Trux’s Sweet Sixteen won a Grammy instead of a pink slip from Virgin Records.

The Cosmic Range

Remy’s backing band on In a Poem Unlimited

Believe it or not, Darlene Shrugg isn’t the only supergroup in Remy and Turnbull’s lives these days. The taut pop focus and disco shimmer of In a Poem Unlimited were, ironically, supplied by Toronto’s loosest, most free-wheeling psych-jazz collective. Spearheaded by multi-instrumentalist Matthew “Doc” Dunn (a cohort of psych-folk mystics MV & EE), the Cosmic Range also counts Turnbull as a guitarist, along with members of DIANA and Lido Pimienta and Jennifer Castle’s respective backing bands, among others. Their 2016 debut, New Latitudes, is an intoxicating swirl of ambient drones, hypnotic Afro-funk, synth-powered psychedelia, and drifting piano reveries, topped with wordless incantations from regular U.S. Girls backing singer Isla Craig.

Louis Percival

Remy’s long-time producer

Louis Percival is at once the least visible of the artists listed here and yet, aside from Turnbull, the most deeply embedded in Remy’s music. His credits date back to Remy’s 2011 synth-buzzed deconstruction of Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine,” and he was the drummer on U.S. Girls’ GEM. But since then, the producer also known as Onakabazien has helped bring the danceable undercurrents in Remy’s music to the fore through his surrealist disco dioramas and boom-bap beat science.

Basia Bulat

Another one of U.S. Girls’ regular backing vocalists

Basia Bulat is something of an anomaly on this list of otherwise under-the-radar acts: She’s an established, Juno Award–nominated indie-pop darling with Arcade Fire connections, records on Rough Trade, and a reputation for winsome autoharped serenades. Bulat’s 2016 Jim James–produced effort, Good Advice, foregrounded her love of ’60s girl-group sounds, the lingua franca at the root of Remy’s songcraft.

Tony Price

Co-wrote the Half Free track “Navy & Cream,” contributed to In a Poem Unlimited’s “Rosebud”

As the frontman for Toronto’s Actual Water, Anthony Nemet made a dramatic leap from disorienting sound collages to swaggering power pop. His latest project, Tony Price, exists somewhere in between those two poles. Last year’s I Prefer Coca-Cola came steeped in lo-fi wooziness, but was still plenty tuneful enough to find a home on Burger Records (where Tony shares roster space with another U.S. Girls collaborator, Michael Rault, who plays bass on In a Poem Unlimited).

Zacht Automaat

Keyboardist Carl Didur appeared on GEM

Centered around the duo of Carl Didur and Michael McLean, Zacht Automaat were eager early adopters of Bandcamp’s DIY-distro capabilities, self-releasing 11 (yes, 11) albums of exploratory analog-synth psychedelia and science-lab prog between 2010 and 2013 alone. In 2013, Remy and Turnbull shepherded Zacht Automaat’s music into the physical world when the couple released a double-vinyl, 27-song distillation of the band’s digital catalog through their Calico Corp. label.