When they formed, Oakland, California's Rays mixed the scrappy D.I.Y. sound of '70s punk and early-'80s post-punk with the impassioned, unpolished melancholy of early Flying Nun bands to come up with their art-damaged songs. Their self-titled debut was recorded as a quintet, but soon afterward they added keyboards and shifted from lo-fi punk to more measured D.I.Y. sounds reminiscent of mid-'80s U.K. bands like Cleaners from Venus and the Pastels, as evidenced by their second release, 2018's You Can Get There from Here.
The band was formed in 2015 by two members of the Bay Ar...