The important stuff first. Hailing from Athens, Georgia, I Am The World Trade Center are Amy Dykes and Dan Geller. They play some of the most painfully cute and indie laptop dance music ever—this is a band that used to be on Kindercore, spiritual home of great American twee-pop records everywhere—and while you’ll never hear any of their songs whipping up a storm on most dancefloors, you have to hand it to the duo for making some very infectious indie-electronica. If they have a fault, it’s that they are very much stuck in a groove; every album they’ve released has simply been a better-produced version of the previous album’s sound. But you could do far worse than to keep churning out songs like “Metro,” which appears in two mixes bookending Out Of The Loop. And lately, after two years of sitting on my shelf, The Tight Connection is finally starting to grow on me.

Okay, now the unfortunate stuff. Dykes and Gellar have been making music as I Am The World Trade Center for about four years now, and it’s been a rocky time for them. First, the band name—the duo came up with I Am The World Trade Center to represent their spiritual symbiosis with New York City, their old home. They hadn’t planned on the events of September 11th, 2001, only a scant few months after the release of Out Of The Loop. For a while the band truncated their name to “I Am The World,” and anyone carrying the first album around got some strange looks for a while. Not long after changing their name back, Kindercore Records closed up shop under auspicious circumstances, leaving the duo without a home.

And just three weeks before the release of their latest album, this year’s The Cover-Up, Dykes was rushed to hospital after a show complaining of swelling in her face. She was subsequently diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in late April. She’s had a number of ups and downs since, but latest word is that, on the whole, things are looking up. Obviously their tour was cancelled and the band is on hiatus, but there will be a benefit for Dykes on September 24th at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA.