Slint was an American rock band consisting of Brian McMahan (guitar and vocals), David Pajo (guitar), Britt Walford (drums), Todd Brashear (bass on Spiderland) and Ethan Buckler (bass on Tweez). They formed in Louisville, Kentucky, United States in 1986 and disbanded following the recording of their second album, Spiderland, in 1991.

The band reformed to play a number of live shows in 2005 and 2007, though they released no new material.

Walford and McMahan began performing music together at an early age, forming Languid and Flaccid with Ned Oldham (later of The Anomoanoan) while still in middle school. Walford and McMahan later played together in the seminal Louisville punk band Squirrel Bait, though Walford left the band following their first recording session. Prior to Slint, Pajo and Walford (and, briefly, McMahan) were also in the band Maurice with future members of Kinghorse. Walford, Pajo, and Buckler played their first show together in 1985 under the name Small Tight Dirty Tufts of Hair; BEADS.

Lance Bangs (born September 8, 1972) is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and music video director who has created videos for Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Green Day, the Arcade Fire, the Shins, The Thermals, Belle & Sebastian, Menomena, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, R.E.M., Mike Watt, Death Cab for Cutie, The Black Keys, Kanye West, and Pavement. He directed the David Cross film Let America Laugh. Bangs has also been heavily involved in the filming and production of MTV's Jackass television series and its subsequent movies.

Bangs was born in Sacramento, California. He founded Flicker, a series of Super8mm and 16mm film screenings while in Athens, GA in 1990 along with Michael Lachowski and Angie Grass.

As a commercial director he has worked with UPS, Nike, Subway, Rock Band and Volvo for several campaigns, including the Titanium Lion winning Life on Board campaign from the 2005 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

He produced DVDs for the Directors Label Series, covering the work of Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek, Stéphane Sednaoui, Jonathan Glazer and Anton Corbijn. He has also been involved with Spike Jonze on a number of occasions, recently being one of the cinematographers for Jackass: The Movie, Jackass Number Two and Jackass 3D. He also was a part of the Jackassworld.com: 24 Hour Takeover, filming behind the scenes material. In 2009 they were shortlisted for an Academy Award for "Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak."

"Cortez the Killer" is a song by Neil Young from his 1975 album, Zuma. It was recorded with Young's band Crazy Horse and ranked #39 on Guitar World's 100 Greatest Guitar Solos and #321 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Young has stated in concert that he wrote the song while studying history in high school in Winnipeg. The song was banned in Spain under Francisco Franco, according to Young's notes for the album Decade. Young's claim is dubious, since Franco was on his death bed on Nov. 10, 1975, the date the song was released. However, this would not necessarily have affected the nature of how the Spanish Censors would have viewed such a song. Franco died on Nov. 20, 1975 after a long illness during which he was incapacitated.

The song is about Hernán Cortez, a conquistador who conquered Mexico for Spain in the 16th century. "Cortez the Killer" also makes reference to the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II and other events that occurred in the Spanish conquest of the New World.

State Shirt is Ethan Tufts, an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Easthampton, Massachusetts. He is known for his hand-crafted, diverse and often unpredictable indietronic style, integrating live looping in both his recordings and live performances. All of his songs are open source and licensed via Creative Commons, providing raw materials for the hundreds of remix artists that have created new works based on his source tracks.

He released his debut EP Don't Die in 2004, and his second album This Is Old in 2008. The first single from This is Old is "Fell Out of the Sky," a song inspired by the black box data recordings recovered from the crash of Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182, September 25, 1978. His most recent album, Let's Get Bloody was released in December 2011.

He is currently working on an open source collaboration project, using only fan-submitted audio samples and his voice. The album will feature audio by Dan Friel (Parts & Labor), Chris Fudurich (producer, Nada Surf), Jamie Kime (Zappa Plays Zappa), Tim Godwin (Air Supply), among others.