Alex & Theo
Theo Slater
Vocals · Guitar · LyricsAs written by Alex: Theo is the voice of Almost Crimes and one half of the band’s songwriting partnership. He grew up with Alex in their hometown of Chicago and they’ve been making music together ever since. To this day he still credits his vocal range to the healing properties of Malört. The man is not to be trusted.
Alex Slater
Production · MIDI · Everything Else
As written by Theo: Alex handles much of the production behind the Almost Crimes, building hooks from Theo’s guitar, MIDI samples, and whatever else happens to be near him. I once saw the man sample a rock for the ambiance. He assures me you can feel it in the music.
Almost Crimes
Almost Crimes started in 2026 out of boredom, an abundance of time, and the questionable decision to see what two men could do with a microphone, a guitar, and an old laptop. Theo and Alex had already spent most of their lives together in one capacity or another, so starting a band seemed less like a major decision and more like finding another way to annoy each other.
The name comes from “Almost Crimes” by Broken Social Scene, one of the bands that shaped how they heard music growing up: messy, communal, melodic, noisy, and somehow more alive because the edges were left showing. That philosophy still sits underneath the project. Almost Crimes makes queer alternative music somewhere between indie rock, electronic pop, industrial noise, and whatever happened at 2:00 AM that nobody had the good sense to delete. Billie Eilish brought the intimacy and negative space. Nine Inch Nails proved ugliness could be beautiful. Gorillaz made genre feel optional. Broken Social Scene taught them that a song could sound like it was barely holding itself together and still hit you directly in the chest.
The songs usually begin small: a guitar phrase, a strange sentence, a joke that gets taken too seriously, or a metaphor that survives several increasingly irresponsible decisions. Lyrics are conversational and image-heavy, moving through sex, desire, loneliness, bad habits, masculinity, relationships, self-sabotage and the occasional extended automotive metaphor for a penis. Production gets built around the writing rather than the other way around, mixing guitars, MIDI, samples, electronic textures, live instrumentation and whatever else happens to be within reach.
Almost Crimes is a queer band, aggressively bisexual, and emphatically for everyone. The point has never been to make “queer music” that requires an invitation to enter. It’s alternative music made by queer people for anybody who finds something of themselves in it. Making this band has been considerably more fun than either of them expected, so the current plan is to keep going. Eventually they’d like to find a few more musicians and turn the laptop-sized version of Almost Crimes into a proper live band. Until then, Theo and Alex will continue doing what they apparently do best: making you dance, overshare, and occasionally question your sexuality.