[4] [5][6] Before Secretly Canadian was founded, Chris Swanson and Eric Weddle met in 1995 in Indiana University's campus radio station, WIUX.

[9] Soon after, Chris' younger brother Ben Swanson moved to Bloomington to earn his undergraduate degree[10] from the Jacobs School of Music in musicology.

[28][29][30] Secretly Canadian then signed The War on Drugs, the Philadelphia-based band whose third record,[31] Lost in the Dream, struck as both a critical and commercial success in 2014.

[32] Secretly Canadian also began a partnership with Chimera Records in the form of Yoko Ono's reissues beginning in 2016,[33] and the debut release from William Eggleston, in 2017.

[34] Secretly Canadian's roster also includes Cherry Glazerr, Whitney, Alex Cameron, Joey Dosik, Stella Donnelly, Faye Webster, and serpentwithfeet, among many others.