Founding members John Paul Pitts and Tyler Schwarz started playing music together in Orlando, Florida[1] under the name Jabroni Sandwich.

[1][1] They then moved back to their hometown of West Palm Beach, Florida and started playing with guitarist Luke Bovat and bassist Freddy Schwenk in 2008 under the name "TV Club."

Around that time, Pitts and Schwarz met Thomas Fekete at an Ultra Music Festival after party in Miami and the group was renamed to Surfer Blood (a name that Schwarz randomly came up with during a conversation with Pitts about his surfer backpack from high school[2]) with the immediate goal of releasing a record and touring nonstop.

[5] In May 2010, the band played at the ATP music festival curated by Pavement along with other groups such as Broken Social Scene, The Walkmen, and Atlas Sound.

[9] The band was chosen by Les Savy Fav to perform at the ATP Nightmare Before Christmas festival that they co-curated in December 2011 in Minehead, England.

[11][12] Artists that contributed remixes to the EP include Totally Sincere (Connor Hanwick of the Drums and Peggy Wang of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart), Speculator, School of Seven Bells and Allen Blickle.

The next day, news spread that the band would be entering the studio in February 2012 with producer Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, Built to Spill) to record their highly anticipated second album which was released on Warner Bros.

Original guitarist Thomas Fekete left the band in 2015 shortly after the announcement of their third album, 1000 Palms, due to a medical diagnosis for a rare form of cancer (sarcoma) that had spread to his lungs and spine.

In January 2020, Surfer Blood announced that they would be releasing a new album called Carefree Theatre which was inspired by the historic landmark theater of the same name in West Palm Beach.

[25] A 10-year anniversary deluxe double LP version of Astro Coast is slated for release by Kanine on Record Store Day, August 29, 2020.