The group's sound draws from a wide variety of influences, including garage rock, krautrock, psychedelia, and folk music.

Initially a solo freak folk recording project, Dwyer evolved the project into a full garage rock band, featuring Brigid Dawson (keyboards, backing vocals), Petey Dammit (bass, guitar), Mike Shoun (drums), and Lars Finberg (drums, guitar), while releasing the acclaimed albums, The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In (2008), Carrion Crawler/The Dream (2011) and Floating Coffin (2013).

After relocating to Los Angeles in late 2013, Dwyer changed the line-up of the band, with Sic Alps bass guitarist Tim Hellman and White Fence drummer Nick Murray replacing Dawson, Dammit!, Shoun and Finberg.

Following the release of the band's sixteenth studio album, Mutilator Defeated At Last (2015), Dwyer and Hellman began touring with two drummers, Dan Rincon and Ryan Moutinho, replacing Murray.

Touring extensively, this line-up recorded the band's seventeenth and eighteenth studio albums, A Weird Exits and An Odd Entrances, with Moutinho departing in late 2016 to focus on his own projects.

[2] With the arrival of new drummer Paul Quattrone, the band recorded its nineteenth album, Orc, with co-producers Ty Segall, Eric Bauer and Enrique Tena.

In late 2017, Dwyer reunited with Dawson for a primarily acoustic album, Memory of a Cut Off Head, which returned to the band's lo-fi roots, and featured several former and current Oh Sees members.

John Dwyer began releasing songs on compilation albums under the name Orinoka Crash Suite as early as 1997,[7][8] while based in San Francisco.

The pair were soon joined by keyboardist and vocalist Brigid Dawson ahead of the project's fifth album, The Cool Death of Island Raiders.

[11] The 2007 release of The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In marked a major stylistic change in the group's music towards a high-energy, garage rock style.

The album was the first to feature drummer Mike Shoun on drums and guitarist Petey Dammit!, a lineup that would remain relatively stable until the band's 2013 hiatus.

The other two days in the studio are having fun writing on the spot and having fun.Regarding the group's tendency towards experimentation in recent years, John Dwyer explains in a 2019 interview: [21] You don't have to make a boring record when you get old.