‘Grey Oceans’ is the fourth album by CocoRosie, the celebrated duo comprising US-born, Paris-based sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady.

Born to an American mother and Cherokee father, Sierra and Bianca spent their childhood living in two different worlds – their everyday life with their mother, a Steiner school teacher, and the summers spent with their father, a Shaman who lived on the road. They became estranged as adolescents when Sierra was sent to boarding school, and a “deep antipathy” developed between them. Almost a decade passed, and Sierra was studying to become an opera singer in Paris. Out of the blue, Bianca – then 19 and frustrated with working as a model – arrived at Sierra’s flat in the French capital, a moment that the elder sister says was “like in Wizard Of Oz when it all goes from black and white to Technicolor”.

They soon found out they had more in common than they thought: art, writing, storytelling and music. The sisters released their debut album, ‘La Maison de Mon Reve’, in 2004 on Touch And Go Records, followed it with ‘Noah\’s Ark’ (which featured a collaboration with Antony Hegarty) in 2005 and then ‘The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn’ in 2007, with an otherworldly album cover by renowned French artists Pierre et Gilles.

Highly in demand on the live circuit, CocoRosie’s live shows have included everything from a trapeze artist to special costumes and a one-off collaboration with the Royal Dutch Orchestra at Amsterdam’s Concertegebouw. Outside of the band, Bianca is an accomplished artist and costume designer, with recent shows in New York, Groningen, Milan and Brussels. In Brussels, she exhibited in 2008 alongside work by Brian Eno, Patti Smith, Yoko Ono, Antony, and David Byrne, a noted fan who invited the sisters to perform at New York’s Carnegie Hall.