Drawing from the common failures of many relationships, Saint Paul based Robbie and Hiromi Matsumoto began writing tongue-in-cheek pop songs soon after they started dating in 2000 and decided to name their efforts after their shared favorite color red, or in Japanese, "Akai". Though most of their raw material was composed on two guitars, in early 2005 producer Eric Elvendahl began to arrange and record their songs with full instrumentation, which by 2006 grew into their first full-length album entitled "Pretty Songs About Ugly Things".

Read more about Akai on Last.fm.