AM & Shawn Lee is collaboration between London-based multi-instrumentalist/producer Shawn Lee and Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter AM. After listening to Lee's 2004 album Music and Rhythm: Ubiquity Studio Sessions, Vol. 1, AM contacted Lee and the duo quickly discovered a shared love of various '60s and '70s sounds, including Brazilian tropicalia, psychedelic-tinged soft rock, Italian film music, and more. A long-distance songwriting partnership developed online with the musicians sending tracks and ideas back and forth. In 2011, AM & Shawn Lee released the full-length studio effort Celestial Electric on Thievery Corporation-member Rob Garza's ESL (Eighteenth Street Lounge) label.