Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice

Yampy Promotions present

Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice + guests

Dr Sure is the alter ego of Central Queensland-born, Melbourne-based artist Dougal Shaw. The pseudonym allows Shaw to embody a mad-scientist-like character, often performing in oversized suits and sunglasses or matching boiler suits with the band. Behind the scenes, the Unusual Practice functions as Shaw’s all-encompassing art project. He writes, records, mixes, and releases music through his own Marthouse Records label and studio (Dr Sure’s, Gut Health, Bench Press), designs the album artwork, posters, and merch, directs the music videos, and manages the band. It’s this dichotomy—the publicly eccentric Dr Sure and the privately meticulous Shaw—that makes the project so compelling.

Shaw: “I always need to be making something. I love going all in on a project, creating a world around it —from the music and lyrics to the artwork and visuals, the release, the live show. Thinking about how all the different elements speak to each other to realise some kind of bigger vision. Completely inhabit that world, even just for a moment… then I’m onto the next project.”

While the band’s output is prolific, the scope changes with each release: from the guitar-led post-punk of their first two albums The West (2019) and Remember The Future? (2021), to the synth punk of Scomo Goes To Hawaii / While Aus Burns (2020), to the bizarro outsider-pop and proto-punk of the Bubble (2022) and Blue (2025) EPs.

Most recently, the art-punk and krautrock of their third album Total Reality (2024)—their third full-length, released on Marthouse Records in Australia and Erste Theke Tontraeger in Europe—pushed the “wierdo punk masterminds” beyond the hivemind and into the limelight—earning praise from the likes of Henry Rollins, who named it in his Top 10 releases of 2024, and Rolling Stone, who placed it in their top 50 records of the year, having dubbed them “one of the most important bands in Melbourne.” The release culminated in five tours throughout 2024, performing 60+ shows in 10 countries. This ‘working band’ mentality has placed Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice among a new wave of Australian artists earning recognition on the world stage.

Shaw: “The first time we got together as a band—in the shed of the sharehouse where Jake and I lived —we spoke about this romantic notion of ‘the working band’, which feels a bit lost in the digital age. This idea of hitting the road and playing every pub that would have us, linking up with other artists and creative communities. That’s what it was always about—art, friendship, community, building something in the real world. We’ve been going at it non-stop ever since.”

On stage the road-worn Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice mutate—songs come alive with fizzing intensity, the players seem larger-than-life. Alongside Shaw, the band includes 4 core members, hailing from different cities and diverse pockets of the Melbourne music scene: Miranda Holt (drums), Jake Suriano (bass, saxophone), Mathias Dowle (guitar, synth), and Asher Bates (guitar). Across the band’s 6 years, an ever-expanding group of collaborators have contributed to recordings and live performances—In February 2024 for example, at New Zealand’s Camp A Low Hum festival, the band performed as a 5-piece and then recorded as an 11-piece for a split 7” with Canada’s Holy Fuck.

A collective of outsiders unbound by genre or scene, Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice invoke punk in it’s original form: no limits. A reputation for diverse and prolific output, political jabs and feverish performance. It’s a lineage that could be traced from a New York dive (Television, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, The Velvet Underground), to an art school in Albuquerque (DEVO), all the way to a Brisbane garage (The Saints, The Billy Mummies). It’s rock music for odd balls and outsiders.

With each performance and release, Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice continue to push sonic and conceptual boundaries, creating a space for exploration and self-expression, and inviting audiences to join them.