sadbirthdays is the music project of multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and composer seth cardinal dodginghorse. They have performed, and recorded with artists such as Cris Derksen, Alex Waterman, Marek Tyler (ASKO), Sarah Houle, Ghostkeeper, Postcommodity/Raven Chacon, Nathan Young, Suzanne Kite, nêhiyawak, and Johanna Householder. In the past decade seth has toured, and performed across Canada and the USA in festivals and venues such as POP Montreal, Sled Island, Femme Wave, 7A*11D International Festival, ViVa! Art Action and THE CHAPTER HOUSE LA. They recently composed a film score for an upcoming National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentary. seth primarily records and writes with analogue tape machines. 

sadbirthdays began as a solo bedroom dream pop project (originally named soft cure) in 2013 when they were a teenager. Pretty soon the solo project became a loud fuzzed-out shoegaze four piece playing shows and festivals across western Canada. When the 2020 pandemic hit soft cure went on hiatus and became a solo project again now named lawrence teeth. Over the course of the next few years lawrence teeth composed film scores, and collaborated with artists like Rain from Heaven, playing shows in Canada and the USA.

During this period seth helped their mother Glenna Cardinal film a documentary at the Blue Quills University, the former Indian Residential School their grandfather attended in the 1950’s and 60’s. Inside Blue Quills songs poured out of seth and they began to write and record them with their portable tape machine in places like hallways, classrooms, cafeterias, and furnace rooms. This new music was intentionally recorded over Christian and Catholic cassette tapes they found at faith based thrift stores, the warped voices and hymns are heard bleeding through the spaces of tense whispered lyrics, stabbing guitars, and punishing drums. These recordings became the 16 track album catholic ladders vol.1, a dark collage of minimalist folk, grunge pop, and slow core. The lyrics in the first collection of songs created in Blue Quills explores themes of family, dreams, spirituality, and intergenerational trauma colliding with present day healing and undoing. Vol.1 will be released in 2026. Because of the amount of material that was recorded at Blue Quills a second volume of songs is currently being finished. 

In 2025 another change took place with seth renaming lawrence teeth to sadbirthdays, and performing solo shows in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Los Angeles. During residencies and time off from art projects last year, sadbirthdays began to demo full multilayered shimmering songs for a new album titled nits. These new demos finished at home, sonically and lyrically became the bright response to the dark and dirgy songs from Blue Quills. In 2026 sadbirthdays will perform live and record nits as a four piece band, release catholic ladders, and tour.