Oxbow Covenant emerged from the flooded sub-levels of Shelf District 7 around 2211, a rotating collective anchored by three core members: Yemisi Brandt-Okafor (vocals, scavenged percussion), Dariusz Thien-Nakamura (detuned bass guitar, contact-mic chrome), and Priya Solvang (synthesizer, illegal neural broadcast rig). Their sound is built on collapsed architecture — West African polyrhythm hammered into Nordic dirge tempos, with Priya's synth work drawing on Carnatic raga structures stretched into queasy, half-step dissonance. Live shows are combat-loud and deliberately uncomfortable, held in decommissioned water treatment cells and burnt-out transit depots, announced only through encrypted mesh drops twenty minutes before showtime.

The band became notorious in 2214 when their track 'Tithe Season' — a fifteen-minute indictment of Vantablack Media's neural-feed licensing fees �� was broadcast simultaneously across eleven pirate rooftop towers during a Tier 3 census blackout. Corporate security raided four suspected venues that night and found nothing. The song has since been attributed to at least a dozen copycat incidents of infrastructure graffiti and work stoppages. Vantablack's subsidiary Crucible Sound attempted to sign them in 2216; the offer was publicly burned — literally, on a data chip, photographed, and distributed.