Kyle McCarthy, also known as NIIC (born May 24, 1990), is a composer and producer from New York City, USA. Kyle McCarthy conceptualized NIIC the Singing Dog shortly after graduating in Music Composition from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and moving up to New York City. Kyle McCarthy's , '''NIIC''' (pronounced "nice") is an anthropomorphic character through which composer Kyle McCarthy performs and produces pop and electronic music. Commonly referred to as 'Electro-pop' A big green Akita inu, the Singing Dog was first conceptualized in February 2013 by Kyle McCarthy. NIIC was inspired by a dog from Kyle's early childhood - a relative's husky named Nicki whom Kyle briefly grew up with. The green color of the character was chosen on a whim, and was first mocked-up by the anthropomorphic artist Casparr. Kyle began the promotion of the green dog and its music within the furry fandom in March of 2013. The Singing Dog is in fact a revival of a previous anthropomorphic musical project Kyle had developed in Philadelphia, a web show puppet series called Sebastian the Singing Cockroach - a self-absorbed part-time artist and cockroach that worked at a city coffee chain and frequent lamented about being under-appreciated by the rest of society. NIIC's character's discography has a very upbeat, energetic sound. His vocals are typically accompanied by energized and Syncopation Synthesizer Backing tracks,, dispersed with live instrumentation. Kyle McCarthy produces all songs within Pro Tools and mixes them through an Apogee Electronics Apogee Quartet console. His microphone of choice is the dynamic Shure SM7b, and incorporates virtual instrumentation software into his tracks, such as kontakt-5, EastWest, Superior Drummer, Trilian, and Stylus RMX. At the start of 2013, Kyle McCarthy released several "rough drafts" of songs that would appear in future albums, such as :The Extended Play" and "Unleashed". It was originally entitled "Paws to the Walls"' but was never formally published as an official album. It was not until July 2013 that Kyle McCarthy released NIIC's first album (the ''Extended Play''), during the opening of Anthrocon 2013. NIIC the Singing Dog's first ''full''-length album was released on Valentine's Day of 2014, entitled ''Unleashed''. NIIC's third album, ''Instinct'', was debuted at Fangcon 2014. In addition, NIIC has also released cover tracks which are not yet compiled into albums, but appear in piecemeal on various media websites such as SoundCloud YouTube Bandcamp HypedSound Grooveshark. He also has his own website NIICMusic and accepts commissions here ==External links== * NIIC on Fur Affinity * NIIC on InkBunny * NIIC on SoFurry * NIIC on Facebook * NIIC on Twitter * NIIC on BandCamp * NIIC on SoundCloud * NIIC on YouTube Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.