Indie-pop supergroups are not immune to the economic downturn. As the more-is-more ethos evermore becomes so Bush-league, megasized musical collectives — whether Animal in name or raconteurish in nature — may find themselves pushed aside by outfits such as Bell Horses, a new superduo. It is solely composed of 90s-era Silver Apples multi-instrumentalist/lone member of electronica outfit Sybarite Xian Hawkins and solo singer-songwriter/also a member of The Robot Explosion Jenny Owen Youngs.

The group’s debut album, This Loves Last Time [sic on the awkward and/or incorrect grammar] will feature eight songs composed mostly while Hawkins and Youngs were located in different cities; vocal and instrumental tracks were emailed back and forth, with the majority of the finishing done by Hawkins in a converted Victorian church in western Massachusetts. (The name Bell Horses reflects this ships-in-the-night collaboration; it refers to a child’s nursery rhyme about equines in transition.)

No tour plans have bene announced, and no songs are posted as of yet on the band’s MySpace page.

Also chiming in on the album is The Antlers drummer Michael Lerner, which ratchets the group’s status up half a notch from superduo to supertrio — still modest by, say, Broken Social Scene standards, and that’s counting the conversion from the Canadian metric system.