Like fellow duos Telefon Tel Aviv and Junior Boys before them, Beacon creatively incorporate elements of contemporary R&B and underground club music while emphasizing songwriting as much as sound design. Across a handful of EPs and the succinct albums The Ways We Separate (2013), Escapements (2016), and Gravity Pairs (2018), Beacon were one of the most consistent artists on the Ghostly International label in the 2010s. Independent since then, they've steadily refined their predominantly downtempo and tender approach with the full-length Along the Lethe among their later releases.

Beacon consists of producer Jacob Gossett and vocalist/lyricist Thomas Mullarney III. The two met at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and, in April 2011, released a pair of single tracks as free downloads on their Bandcamp page. They made their official debut that November with No Body, a hushed but deeply rhythmic four-track EP released through the Ghostly International-supported Moodgadget label. Throughout the following year, the duo toured the U.S., opening for the likes of Gold Panda, Tycho, and Oneohtrix Point Never. Gossett and Mullarney landed on Ghostly International proper in October 2012 with the For Now EP, and their hushed first album, The Ways We Separate, followed four months later. During 2014, they remixed Tycho's "See" and toward year's end issued L1. Their third proper EP, L1 featured some relatively active moments that presaged the faster tempos and more physical sounds heard on second album Escapements, issued in February 2016. Continued touring with Tycho -- with Mullarney joining the band as vocalist -- led to a re-recording of "See," this time credited to Tycho "feat. Beacon." That, as well as a new Beacon single, "Marion," led to Gravity Pairs, Gossett and Mullarney's third album, in November 2018.

At the turn of the decade, Beacon released a piano-based cover of Pixies' "Wave of Mutilation" and left Ghostly to launch Apparent Movement with "Feel Something" later that year. An intermediary single for another label, Best Of, arrived the next year. In 2022, the duo turned Madness' "Our House" into a spare ballad, and that September issued Along the Lethe, which was written during the COVID-19 lockdown. Former Ghostly labelmate Matthew Dear joined them on "Mile a Minute," while another song on the LP, "Ostrich," featured saxophone swirls from Colin Stetson. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi