Leverage Models began when composer/producer Shannon Fields disbanded his long-running, volatile behemoth of an art-performance group, "Stars Like Fleas" (who Paper Magazine once called "New York's most sublime and continuously undiscovered band"...and also its most confusing), moved to the country, and began releasing equally  confusing (in different ways) cassette tapes on Hometapes under the name Leverage Models, as "a form of therapy". The music was received enthusiastically by critics and lost him many friends.

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Following favorable reviews of the preliminary EP's Shannon joined forces with the Brooklyn art-rock band JOBS, Alena Spanger (formerly of Tiny Hazard), and veteran avant-percussionist Jeff Gretz, to form a band that built an audience touring North America for the next three two years, and created the self-titled debut full-length album that some people considered remarkable and many others never heard.  The music, on the surface, has been described as "Deceptively complex…intensely visceral, pleasurable, (literally and emotionally) moving music". The music, under the surface, has been difficult to describe.

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Touring in 2015-16, the band unleashed an imperfect storm of Fripp-worthy guitar solos, a constellation of synthesizers, frenetic Afro-Latin percussion instruments, and the “combustible”, “tent revival fury” of Spanger’s and Fields’ live performances. The band has toured supporting Son Lux, Helado Negro, Abdu Ali, Frog Eyes, Xenia Rubinos, Flock Of Dimes, & Lower Dens, and has been on live hiatus since the 2016 American presidential election.

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Leverage Models' second full-length album, Whites, was released on 8.26.18 by Anachronisme, and benefits the Southern Poverty Law Center. It has been tipped by PopMatters, NPR, Dusted, Bandcamp, and Spotify, among others.