Big Red Machine is an American indie folk band that began as a collaboration between musicians Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon. The band is named after the nickname for the dominant 1970s Cincinnati Reds baseball team, which won the 1976 World Series in Dessner's birth year.

Aaron Brooking Dessner is an American musician. He is best known as a founding member of the rock band The National, with whom he has recorded nine studio albums; a co-founder of the indie rock duo Big Red Machine, teaming with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon; and a collaborator on Taylor Swift's critically acclaimed studio albums Folklore and Evermore, both of which contended for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2021 and 2022, respectively, with the former winning the accolade; as well as The Tortured Poets Department (2024).