Kevin Bronson on February 22nd, 2011

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How the cast of characters in Sing the Body Electric crossed paths owes to the strange synchronicity that runs like a current through a city like L.A. It involves connections like a manic poet and his itinerant songwriter buddy, the songwriter and his girlfriend, people who met while attending a local recording academy, people who worked together Skooby’s Hot Dogs in Hollywood … Yeah, it’s hard to connect all the dots.

Easier, then, just to consider the final product. Sing the Body Electric makes amped-up, all-wires-exposed indie-rock that makes you think of Bright Eyes as stalked by a one-man marching band – that latter being trumpeter Luis Lopez, whose horn blares triumphantly and tastefully through the arrangements fashioned by singer-guitarist Colin Dieden, guitarist Isaiah Powell, bassist M.J. Medina and drummer Nathan Pirtz.

• ||| Stream: “Indecisive Things (demo version)”:

“It’s so much fun when we hang out and play the iPod,” Medina says wryly, noting her bandmates’ disparate backgrounds. “We’re just a clusterf*ck of influences.”

They come together behind frontman Dieden, who writes “four or five poems a day,” often using a good old-fashioned typewriter, but sometimes unintentionally. “I’ll be laying drunk in a park in Westwood and text something to someone, and they’ll respond, ‘Hey, that’s sounds cool,'” he says. Indeed, Medina says, “Sometimes his texts read like novellas.”

His narratives are backed by singer-guitarist Powell, a songwriter himself; Medina, who has a bedrock of old-school punk and classic-rock influences; Lopez, who counts Arturo Sandoval as his hero; and Pirtz, who drummed his way out of small town in Ohio. Together, the Body Electric is working on its first batch of recordings with producer Chris Tristram (Parlour) with an eye on releasing music later this year.

In the meantime, they admit, the quintet is a work in progress. But recent live shows have marked them as a band to watch.

“I think as a group we have a lot of strengths,” Powell says, “and our music has a way of giving everybody a chance to shine.”

||| Live: Sing the Body Electric plays the early set tonight at the Satellite on a Buzz Bands LA-curated bill with Army Navy, A House for Lions and Soft Swells.

Photo by Laurie Scavo