Michelle Shiers on March 17th, 2015

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Los Angeles chamber-pop quintet Wartime Recitals have premiered a new video for their track “Bad Dances.”  Directed by Hunter Peterson and starring Scott Drennan and Jenny Verrochi, the video was filmed along the California coastline and in the Mojave Desert — a perfect backdrop for the band’s summertime harmonies and earnest baroque indie-ness. We are left following around a heartsick robot named A7 who is struggling to delete flashbulb memories of an ex as the track rises and crashes with shining guitars and soaring keys that meet sweet glockenspiel. Together, singer Jonathan Krueger and vocalist Morgan Paros tell a narrative revolving around the pains of nostalgia and heartache. Their harmonies are wistful and twee as they sing “We can’t control the blood flow/ We can’t control the heart stops.” Wartime Recitals have carved their initials into world of emotive indie-pop with their youthful and twinkling melancholia, requisite for those reflective afternoons spent laying in the sand.

||| Live: Wartime Recitals performs April 14 at Harvard & Stone.

||| Previously: “Bears”