Daiana Feuer on June 18th, 2015

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What is rock music? Is it something parents just don’t understand? Is it someone shaking their head back and forth over a guitar? Is it multiple persons shaking their heads over guitars? In all its varieties and applications, these days, describing something new simply as rock music doesn’t seem to suffice. But when the aliens come down and ask Media Jeweler what the stuff they make is, these Santa Ana guys will say, “rock music,” and pass the alien a half-eaten hamburger and the band’s new self-released album, “$99 R/T Hawaii” (out Aug. 14). The band does not approve of modifying adjectives when it comes to genre description. Which might be easier for the aliens to understand anyway. If you said, this is jazzy-post-punk-DIY-dippy doo, that would just confuse our extraterrestrial guests. Better to let the aliens listen to “Autopilot” and think, “Oh, it’s so wild and unique, full of spunk. The horns excite me! So much to take in and yet there are no words.” Then astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson would chime in—because, naturally, the aliens visited him first—and he would say, “Yes, one might not ‘think’ rock music by hearing Media Jeweler, but a person (or alien) can feel it.” If it’s good enough for the aliens, it’s good enough for all of us.

||| Stream: “Autopilot”

||| Live: Media Jeweler performs July 12 at Funzone in Santa Barbara, July 24 at dA Center for the Arts in Pomona, and Aug. 8 at The Smell in Los Angeles.