Kevin Bronson on October 25th, 2016

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Julien O’neill and Samuel Shea, the transplanted New Yorkers who founded Warbly Jets last year, aren’t sure how they fit on an L.A. landscape populated by ’60s retroists and their cassette tapes. “We have no interest in writing something solely indebted to paisley and teardrop guitars,” keyboardist O’neill says. Adds Shea: “I love all the people here. That being said, I’m not a big fan of the ’60s psych resurgence. Our goal has always been to blend our influences from the past with today’s technology instead of just recreating the jangly guitar music that was perfected by countless bands five decades ago. This hasn’t necessarily given us the most obvious fast track, but we never gave a damn about being a scene band when we moved here anyway.”

The quartet, which features Justin Goings on drums and Dan Gerbang on bass, has taken a while to get on its feet. Shea sustained a broken wrist and forearm last year in a motorcycle accident, for one thing, and there were the simple challenges of making ends meet: couch-surfing, finding a suitable studio space. Etcetera. Things coalesced in downtown L.A.’s Ultrasound Studios, and Warbly Jets have now unveiled their first proper single, “Alive.” It’s a riffy, raging, testosterone-charged declaration recalling the swaggering Britpop of Oasis and the urgent garage-rock of Swedes like the Hives and Division of Laura Lee. So … The ’60s as filtered through the ’90s and spiked with millennial mischief? Maybe. Either way, it’s a rocker.

||| Stream: “Alive”

||| Live: Warbly Jets play tonight at Harvard & Stone. They also play Nov. 10 at the Wayfarer in Costa Mesa (tickets) before embarking on a national tour with Mystery Lights.