Ears Wide Open: Grad Party

0
Grad Party (Photo by Don Flood)
Grad Party (Photo by Don Flood)

Grad Party melds the talents of singer-guitarist Ian Bowers and singer-keyboardist Carlo Ladd, who met while attending Brown University in Providence, R.I. Besides their academic pursuits, each wrote music for film before landing in L.A. to refine their lean, clean indie-pop. The dance music on their 2017 EP “Speak” is the old college radio version of disco — light on hedonism, meticulously restrained, guitar scribbles with a light coat of synth. Their new single “Pretty Boy” is more acoustic than the EP, a jaunty, fragile outpouring of tender emotion: “Pretty boy, don’t you care what they say / I can keep you warm at night.” The duo are working on a full-length.

||| Stream: “Pretty Boy”

||| Also: Stream “Speak” and “Feeling”

||| Live: Grad Party plays Sunday at the 5 Star Bar along with Bye Bye & the Forevers and Death of Politics.