Ears Wide Open: Parade of Lights, You Me & Iowa

Kevin Bronson on
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[One in a series featuring new sounds from SoCal bands:]

Long Beach quartet Parade of Lights – featuring former members of Polus (before drummer Anthony Improgo departed to play with Metro Station) – is readying its debut five-song EP. This early taste from Ryan Daly, Matt Frey, Randy Schulte and Mike Nielsen features a heartsick anthem, sweetly melodic and deftly arranged, the kind of pop-rock for the night after date night.

||| Download: “Cityscape”

||| Live: Parade of Lights, with Ballerina Black, plays tonight at the Silverlake Lounge.

You Me & Iowa has been elbowing its way through L.A.’s crowded field of indie-pop bands for about four years, and now the quintet – Andrew Carroll, Ryan Julio, Ryan Ross, Tony Benedetti and Tizoc Estrada – is hard at work on the follow-up to 2008’s “The Adventures of You Me & Iowa,” a mini-album of sparkling, polyrhythmic pop.” “With the weather as hot as it’s been,” bassist Ryan Julio says, “the song ‘Howling at Summer’ seems pretty appropriate.” Agreed.

||| Download: “Howling at Summer” (demo)

||| Live: You Me & Iowa, joined by Avi Buffalo, the Hectors and We Fly by Night, play Spaceland on Saturday night.