Kevin Bronson on December 13th, 2019

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A hearty “welcome back” to the 2000s. Hot on the heels of news that Louis XIV have scheduled tour dates and are working on new music comes word that L.A. quartet War Tapes have restarted the engines and have new material coming the spring.

But first, the band — Neil Popkin, Becca Popkin, Matthew Bennett and Billy Mohler — are putting a final exclamation point on their 2009 opus “The Continental Divide.” Today, the quartet issued five previously unreleased B-sides as part of “The Continental Divide – 10th Anniversary Edition.” The release comes via Mohler’s MAKE Records.

War Tapes, who formed amid the post-punk revival of the 2000s and called their sound “doom-pop,” have largely been on hiatus since releasing an EP in 2010, although they resurfaced in 2017 with the new singles “Pale Blue Dot” and “City Girl.” Mohler, a Grammy-nominated producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, returned to his jazz roots earlier this year to release the album “Focus,” and Neil Popkin has been involved in several other projects, including playing in (and recruiting Bennett for) the gothic shoegaze band Brass Box.

The B-sides come recommended for fans of any band such as She Wants Revenge (with whom War Tapes once toured) — dark, hard-charging songs with guitars that bite and claw and dire vocals that sound like every tune is the last song you’ll hear on your last night on earth. And you’ll dance like it.

||| Stream: “The Continental Divide” B-sides