Kevin Bronson on April 30th, 2020

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“Madonna is better than most rock bands,” Dylan Ewen deadpans at the outset of his new song “T9,” a cheeky, lo-fi pop-punk song that introduces the singer-songwriter’s forthcoming album “Pain.” Ewen goes on to hold forth on flip phones, texting, childhood and how he wishes he were a machine with USB stick in his spine, so when we warns the album is “emo and heartfelt but has a lot of funny and lighthearted moments,” we’ll take him at his word.

Ewen, a native of the Dallas-Forth Worth area who moved to L.A. three years ago, splits his time between music, tattooing, visual art and teaching. He’s played in a lot of bands in a lot of different styles, including the goofball Boston outfit the Sulk Scouts, but recently he’s been honing the DIY skills needed to craft his spindly music, a fun mix of guitar, synth and beats. “I tell people it’s kind of like Blink-182, but if you shrunk them down to be 1 foot tall and replaced Travis Barker with a drum machine.”

As for “T9,” Ewen says, “At the time I made this song, I was teaching rock band lessons to little kids, so I was learning every pop/rock song from the past 30 years. So I feel like on this song and other songs on the album there are a lot of little tidbits of pop culture references sprinkled throughout.

“I wrote the line ‘Madonna is better than most rock bands’ because, at the time, I was teaching every popular AC/DC song and was getting really burned out on rock music in general. I think that’s why the album has those rock influences but also uses a smaller sound and electronic elements, like a small drum machine, toy-sounding synth bass and synth leads.”

There’s no release date yet for “Pain,” but Ewen has another single on the way in June. His artwork is pretty wild, too.

||| Stream: “T9”