Kevin Bronson on March 16th, 2022

0

Glendale-birthed quartet Guppy sounds like the most fun you can have without buying a ticket to an amusement park.

The band — J Lebow, Marc Babcock, Ian Cohen and Kabir Kumar — makes carefree power-pop that’s crazy-catchy and certifiably campy. They started as more of an edgy garage-pop outfit (the edge included their prickly sense of humor) before getting to work with producer Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties) on their forthcoming album, “Big Man Says Slappydoo,” out April 22 via Lauren Records.

Bands like Guppy remind you not to take everything so seriously. Of course, while you’re pretending not to care, they’ll slip in a zinger or three.

Their new single, “If I Wanted To,” out today, is intended to “warm the soul and break your heart with a mesmerizing mantra about the beauty and pain of indifference,” the band says.

It follows last fall’s single, “Aliens,” which whips itself into a frenzy over the possibility of meeting interplanetary travelers. What would visitors think, for instance, about hyper-sentimental love songs? “I’ll tell them all about love, about how I lost it / Then they’ll get so bored they’ll get back on their rockets,” Lebow sings.

Of course, Lebow has one more wish: “When aliens come to earth / I hope to God that they’ll buy my merch.”

Amen.

||| Stream: “If I Wanted To” and “Aliens”