Ears Wide Open: BEL

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BEL

Isabel Whelan — singer-songwriter, the pride of Clovis and UCLA grad — makes music under the name BEL, and with just over a dozen fairly radiant tracks to her name in under two years, she’s bidding to join the conversation surrounding artists in the indie zeitgeist.

BEL’s frank, vivid, often droll and deceptively dreamy indie-pop/folk-rock has a lot in common with artists such as Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, Talker, Alaska Reid and Tomberlin — not to mention Girlhouse (Lauren Luiz), who collaborated with Whelan on the March single “PBR.”

“PBR” (written with Luiz’s bandmate in WILD, Tyler Thompson) circles the wagons for one of those “what-am-I-doing-here” moments: “Cigarettes and PBR / At a gentrified dive bar.” It finishes with a roar, as if BEL and Girlhouse could escape on the power of their harmonies alone.

BEL’s latest single is also a collaboration with Thompson. “Cake” is a simple but cleverly framed declaration of longing: “I’m eating cake right out the refrigerator / When I was with you it tasted way better,” she sings.

Those singles will appear on BEL’s sophomore EP, “Jet Lag” (release date TBA), the follow-up to her debut “Muscle Memory” and singles like last fall’s ’70s-embracing “Mason Jar.”

||| Stream: “Cake” and “PBR” (feat. Girlhouse)

||| Also: Stream the “Muscle Memory” EP in its entirety