Ears Wide Open: Nitefire

Kevin Bronson on May 5th, 2023

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As a grouping of musical artists (and, for that matter, a blog name, but we’re stuck with it), “buzz bands” is pretty much past its expiration date. Nitefire is an L.A. quartet whose buzzing, swaggering, impudent and reliably catchy indie-rock recalls (depending on which song you spool up) the likes of early Strokes, the Hives, Silversun Pickups and the Vaccines.

Yes, basically, a lot of the music that was moving the dial about the time Nitefire co-founders Nico Geyer and Luke White were being born. Maybe something was in their formula.

White and Geyer were high school buddies who jammed together, but Nitefire didn’t start in earnest until they went away to college — inconveniently, on opposite coasts. Some of their early songs mined a different era, but their current musical persona started to emerge in 2021 with the single “Uptight.”

Now joined by Christian Renard and Noah Davies, Nitefire last year released the EP “[Redacted],” a real rush of blood to the head (especially “Worth It” and “Sunflower”) for fans of guitar-driven pop circa Y2K. This spring brought the release of “Dumb Like Daisies,” the new single produced by Aron Kobayashi-Ritch (Momma, Miss Grit, Been Stellar).

And today, they unveiled “I’ve Been Taking Walks (La La Song),” another rocker that recalls post-Britpop British guitar pop. We’re buzzed.

||| Stream: “I’ve Been Taking Walks (La La Song)” and “Dumb Like Daisies”