Video premiere: The Pretty Flowers, ‘Chip My Paint’

Kevin Bronson on November 4th, 2019

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The Pretty Flowers (Photo by Sami Paige Drasin)

The Pretty Flowers are an indie-rocker’s indie-rockers. The L.A. quartet’s 2018 debut album “Why Trains Crash” proudly carries the torch lit by bands such as the Replacements, Pavement, Guided by Voices and Superchunk and handed off to others like the Thermals and Ted Leo. Which is to say that their biting, hooky songs are like panes of glass being broken by pearls of wisdom.

The foursome — Noah Green (vocals/guitar), Sam Tiger (bass/vocals), Jake Gideon (guitar/vocals) and Sean Johnson (drums) — all come from excellent L.A. band pedigrees. So it’s no surprise to find their album imbued with sharp lyrics and no small amount of pointed humor, from wry to sarcastic to goofy. It’s the kind of rock, to steal their phrase, that can really chip your paint.

There’s probably a wisecrack that can be made about director Derek Pastuszek’s light-hearted video for the song “Chip My Paint,” which casts frontman Green as a sunflower, getting some attention from an elderly gardener. Suffice to say that, like the song (and the album as a whole), it’ll grow on you.

The Pretty Flowers, by the way, have been busy since their album release. Earlier this year, they released the eight-song “Golden Beat Sessions,” which found the quartet covering an interesting array of artists, from Phoebe Bridgers (“Scott Street”) to Warren Zevon (“Lawyers, Guns and Money”) to Teenage Fanclub (“Radio”).

And the quartet is already working with producer Adam Lasus in his new Studio Red on tracks for their sophomore album.

||| Watch: The video for “Chip My Paint”