On Rademacher’s ambitious 2011-12 album trilogy “Baby Hawk” — which no indie-rock fan should have missed, although many did — songwriter Malcolm Sosa dissected the artist’s life, with all its hope and warts and perceived ignominy. Now Sosa (née Mike Mancillas) is contemplating “Retirement.” The Fresno native, ensconced now in the L.A. life, has been […]
Florida natives Chris Hess and Adam Winn — making music as SWIMM — have been making waves since they forsook their home state for Los Angeles, playing club shows, DIY events, galleries and basically anywhere they can add a little color to the room. Last August, they retooled 2013’s “Feel” EP into a deluxe edition, […]
First, you have to be OK with the band name Dankrupt. (It was not until a recent hazy night in Echo Park that I learned it is not just a terrible pun but a slang term, sorry for being out of touch.) Then you have to be OK with videos featuring rock bands faux-playing in […]
Chelan, the long-running collaboration between Jen Grady and Justin Hosford, work out of Joshua Tree, have a visual collaborator in artist Kime Buzzelli (who does the duo’s album art) and take a slightly experimental approach to indie-pop. Their fourth album, the self-released “Equal Under Pressure,” features deft mix of peripatetic rhythms and layered vocals, both […]
The Airborne Toxic Event released a new album this week. “Dope Machines” arrived in the mail with a notice touting the L.A. quintet’s reinvention as an electro-pop band and something in the way of an artist’s statement from frontman Mikel Jollett: “We live in a world connected by these dope machines that do all this […]
Take a little Prince-style soul, mix in the rhythmic slap of Haim and add a falsetto that oozes pure sex, and you have the new single from indie-dance trio The Black and the White. The L.A. band — consisting of Mario Gonzalez and former As Tall As Lions members Julio Tavarez and Cliff Sarcona — […]
Dorothy — the L.A. quartet of singer Dorothy Martin, guitarist Mark Jackson, bassist Greg Cash and drummer Zac Morris — are at work in the studio recording their full-length debut, and like the free EP the band released last fall, it’s expected to offer more pedal-to-the-metal blues-rock. Like the weird players in the foursome’s new […]
Guitarist Bobb Bruno — the other half of the Best Coast creative duo — never seems to run out of ideas, even if thematically the band continues to run in place. On “California Nights,” the title track of Best Coast’s third album, Bethany Cosentino waxes plaintively on — get this — the L.A. life. She’s […]
“Hills So High,” last year’s debut from L.A. quartet A House for Lions, was a traditionalist’s dream, full of cinematic, poignant songs built from rock’s basic parts — guitars, stand-up bass, keys, percussion and Daniel Norman’s crystalline vocals. Now the quartet (Norman with guitarist Mike Nissen, bassist Eric McCann and drummer Joseph August Luisi) is […]
Singer-songwriter-producer Meeka Kates splits his time between Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles and Lyon, France, making style-shifting pop with production so warm it could heat half the East Coast. He says his new song “Waves” was started while he was in L.A. and finished in France; on any continent, it oozes a meditative vibe that […]
