Mini Mansions’ latest single “Any Emotions” articulates a typical guy lament—”I can’t understand / any emotions”—but actor Colin Hanks displays the full range in director Mike Harris’ one-take video for the song. The single features background vocals from the legendary Brian Wilson, for whom Mini Mansions’ bassist Zach Dawes did session work and possesses a […]
Last week, Lord Huron — the L.A.-based band helmed by native Michigander Ben Schneider — released a short teaser video (but precious little other info) for their new album “Strange Trails.” Schneider and company won hearts and minds with the cinematic folk music on their Western-flavored debut “Lonesome Dreams” in 2012, but beyond the teaser […]
Ryan Pollie is a very tall man with a very low self-opinion — at least, if you take his wry, shambolic garage-pop literally. Pollie is the winking mastermind behind the quartet Los Angeles Police Department, whose noisy 2014 debut album crackled with lovingly misshapen pop songs, ragged and hooky and most of which ended too soon. […]
Back in late 2013, singer Rachel Fannan described her new music — being made under the name Only You — as “some dirty Dusty Springfield-sounding sh*t.” It’s taken a while for that music to emerge, but her new single “The Pressure” is indeed dirty and dusty, its ragged guitar and Fannan’s howling vocals evoking vast, […]
If the first single from Panthar doesn’t get you out of your seat, might we suggest some sort of electric prod? “Ghost Rocket” is a glammy new-wave rave-up with the kind of surging guitars liable to induce visions of, as the lyrics say, a “radium light shower.” The new L.A. quintet was founded by singer […]
Long Beach-based Nahneen Kula make an intoxicating mélange of experimental pop, mixing electronic and organic instrumentation with samples and the bright, nimble vocals of its namesake singer, Charlene Gibbs. The 24-year-old Garden Grove native derived the band’s moniker from her junior high nickname, Nahneen, and her Malaysian mother’s maiden name. Bjork (or, locally, Liphemra) might […]
The raging punk-cum-blues of the band Virginia Reed isn’t the work of anybody named Virginia at all — the L.A. quartet is helmed by singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Keith Hendriksen, who in the current lineup is surrounded by John Klein, Jeff Watson and Bryan Hamilton. The band’s moniker derives from a 1940s-era portrait of a woman that Hendricksen […]
First, it was “Paul Newman.” Then, “Dustin Hoffman.” And for their third single, the Fontaines continue the march of apparent celebrity homage with “Cate Blanchett,” their most throwback-sounding ditty in their growing retroist catalog. Siblings Hank and Charlotte Fontaine call their music “new-wop,” and indeed it updates the finger-snapping goodness of the 1950s with modern […]
L.A. quartet Badflower have been busy since their 2013 independently released EP “About a Girl.”. They’ve played South by Southwest and the Sunset Strip Music Festival, toured the country, received some radio love, worked with producer Jay Baumgardner (Bush, Evanescence, Linkin Park) and, most recently, spent time in the studio self-producing their debut album, planned […]
French-American folk-pop duo Freedom Fry churn out catchy singles as if they’re on commission. Which Bruce Driscoll and Marie Seyrat are, we suppose, in a manner of speaking. Their latest model, “Shaky Ground (Hey Na Na Na),” is a nimble slice of popcraft perfect for unseasonably warm Southern California winters and nodding like an agitated […]
