[A second installment of my share-’em-if-you-got-’em campaign:] ‣ The Dears, “Blood” (e-mail required). From the Canadians’ forthcoming fifth album “Degeneration Street,” due Feb. 15 on Dangerbird Records. Murray Lightburn and crew [pictured] are also doing a weekly webcast every Monday at 4 p.m. Pacific time right here. ‣ Dirty Vegas, “Electric Love” (e-mail required). Remember […]
Attention holiday shoppers: We know that your favorite price tag reads “free,” so at the risk of whoring ourselves out to a major retailer, we’re going to tell you about “The Christmas Gig,” a digital compilation of holiday tunes. It’s free. It’s original music. It’s good, in places really good. And it includes a lot […]
Jordan Richardson calls Epic Ruins “an art project whose medium is rock band.” The Los Angeles-based drummer – the former skins man for indie rockers Oliver Future who went on to join Ben Harper & Relentless7 – could also have described his collaboration with Fort Worth, Texas, pals Steve Seward, Sam Anderson and Jeff Dazey […]
Fans of the Cure, all-black wardrobes and anything Factory Records should get their dancing shoes on for Ballerina Black, the two-year-old L.A. trio that, like its forebears, turn mopery on its ears and into something cathartic. Frontman Bobby Moynahan and mates Esli Sugich (bass) and Tony Antos** (drums) have the formula down – in-your-face bass […]
New York-born Jenny O has been a familiar face on the L.A. scene for a while, having played aside enough local artists to fill a week’s worth of bills in Silver Lake. Although there’s an unreleased album she recorded last year, Jenny O is finally unveiling her first batch of solo material, the self-produced “Home” […]
[From your humble blogger: The crush of music I receive each day, digitally and physically, is overwhelming. In the past I’ve pretty much only posted tracks for which I have time to write a full capsule. Now, in the interests of simply sharing more music, I’m going to start “quick posts” of tracks with brief […]
You won’t find the slightest trace of indie tricks – no fuzzy reverb, glitchy beats or laptop wizardry – on “I Want Us to Be Remembered,” the first EP from Los Angeles quartet A House for Lions. “That’s not who we are,” singer-songwriter Daniel Norman says. “It would come off as false.” Instead, Norman’s partnership […]
L.A. singer-songwriter Nik Freitas has probably had very few moments to himself since he released his fourth album, “Sun Down,” in 2008 for Conor Oberst’s Team Love imprint. He’s toured as part of Oberst’s Mystic Valley Band, and most recently he’s joined the touring juggernaut of the Danger Mouse/James Mercer project Broken Bells. “Recorded on […]
The first EP from Riverside-based Summer Twins is sibling revelry indeed. Sisters Chelsea and Justine Brown make scratchy/sparkly cherub pop that’s sweet and guileless, and if the vocals on “The Good Things” (released in August) are still a work in progress, well, we could name-check a lot indie songstresses who started this way. Bassist Danny […]
[Happy Monday. For all you Daft Punk fans, Jason Bentley will be debuting tracks from the “Tron: Legacy” soundtrack at 10 this morning on your friendly neighborhood public radio station …] Top 2 audio/visual spectacles this evening: ‣ Roger Waters performs “The Wall” live at Staples Center. ‣ Sonic experimentalists the Books, joined by Temporary […]
