Stars will return Oct. 14 with their 7th studio album “No One Is Lost.” In anticipation of the release, the Toronto-based quintet have released a second single titled “Turn It Up.” Whereas the first single “From the Night” sounded like they’ve been digging through crates of disco gold, this new track is more on par […]
If the name doesn’t give you liftoff, maybe Sex Helicopter’s music will. The Los Angeles quintet – singer-guitarist singer-guitarist Jeremy McLennan, along with Cary Singer, John Rockwell, Marcus Högsta and Mac Sinise – engage in a lot of decade-hopping on their first EP, “Great”, now available as a free download. They’re strongest when they plumb the bent […]
L.A.-based trio Distant Cousins have been making bank placing their songs in film, TV shows and advertisements, which is not bad for an effort that began as a side project featuring three songwriters who’d done pretty well in their own right, Ami Kozak, Dov Rosenblatt and Duvid Swirsky. They came on the radar a year […]
Y’know those emails you dash off at the height of emotion only to think twice and trash them before clicking send? Or those tweets you start at 1 a.m. and thinking better of posting? Los Angeles singer-songwriter Meiko says her new album “Dear You” is full of them – “love letters, pissed-off letters, breakup letters,” […]
Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Graham Harrington exudes the plaintive melancholy of a man going it alone – which he rather likes, he explains here. Under the moniker Mirror Days, Harrington has revealed a flair for lush, ambient dream-pop on his 2012 EP “Hearts & Heading Home” and last December’s self-titled full-length. Not unlike the bedroom shoegazers […]
The bass-propelled synth-pop of Los Angeles duo Magic Bronson exists somewhere between stoner backyard party jam and hip-hop rave-up. It’s as stupefyingly uncategorizable as it is intoxicating – bassist Matthew Lieberman laying down big grooves for 6-foot-6 singer Michael Nicastro’s vocals, which range from slacker-cool to bravado-soaked, while synth textures and reverb create a sort […]
Eighteen months after their audacious debut “Bite the Bullet,” L.A. quartet Black Hi-Lighter return next week with a second full-length, “Looks and Lies” – another record that feels like it’s part of rock ’n’ roll history although most of rock ’n’ roll history has already been written. The work of singer-guitarist James Poulos, guitarist-producer Eric […]
Those familiar with Michael Orendy’s rapturous albums as Frankel may have been surprised two years ago when he unveiled Paw City, the new electro-rock project undertaken with his wife (and member of Earlimart) Ariana Murray. The first Paw City EP, released in June 2013, straddled the line between catchy and wonky (think: Grandaddy), and now […]
“I’m still trying to make sense of it all,” Daniel Ahearn says of the past two years, which have seen the end of the L.A. singer-songwriter’s marriage, his growing into his new role as father, the birth of a new musical project with Mindy Jones and, in general, a spike in his songwriting career that […]
Allow us to join the chorus praising Ty Segall, the incredibly prolific rocker who this week released his seventh album since 2008 (not counting various collaborations, including one with White Fence, and his work in Fuzz, etc.). Segall’s new album “Manipulator” (out this week via Drag City) feels like a cumulation of everything he’s done […]
