We’ve name-checked Emma Ruth Rundle as one of the creative influences in the bands Red Sparowes, Marriages and the Nocturnes, and even as a contributor to Drab Majesty, but her solo debut “Some Heavy Ocean” (out this week via Sargent House) reveals the singer-guitarist as force herself. Indeed, “Some Heavy Ocean” is some heavy stuff, […]
The L.A. duo Linus Young has a rebel aesthetic, boy/girl harmonies and slow-burning songs that are ever-so-rough around the edges. Comprised of members Joseph Walker and Iris Belson, Linus Young joins the likes of In the Valley Below in offering sultry vocals, light percussion and moody atmospherics as a sexier alternative to duos like the […]
Army Navy’s veritable wellspring of jangling guitars and dulcet melancholy is flowing again. The L.A. trio of Justin Kennedy, Louie Schultz and Douglas Randall have announced that their third album, “The Wilderness Inside,” will be out July 15 (via their own Fever Zone Records). It follows last August’s EP “Crushed Like the Car,” whose title […]
Smoke Season, the duo comprised of L.A. musicians Gabrielle Wortman (TEMP3ST) and Jason Rosen (Honor Society), returns with a new single to follow up their “Signals” EP. “Badlands,” a track that still teases with their smoky Americana ambience, is a lush arrangement that lingers just 10 seconds over four minutes. Wortman’s soulful wails and Rosen’s […]
Raw Fabrics are an L.A.-based trio of 21-year-olds with an armload of anthemic songs that mix the driving bass lines of modern dance-punk bands with production sheen of modern radio bands. The new single “Down the Drain” sounds like something Franz Ferdinand might’ve tried in another life, with its insistent chorus and hook. Raw Fabrics […]
Having used the same escape hatch from Utah as fellow Provo natives the Moth & the Flame, Spencer Petersen and Thomas Carroll have played in L.A. bands such as Eyes Lips Eyes and SWIMM. Now singer-guitarist Petersen is debuting his own project, Sego, and judging from the first single “20 Years Tall,” it ought to […]
It’s hard to tell from Decorations’ first single whether singer-songwriter Devon Geyer is more girl-crazy or synth-obsessed. “Girls” comes at you like a Technicolor bounce house – pubescent Devo tooting and cursing along to scratchy guitar. Geyer, the son of prolific songwriter Stephen Geyer (who penned myriad television themes as well as songs for the […]
Everything about “If and Or” – the debut full-length from L.A. duo the Boom Circuits – seems ready for a major motion picture. In fact, director Ben Redmond’s slick video for the hyper-romantic single “The Cost” almost qualifies itself. The album is the work of Vega Schenk and Andy Ellis, who, after releasing EPs in […]
In an interview last month with Noisey, Failure’s Ken Andrews talked about the trio’s reunion and acknowledged how surprised he was that February’s comeback show at the El Rey Theatre sold out in two minutes. And he sprung a surprise himself – the news that the band was working on a new album. Today comes […]
As long as there is California, songwriters will be penning paeans to the West Coast dream. And so it goes with the Canyon Rays, named as an homage to Laurel Canyon and sounding every bit as sunny as a beach. The band is the work of songwriter Luke Hamel, who debuted last December with a […]
