If this item seems a little discombobulated, that’s because it’s … hard … to type … when … you’re … on … the floor. That might be the destination for longtime followers of Bleu, the pure pop craftsman born William James McCauley III. The Berklee-educated, magnificently sideburned songwriter, whose first four albums pretty much put […]
L.A.-based singer-songwriter Maxime Sokolinski – who’s played in his big sister Soko’s band, as well as with Daniel Johnston, Adanowsky and L.A.’s Sweaters – stepped out of the shadows in 2011 when he released a little bedroom pop gem, “Feels Like,” anonymously, to YouTube. The 25-year-old has spent recent months back in his native France, […]
The L.A. trio Rucky Punch is not the first local outfit to indulge their Talking Heads fetish, and they probably won’t be the last. But in their own slightly goofball, punk-rock, lo-fi way, they’ve nailed it on their new single. The brainchild of John Predny (Underground Railroad to Candyland), Zack Thompson (Selling LA) and Rukio […]
Graham MacRae has covered a lot of turf in Los Angeles. He worked for a major label; he now runs his own promotions firm; and he’s an illustrator (though he calls them “elaborate doodlings”). He even once co-owned a locally famous Echo Park record store (RIP, six years ago this month). MacRae’s songwriting has been […]
Anybody who witnessed the set by La Santa Cecilia at the Silver Lake Jubilee last May knew it was only a matter of time: The charismatic, Latin-fusion quartet of Marisoul, Alex Bendaña, Pepe Carlos and Miguel “Oso” Ramirez was destined for big things. With last week’s release of their major-label debut “Treinta Dias,” La Santa […]
The breezy indie-pop on the debut EP by Bets casts the singer as a wide-eyed and sharply observant narrator of matters of the heart, and when there’s a view as in “Rooftop Lover,” beyond. Her voice is a delicate but expressive instrument, recalling Inara George, and the EP – which came out in January and […]
There a lot of cooks in Holy Folk’s kitchen – the collaboration features songwriters Keith Waggoner, Josh Caldwell, Ryan George and Jonathan Hylander (in no particular order, Les Blanks, the Voyeurs, Amateurs and Honey Loving Cells), who between them have probably done enough L.A. club gigs got earn some sort of accreditation. Begun as the side […]
Melissa Ann Sweat makes small things seem like big things. As Lady Lazarus, the poet-artist-musician deals in minimalist compositions that seem like folk tunes afloat in a slow-moving current – music that, like the new video for “Gleam,” seems to suggest a certain detachment from a world that’s moving too fast. It’s a relatable sentiment, […]
Rainbow Jackson’s “Rippin’ Off the Rails” EP, released last year, announced the L.A. quartet as happy, hair-flyin’ purveyors of hooks – not quite consciously messy enough for the local surf-garage-punk scene but too scuzzy to fit in with L.A.’s next-wave hard rockers. Named in homage to Bo Jackson (“the greatest American athlete to ever play […]
Some may call it vibrato in Laura Stevenson‘s vocals, but that delicate quiver in the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter’s voice moves one so deeply it’s beyond a technical music term. With every tremble, she picks at her songs’ subject matters until every human flaw is exposed – and this is just one factor that makes her latest […]
