Ears Wide Open: Trickster Guru
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Christopher Caplan’s new ’60s-tinted psych-pop songs tackle some serious subject matter — a tragic car crash and a cult leader, respectively. Groovy, but dark.

Christopher Caplan’s new ’60s-tinted psych-pop songs tackle some serious subject matter — a tragic car crash and a cult leader, respectively. Groovy, but dark.
Los Angeles indie-rockers StaG will release their third full-length, “Don’t Check Out” in March. But Matt McGuire and Will Walden aren’t really thinking about moving back to Colorado, are they?
The latest single from singer-songwriter Sophie Stern, who has an EP on the way in the new year, is simply grown-up fun. Don’t go crying now.
The Brinks, the collaboration between producer Matt Friedman and singer Scott Mellis, released their debut EP “Temporary Love” earlier this month. File under spartan synth-pop.
As Highland Kites, singer-songwriter Marissa Lamar has released an EP and a full-length album in the past 16 months. There’s substantial depth to her folk-pop confessionals.
The L.A.-by-way-of-Utah band of brothers unveil “I Feel This Place,” a taste of hazy psychedelia that will appear on their forthcoming EP.
Written, recorded, and produced by experimental musician Nicole Turley, “Rose My Emperor” appears on a new Swahili Blonde record coming this January.
The Luxembourg Signal and Sacramento’s Soft Science team up on a split 7-inch that offers two sweet slices of indie popgazing.
The solo album from the Fool’s Gold frontman will be out March 4, and half the proceeds from this first single will benefit the French Red Cross.
The fire-drill of a new single from the young L.A. quintet is a frenetic post-punker and the first song to emerge from their sessions with producer Michael Leonhart.