There’s a healthy dose of sleek, old-school funk-soul in the music of Tien Nguyen, the 26-year-old songwriter simply going by the name Tien. And maybe you’ll hear a little bit of Brazil, too, with Tien having spent time between South American beaches and southern California. The Maryland native and son of Vietnamese immigrants has been […]
L.A. trio the Shrine made a big dent in the local scene (and few eardrums) with their 2012 album “Primitive Blast,” which drew equally from a host of “black” bands, most notably Flag and Sabbath. Indeed, the threesome of singer-guitarist Josh Landau, bassist Courtland Murphy and drummer Jeff Murray is not beholden to one strain […]
In the vein of Philadelphia’s the Roots or Minneapolis’ Heiruspecs, Los Angeles’ the Concepts are a hip-hop band backed by live instrumentation and a full band. They are fronted by MC Keith Kilgore, and rounded out by Zane Guindon on guitars, Justin Lenoir on drums and percussion, Kyle Newman on trumpet and flugelhorn, Nick Vanetta […]
The first thing you should know about the recent exploits of Harriet is that the L.A. quartet’s debut album will be titled “It’s Totally Cool, I Wouldn’t Even Worry About It,” which, as album titles go, is totally cool. Frontman Alex Casnoff says the album will be out “the second quarter of this year,” or […]
The broad implication behind Foster the People’s new single is that the band – and, ostensibly, its cherubic fan base – are all “Coming of Age.” In the video created by BRTHR (Alex Lee and Kyle Wightman), frontman Mark Foster, 30-ish now, dues paid, the gold record “Torches” in the bank, is depicted as brooding […]
Jon Siebels was most recently spotted in the original-lineup reunion of Eve 6, who returned in 2012 with their first album in nine years. As a singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, label chief and developer of new talent, Siebels has never been far from the creative process, though, having worked with Monsters Are Waiting, Kenan Bell […]
It’s been almost a year since dream-pop trio Tashaki Miyaki dropped any new music, but that drought will be over Feb. 25 when “Cool Runnings” comes out. The threesome is capable of dropping fuzz-bombs that can shake you all the way back to the 1960s, but the their forthcoming 7-inch is not that – it’s […]
Luis Dubuc’s music as Mystery Skulls is the stuff of electro-pop dreams, all candy-coated melodies and updated ’80s production and giddy rhythms. But Mystery Skulls’ major-label debut, the single “Ghost,” is a nightmare – well, the video is, anyway. Dubuc wrote the song in Dallas before he disappeared in favor of L.A. “The song is […]
Cassorla – the solo venture of multi-faceted guitarist Ben Cassorla – earned a lot of attention when he teased his new EP by issuing a song collaboration with “Parks and Recreation’s” Aubrey Plaza. (The video’s a treat too, with Plaza saxophoning it in on Echo Park Lake.) There are plenty more of Cassorla’s friends on […]
The Los Angeles crew Clipping claim to “make party music for the club you wish you hadn’t gone to, the car you don’t remember getting in, and the streets you don’t feel safe on” – an incredibly apt description for the avant-garde noise-rap that the trio of Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes have […]
