[Yet another installment in our week of holiday songs:] No happy holidays for hippies? Matt Adams makes it sound that way in the Blank Tapes’ chuckler of an original, “No Gifts This Xmas.” It’s a jangling, slightly country-fried lament that fits it perfectly with the blithe psych-pop on the trio’s most recent album, “Vacation.” The […]
Cherry Glazerr trade in raw, lo-fi pop and cherubic charm, the latter quality mostly responsible for their quick rise, in less than two years, through L.A.’s garage-pop ranks. Yes, they derive their name from NPR journalist Chery Glaser (who doesn’t mind), and, yes, they’ve released music via Burger on those landfill-contaminating trinkets known as cassette […]
Los Angeles-based hip-hop group OverDoz has been around for a few years now, putting out the mixtapes “Nova” in 2010, and “Live For, Die For” in 2011 which featured guest spots from Casey Veggies, Dom Kennedy, and Kendrick Lamar, as well as putting in an appearance on A$AP Rocky’s “Long.Live.A$AP” track “Pain.” Now the collective […]
[Another in our series of holiday songs:] There’s something perfect about the people behind the Peanuts franchise soliciting a guy named Schroeder to cover the Vince Guaraldi/Lee Mendelson classic “Christmas Time Is Here.” Even if this particular Schroeder is known for his work with the guitar and not at the piano. Jeff Schroeder, the Orange […]
[Today’s installment in our week of holiday tunes:] L.A. singer-songwriter Duniven has been readying his new “Answers” EP, but in the spirit of the season he took time out to pen a holiday original. “The Spirit of Christmas,” which features Jerry Borgé and David Spreng, is a rootsy romp that conjures up the familial fun […]
Los Angeles’ perennial hip-hop MC Murs has a new imprint called Label 316, and he has put together a new posse-showcasing track titled “S.O.S.” The Pharaoh Davis-directed music video was shot at the Beach Hut Deli in Reno, Nev., full of old-school arcade games, and features Highland Park’s Reverie, New Jersey’s Kosha Dillz, Oklahoma City’s […]
NO, the gravitas-wielding indie-rockers fronted by New Zealand expatriate Bradley Hanan Carter, have signed to Arts & Crafts. The Toronto-based label will release the Echo Park band’s debut full-length, “El Prado,” on Feb. 18. Carter, along with Sean Daniel Stentz, Reese Richardson, Ryan Lallier, Simon Oscroft and Michael Walker, came on the scene in late […]
Preface: More than 200 Los Angeles-sired albums landed on Buzz Bands LA’s doorstep this year, and they came in all sounds and styles. There is something to recommend in a startling number of them. But to avert writing the same introduction I did last year, I will simply say, in dispensing with the notion of […]
The Silver Lake/Echo Park scene figured to lose one of its most intensely burning stars in 2012 when Summer Darling announced it was calling it quits. They were an indie rocker’s indie rockers, and their self-titled 2010 album was a brute, emotionally and physically, adhering to a directness and complex musicality seldom heard since the […]
[The second in our daily series of holiday songs this week:] One thing for sure about Dengue Fever’s slinky cover of the 72-year-old classic “Little Drummer Boy” – pa rum pum pum pum is pa rum pum pum pum in any language. The song is the latest wrinkle from the one-of-a-kind, L.A.-based sextet whose fusion […]
