The enigmatic U.K. artist Dean Blunt’s music is hard to classify. As one half of the now-disbanded group Hype Williams with Inga Copeland, they created experimental and unconventional pop music, shirking interviews with nearly anything but the truth, while Blunt’s divisive 2013 solo album, “The Redeemer,” was full of murky R&B and samples. His new […]
Magic Bronson is addictive. The L.A. duo’s full-length debut “Wildlife” rumbles and hums in the secondhand-smoke-filled netherworld of indie-rock, hip-hop and electro-pop, and its biggest calling cards are the crooning verses and choruses of the very tall Michael Nicastro and big bass lines of … well, less tall Matthew Lieberman. The three singles the duo […]
We’re feeling particularly exuberant at BBLA today despite it being a Monday. The sugar-high from all that Halloween candy may be to blame, or perhaps, getting into costumes and the holiday spirit simply left us with a few sentimental memories. If you’re in the same boat, then Mayer Hawthorne‘s latest Pharrell Williams-produced single “The Stars […]
As Globelamp, Elizabeth Le Fey engages in several tugs-of-war – mystical vs. corporeal, hopeful vs. skeptical and, on her new single, here vs. afar. The singer-songwriter’s debut album “Star Dust,” which came out in June, exuded a childlike innocence that belied the often-dark morality tales spun in a reverb-heavy web of psychedelia. Now Le Fey, […]
At the helm of the indie quartet Blonde Summer, Chris Pope has released three EPs of distinctly Californian, guitar-tastic (and, we might add, criminally overlooked) rock as Blonde Summer. Pope’s side project Solai, realized in his Silver Lake apartment, has a West Coast feel too – the sun- and synth-drenched nostalgia that permeates a lot […]
If you’re one of those music fans who holds to the notion that there must be something in the water in Sweden, here’s another line for your thesis: the indie-pop quintet Amason. Having been tagged a “Swedish supergroup,” the band crafts elegant songs built around the smoky voice of Amanda Bergman, who sang in the […]
L.A. quintet Kissing Cousins re-emerge for their first release since 2011 when the new EP “In With Them” lands on Dec. 9, and the song “Cover Me,” with its slow-motion heavy metal riffs, makes for some strong musical paranoia in the video directed by frontwoman Heather Heywood and filmed by Raechel Zarzynski and Justin Bell. […]
Are you in the Halloween mood yet? If you aren’t then this new animated video for Mystery Skulls‘ “Ghost” might do the trick. Although it’s not the scariest of clips, it will have you reminiscing about old Scooby Doo cartoons with your pals. Animators Ben Mangum, Isaiah Kim and Blake Hudson found much inspiration from […]
The new EP from Line & Circle shimmers like a mirage from the distant 1980s – although not the new wave ’80s currently being plundered by anybody who can plug in a synth. The L.A. quintet, founded by Midwesterners Brian Cohen and Brian Egan and including Eric Neujahr, Jon Engelhard and Nick Cisik, recalls the […]
If you didn’t know the source, the chorus of “It’s Not You” might be something overheard in a practice space in Echo Park where some kids are working on their next cassette. It’s the Buzzcocks (est. 1976), now doing business in the lineup of long-timers Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle with 2008 additions Chris Remington […]
