Much has been made of the distinctive manner in which Crash Kings make their music: The Los Angeles trio goes guitar-less, using an array of synthesizers, keyboards and effects that gives the aural impression there’s shredding going on when there’s nary a six-string in sight. It’s heavy-duty blues either way, and it was Crash Kings’ […]
Don’t be deceived by the band photo: Irontom is as serious as a sledgehammer, and its riffs land like one. The quintet of singer Harry Hayes, guitarist Zach Irons, bassist Dane Sandborg, keyboardist Daniel Saslow and drummer Dylan Williams returned last week with their second EP in a five-month span. The band calls their sound […]
Jackson Phillips and Kevin Friedman may have only recently graduated from Berklee College of Music, but the Brooklyn by way of Boston duo, who have now relocated to L.A. and call themselves Carousel, has the formula for summery, ’80s-leaning synth-pop down. Add these boys to your pool party playlists, everyone. With songs like “Let’s Go […]
Two years ago Baths, the nom de tune of the San Fernando Valley’s Will Wiesenfeld, was busy being showered with praise for his debut album “Cerulean,” conceived and created in his Chatsworth home. Fresh off a year-long tour, he returned ready to begin the process of creating his full-length sophomore effort, when the young composer’s […]
Kristina ”˜Teeny” Lieberson was originally the keyboardist for Brooklyn band Here We Go Magic, but ever since she recruited her sister Katharine and Lizzie and friend Jane Herships for her own project, we’ve been hearing more of her psychedelic side. Appropriately naming the band TEEN, these four ladies have been churning out summer ditties drenched […]
Robert Preston Collum moved from Brooklyn to Venice this spring – “to live near the ocean, ’cause who doesn’t want that,” he says – leaving behind his NYC duo Anything But Animals and bringing with a new nom de tune Pink Mexico. And a new album, the dyslexia-embracing “PNIK MXEICO,” which at times sounds like […]
The gripping video for the new Dekades song “You & Him” can be interpreted a lot of different ways, but director Aaron Paustian finds a way to unveil some light at the end of the darkness. The clip stars Margot Dayan and Harwood Gordon, with Dekades’ mastermind herself Arden Fisher materializing at the end. The […]
Ever since she stood in front of a mic three decades ago in the embryonic stages of Concrete Blonde, Johnette Napolitano has had one of those stop-you-in-your-tracks voices, a quaver that commands, or challenges, or suggests, or sometimes all three at once. Now ensconced in the desert, the songwriter/artist/author/provocateur is culling years of songs, old […]
It’s easy to imagine composer Chris Schlarb in a white lab coat, surrounded by Bunson burners, a glint in his eye. If not out-and-out magic, what Schlarb practices in his Long Beach studio is musical alchemy, a cerebral yet somehow sensual voyage to world unfettered by boundaries. Schlarb debuted his ambient experimentation “Psychic Temple” back […]
In Adrian Buitenhuis-directed video for Kisses’ dark synth-pop single “Huddle,” the duo turns into a trio when Jesse Kivel and Zinzi Edmundson are joined by a little drummer boy named Henry. Aside from the band, it’s not entirely clear why he’s hanging out with two older kids who are about to go to college, but […]
