Shiny Toy Guns have come full circle. The synth-rock quartet, which took off after Oklahoma songwriters/producers Jeremy Dawson and Chad Petree recruited singer Carah Faye Charnow out of high school in Newbury Park, was one of the first big MySpace sensations, their single “Le Disko” eventually becoming omnipresent on rock radio after Indie 103.1 championed […]
Beat Club has the beats, by golly, and they don’t sound like they came from some computer application. The new indie-dance trio is a little bit punk, a little bit garage and a heftier amount of disco, with ’80s-vintage bass lines rolling under scratchy guitar riffs. Beat Club is the new collaboration from ex-Low Vs […]
Has it been a full year since we dashed over to Eagle Rock to hear Becky Stark and Lavender Diamond perform a batch of new songs? Indeed, that was May of last year, and finally the L.A. quartet has announced a new album, “Incorruptible Heart” (due Sept. 25). It was spring of 2007 when Lavender […]
Jens Lekman will return with a new album titled “I Know What Love Isn’t” on Sept. 4 via Secretly Canadian, but our first taste of the the follow-up to his EP, “An Argument With Myself,” seems rather somber. Melodrama is nothing new for the Swedish crooner, but the sentiments on the record’s first single, “Erica […]
“King Devil is the bad guy we have inside of us,” Joe Fraley says of his new nom de tune, and you can hear the singer-guitarist wrestling his demons throughout King Devil’s self-titled album. Fraley’s fearlessly eclectic brand of acoustic blues and rawboned, off-kilter psych-pop simmers with frustration and rage – music inspired, he says, […]
Hearing Mary Lorson’s voice again is like reconnecting with an old friend. Often mentioned in those lists of lamentably under-appreciated artists, Lorson remains a favorite of aficionados of ’90s alt-pop. And for those who cherished her four albums as lead singer of Madder Rose, there’s great news ”¦ she’s back. Her 10th disc is out […]
L.A. trio Wildcat! Wildcat! swooped in early this year and stole the hearts of indie-pop fans with two slabs of electro R&B that seemed suspended in the clouds, high on harmonies and ticklish keyboard lines. Now the threesome of Jesse Taylor, Michael Wilson and Jesse Carmichael have a full-length album (and an August residency at […]
The Heavy’s heavy-duty blasts of funky soul have long stoked the fires of L.A. fans (that 2010 show at the Hammer Museum was particularly memorable). Now the U.K. quintet propelled by the muscular presence (vocally and physically) of Kelvin Swaby is gearing up to release their third album, “The Glorious Dead” (due Aug. 21). Swaby […]
Britt Daniel (Spoon), Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade) and Sam Brown (New Bomb Turk) have been hinting at their new supergroup Divine Fits for a while now, and their respective fans have especially been on the edge of their seats since a snippet of “My Love Is Real” was heard in a teaser video posted back […]
