George Lewis Jr., who releases music under the moniker Twin Shadow, has poked his well-coiffed head into new wave, electro-pop and R&B, and has come out groomed to be a pop star. His debut “Forget,” a hybrid of all those genres topped with yearning Morrissey vocals, made a memorable splash in 2010, and he’s well […]
No label does as much to keep the C86/Creation Records/post-punk flame burning as Bay Area-based Slumberland Records, and those who like to give their Joy Division and Jesus and Mary Chain records a rest every once in a while hope the light never goes out. San Francisco post-punk trio Weekend ably carries the torch, the […]
[In the interests of keep you up to date, here are three recommended songs from artists we’ve previously posted about:] HoneyHoney, “Turn That Finger Around” (e-mail required) – “Billy Jack,” the second album of razor-sharp Americana from the duo of Suzanne Santo and Ben Jaffe, will be out Oct. 24 on Lost Highway. Their “Ten […]
The Nocturnes’ gorgeous hybrid of folk and dream-pop is the stuff of slow-motion dreams and translucent hallucinations. The L.A. quartet is the brainchild of Red Sparowes guitarist Emma Ruth Rundle, who along with RS bandmate Dave Clifford on drums, guitarist Julian Rifkin and multi-instrumentalist Paris Patt, fashions dirgey anthems out of echoing guitars and choral […]
A.A. Bondy’s meditative third album “Believers” (on Fat Possum) edges away from the guitar-based folk on his breakout “When the Devil’s Loose” and seeks a place in the clouds, where the former Verbena frontman seems to gaze down at his dreams. In separate songs he confesses to be “far away from the world” and “looking […]
Coyol, a duo who embodies both the grit of the old Southwest and the new Los Angeles, have released their first self-titled EP, and to celebrate they’ve made a video for the tune that started it all. Although Céleigh Chapman and John Isaac Watters have carefully been unveiling new songs (each accompanied by intriguing artwork […]
Sometimes bands come together in strange and mysterious ways, but Deap Vally – yess, thatz how they spel it – might be the first collaboration to start over crochet hooks. Singer-guitarist Lindsey Troy met drummer Julie Edwards when Troy took a needlework class at Edwards’ shop the Little Knittery in Atwater Village. Edwards, last spotted […]
L.A. rocker Andy Clockwise’s new video for the insistent jammer “Love and War” – off his April release “The Socialite” – engages in some nifty sleight-of-hand and typical (for Clockwise, anyway) theatrics. Because, as he reminds in the chorus, “All is fair in love and war.” In the Clockwise-directed clip, filmed by Robert Murphy, Jade […]
So the Barr Brothers’ story goes that guitarist Brad Barr heard a neighbor, Sarah Page, practicing her harp, learned the melody, knocked on her door and played it for her. Which makes for a nice warm-and-fuzzy – not unlike the Montreal quartet’s self-titled debut album (out next week on Secret City Records). It’s bluesy, tool-shed […]
Alan Palomo’s project Neon Indian initially surfaced after he had written a batch of songs that didn’t quite fit with his band Vega, but his entrance into the chillwave scene along with others such as Toro Y Moi and Washed Out did not go unnoticed with hazy anthems such as “Deadbeat Summer” off his appropriately […]
