As frontman of the cheekily named but underrated O.C. quartet Venus Infers, Davis Fetter was a swaggering mod rocker whose Strokes-meets-Britpop music could have come from Manchester as well as much as Huntington Beach. With his foursome on hiatus, Fetter has done more than just adopt a stellar bouffant. Fetter’s first two singles ooze the […]
The Spires continue to do nothing to damage our long-distance relationship. The little band from Ventura, busy like bees on their own Beehouse Records for six-plus years now, make Anglophile-inspired pop with beautifully gnarly guitar tones and reverb that isn’t just there for decoration. “Waves” – the teaser single off a new album coming this […]
Vancouver garage-rockers the Pack A.D. have always been one duo whose bite has lived up to their bark. For their first three albums – most notably 2010’s “We Kill Computers” – singer-guitarist Becky Black and drummer Maya Miller cultivated the gnashing blues of the White Stripes and the Black Keys. They’ve kept their fourth album, […]
Robert DeLong seems like one of those kids beamed here from a future world where all threads of music have been stitched together into some kind of vibrant cloth. His hybrid of electronica samples from pop, folk, house, dubstep and glitch – he’s finishing up an album titled “Just Movement” and working in the studio […]
No sooner had Pat Grossi – his harp twinkling and voice soaring as Active Child – finished his residency at the Echo than the video for “Playing House,” his collaboration with How to Dress Well, was released. Like the song, director Isaac Ravishankara’s drop-dead gorgeous video plays with the notion of dreams vs. reality, and […]
The barb-heavy barroom rock of Stephen Brower & the Silent Majority swings through plenty of shades of Americana – punk-blues, fractured folk and Southern fried classic rock among them – but the songs on the band’s new album “sb/sm” get in and out of your face so quickly that nothing wears out its welcome. Brower’s […]
People will most likely recognize her from a role on the TV show “Boardwalk Empire,” but L.A. music fans may recognize Aleksa Palladino from her time spent playing local venues with her husband Devon Church as Exitmusic. Back in 2008, they were promoting a collection of songs titled “The Decline of the West.” Since moving […]
Hanni El Khatib’s scorched-earth take on vintage garage rock and blues is all about rage and danger – he claims his music is inspired by knife fights and train wrecks, after all – but the video for the song “Come Alive” takes the subversive, wry route. It was directed by Simon Cahn and Ricky Saiz […]
Florence + the Machine are building up to releasing a follow-up to their highly-regarded album, “Lungs,” but the first two tracks they’ve handed out show no sign of a sophomore slump. If anyone fell for Florence Welch’s dramatic flair on the previous record, it sounds like she has tightened her skill for straddling the ethereal […]
Cliff Magreta has been waiting for the clock to strike 12 for several years now –he began writing tunes as Minutes til Midnight around 2006 after the Shore, for whom he played bass, saw their record deal wash ashore. Since then, his exploits have included songwriting with other artists (he was a co-writer on Paul […]
