As Dangerbird Records co-founder Jeff Castelaz wends his way toward Los Angeles on his Pablove Across America bicycle trek, plans are in place for the big final bash – a benefit concert on Nov. 21 at the Avalon. This week, Band of Horses and Sea Wolf were added to a lineup that already included the […]
My favorite retro-pop Danes, the Raveonettes, have dropped another glorious fuzz-bomb in their fourth album, “In and Out of Control” (just out on Vice). Maybe it’s because Sun Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo seem to have spent so much time in Los Angeles over the past couple of years, but the new album sounds surf-infused, […]
In a way, the Meeting Places’ name is perfect. Like the best of their shoegazing forebears, the L.A. quartet’s music glistens in the place where fuzz-filled soundscapes meet memorable melodies. The quartet of Scott McDonald, Chase Harris, Dean Yoshihara and Arthur Chan has been an on-again, off-again proposition since early in the decade, taking a […]
By Viktor Phoenix Comparisons to Nine Inch Nails are probably going to plague I Will Never Be the Same for a while, but let’s get real here: It’s not such an odd proposition that in 2009, 20 years after the release of “Pretty Hate Machine,” a talented and passionate songwriter such as Josh Atchley can […]
[As a public service, and in the interest of knowing your Lissys from your Lissies:] Lissie Maurus, who performs as Lissie, makes the kind of big-hearted Americana that springs from the loam of this country’s midsection – in her case, Rock Island, Ill. Her debut EP, “Why You Runnin’” is out next week on Fat […]
[One in a series of new music in and around L.A. …] There’s always been a strong Britpop current in L.A., and no shortage of Anglophile-leaning fans to get caught in the undertow. New local quartet Satellite Crush is going with that flow, fashioning the dreamy, misty-eyed pop that could have accompanied thousands of lonely, […]
L.A. indie-rockers the Breakups – not to be confused with the Break-Ups or the Breakup – have been working on music to follow up 2008’s “Eat Your Heart Out” EP, which shone with songwriter Jake Gideon’s classic power-pop influences. Now Gideon is readying a new single, “Better Off Alone,” and for the B-side, he joined […]
Those Darlins, Murfreesboro, Tenn.’s country-pop kissin’ cousins to late ’70s L.A. female pop-punk bands like the Go-Go’s and the Bangles, owe as much to Link Wray as they do to Patsy Cline on their self-released debut. After a successful spring tour with Dan Auerbach (the Black Keys), they’re currently touring the heck out of America […]
[Buzz Bands today welcomes Viktor Phoenix, a freelance music supervisor and sound designer, who will be an occasional contributor the blog.] Backed by a full band, including chanteuse Charlotte Savary, French DJ/producer Wax Tailor (aka Jean-Christophe Le Saoût) brings his laid-back brand of down-tempo funk and English soul-infused trip hop to southern California this weekend […]
The debut album from Letting Up Despite Great Faults – the tongue-twisting moniker of L.A.’s Michael Lee – is as much a feat of DIY techonology as it is artistry. It’s essentially a bedroom pop record … made in a really high-tech bedroom by a really fussy guy who a couple of years ago trashed […]
