First, you have to be OK with the band name Dankrupt. (It was not until a recent hazy night in Echo Park that I learned it is not just a terrible pun but a slang term, sorry for being out of touch.) Then you have to be OK with videos featuring rock bands faux-playing in […]
Chelan, the long-running collaboration between Jen Grady and Justin Hosford, work out of Joshua Tree, have a visual collaborator in artist Kime Buzzelli (who does the duo’s album art) and take a slightly experimental approach to indie-pop. Their fourth album, the self-released “Equal Under Pressure,” features deft mix of peripatetic rhythms and layered vocals, both […]
The Airborne Toxic Event released a new album this week. “Dope Machines” arrived in the mail with a notice touting the L.A. quintet’s reinvention as an electro-pop band and something in the way of an artist’s statement from frontman Mikel Jollett: “We live in a world connected by these dope machines that do all this […]
Keenhouse, née Ken Rangtuky, is a Los Angeles-based electronic music producer who split time between Europe and Southeast Asia in his youth, cultivating an interest in the sounds of both the East and West. A few weeks ago, he released his third (and most ambitious) album, “A Future Past,” on Sunlinxx Records, with 15 tracks […]
Odessa Jorgensen has taken a circuitous route to “Odessa” — the debut album that, it was announced this week, will come out April 28 via Chop Shop/Republic Records. The L.A.-based singer-songwriter, who counts the violin, guitar and a singing voice from heaven as her weapons, was a member of Americana outfits Bearfoot and the Biscuit […]
Take a little Prince-style soul, mix in the rhythmic slap of Haim and add a falsetto that oozes pure sex, and you have the new single from indie-dance trio The Black and the White. The L.A. band — consisting of Mario Gonzalez and former As Tall As Lions members Julio Tavarez and Cliff Sarcona — […]
[Update below with statement from the L.A. duo The Singles] Scarlett Johansson [pictured during her 2007 Coachella cameo with the Jesus and Mary Chain] sent fans into a tizzy last week by releasing the Go-Go’s-inspired single “Candy” and announcing the formation of The Singles, an all-female pop band with Holly Miranda (who just signed to […]
Over the course of two albums and an EP, L.A.’s Warpaint have gained a stature as mystical art-rock goddesses, but they apparently aren’t above relationship problems. The new song “No Way Out (Redux)” is a dark lament about feeling trapped and not being able “to take the fallout.” The band — Emily Kokal (vocals/guitar), Jenny […]
Don’t you love it when artists coin nifty catchphrases for their sound? Makes our job so much easier. L.A.-based Stefan Pruett calls his music “darkwave pajama pop,” leaving you to solve the mystery of whether they’re flannel or silk. His first song “Carefree” is of an interesting fabric, nodding to ’80s post-punk and modern EDM/synth-pop. […]
Dorothy — the L.A. quartet of singer Dorothy Martin, guitarist Mark Jackson, bassist Greg Cash and drummer Zac Morris — are at work in the studio recording their full-length debut, and like the free EP the band released last fall, it’s expected to offer more pedal-to-the-metal blues-rock. Like the weird players in the foursome’s new […]
