Jennie Vee is a rather – shall we say – glamorous looking  NYC musician and singer songwriter who plays a brand of dream pop that flirts with modern rock. The young lady is obviously good at getting into the right "circles" – apparently she’s become Courtney Love’s best friend, if not "muse" (whatever that may mean!), which led to the two touring together. Jennie released her debut EP ‘Die Alone‘ in 2014, and she recently unveiled this video for the cover of Echo and the Bunnymen’s legendary single "Lips Like Sugar." The song will be featured in Vee’s upcoming EP "Spying," due for a middle June release.

Some records have the ability to plunge the listener into some kind of alternate reality. Annique Monet‘s uber-psychedelic debut album ‘Phantom Letters‘ will do that to you. It took a few notes for opening track "Salt, Veruca," (streaming) to hypnotize us with its haunting beginning: a simple electric piano part, whistles, a fake horn section and a droney verse slowly led us towards a celestial chorus, which was quickly fogotten – for good – in favor of a baroque, droney outro. The following track ‘Voodoo‘, a grottesque and dissonant waltz, took us to a really weird (and scary) place: we saw the devil looking at us through the speakers, from Vienna. With a beautiful melody, the first few bars of "Nowhere"  brought back some hope for a return to light, but the song didn’t go anywhere – we should have expected it, considering the title. ‘Relapse‘ delivered another waltz – a more subtle one – but filled to the brim with eerie and decadent melancholy. From its plodding intro, Turtlenecks in July resurrected the ghost of The Beatles’ psychedelic pop, although sounding nothing like it, while in ‘52,’ Greek mermeids lured us with the most ghostly of lithanies, asking us to join them – and drown. The following two songs on the record kept this beautifully absurd, elusive dream going, with noteworthy track "Unchange" closing the collection.

Although we often praise structure in songwriting (many songs here would benefit from more of it), there’s very little structure in a dream – which is what this album is. In a scene that seems to have lost the imagination of its peak years, this is a record that will hopefully inspire other NYC artists to be more daring. You can catch Annique Monet live at Baby’s All Right on May 26.

We added this song to The Deli’s playlist of Best psych songs by emerging NYC artists – check it out!

Three years ago, The Deli caught a whiff of The Littlest Viking on their self-titled LP off Mountain Man Records. It was hairy. It was sweaty. It was 12 songs of start-stop rhythms and callus-inducing riffage that would make Pete & Pete beam with pride.

The labor and lust of Ruben "Emo" Cortez and "Metal" Christopher Gregory (first released in 2009) matches breakneck shredding and irregular time signatures that are as fun to play as they are to dance to, influenced by bands like Jawbreaker, Drive Like Jehu, and American Football. Fans of Giraffes? Giraffes! and Cinemechanica will feel right at home in TLV’s whirlwind of perspiration and referential music jokes.

This year, Littlest Viking is setting out to do the near-impossible: work a new album with a well-thought out pop direction. Says Cortez:
 
"While the first album was a portrait of two young punks trying to play every lick and fill we knew with ridiculous speed and the second album was a more self-aware album where we were trying to sift through the previous work, this new album is a focused collection of songs that is more methodical and self-edited than previous. We joke around that it’s going to be an emo Santana’s "Supernatural" album, which will make sense once it’s fully completed and we can finally get a callback from Michelle Branch."

And if you’re itching to see, smell, and hear these guys perform, you’re in luck: Littlest Viking will be joining Young Lovers for their third night of residency/music video premiere at Pehrspace on May 25th.

Not sold yet? Listen to "Lumpy Space Princess" off their self-titled LP below. – Ryan Mo