photo credit: Anders Rhedin

Dinner, the project from Danish multi-instrumentalist Anders Rhedin, premieres the Annabel Van Royen-directed music video for “Connection,” (featuring vocals from Molly Burch) the second single from Dinner’s new album Dream Work, due for release October 22nd on Captured Tracks. 

The track opens with an organic-sounding, lightly-phased synth pad that evokes hazy rays of morning sun breaking through an overcast sky, before arpeggiated guitar, drum and bass enter to support it. Rhedin’s baritone voice is not the most flashy instrument, but it carries an authentic vibe, as if your good friend or someone at an open mic were singing sincerely and intimately to you. The chorus, where Rhedin is joined by both a heavily-vibratoed lead guitar and the subtly ethereal backing vocals of Burch, is a pleasing, satisfying climax with a vibe halfway between 60s “groovy” and 2020s sheen. Rhedin walks a fine line here but the warm, three-dimensional production and the unfussy arrangement meld seamlessly.

The music video, meanwhile, goes for even more understated. Shot in a single location—a gently smoke-filled midcentury modern building in a sun-lit wood, a young woman in contemporary clothing alternately paces, plays with herself as if she’s a puppet, and flashes smiles for short moments before reverting to an expressionless visage. Regarding the video, director van Royen explains: "The video is a portrait of a young person expressing themselves with their body in the space and through connection with the viewer." Adds Rhedin: "I had many long talks with Annabel, the director. I thought I was going to be very involved with this video. But in the end, I just had to let go, and trust Annabel’s ideas and her vision. Let her creativity take over. I’m very glad that I did. To me the video is about a liminal state between reality and something else." Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Liam Dillon and ALL BITE

L.A.-based, east coast indie-punk/emo inspired band ALL BITE (the trio of drummer Noah Shearer, bassist Emily Tomasi and guitarist Jeremy Coppola) officially announces the December 3rd release of their new LP, Get Well Soon and shares a ferocious new single, the Jack Shirley-produced  “If You’re Like Me,” out today. 

In grand punk tradition, the track bursts out of the gates on all cylinders, with Tomasi’s lead vocal alternating between a half-shouting punk melodicism and ear-splitting Riot Grrl wails, with the rest of the band chanting the title between nearly every line of the lyric, giving them a sound much larger than their three members. At less than 70 seconds in length, it’s nonetheless an addictive tune, and indicative of the solid song craft and promise these twenty-somethings are showing on their first full-length. Here’s to hoping ALL BITE continues barking up the right tree. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Ariel Fish

IAN SWEET is the quirky name of Los Angeles-based artist Jillian Medford’s musical project, and she’s just dropped new synthpop-tinged single “f*ckthat” via Polyvinyl, along with a music video to support it. 

The track (produced by Canadian duo deadmen) begins with delicate plinking piano and underwater wordless swoons, before Medford’s lead vocal—sometimes weightlessly breathy, sometimes pleasingly piercing and assertive—enters alongside taut drums, bass, and spacey synths. Medford’s lyrics focus on the exasperation the narrator feels for a relationship that feels one-sided, lacking the reciprocation of affection and emotional investment that the narrator themself has put in. 

“We’ve been on the phone all night long / I’m singin’ you the words to your favorite song / You wouldn’t do the same for me / If I called you up at 3 / You’d probably see my number and just let it ring”

The song’s mildly profane title arrives right at the explosion of the chorus, fittingly evoking the narrator’s frustration and venting in the way that only a person who has a sense of self-worth can. Why put up with a love that doesn’t love you back, or bother to follow through on the little things that, in the end, mean so much between two people? It’s a deep topic for such a seemingly effortless pop confection, but it’s pulled off with finesse, and shows that IAN SWEET is a name to remember. 

The IAN SWEET-directed video, meanwhile, finds the artist in a semi-psychedelic call center, complete with boring powder-blue landline phone, shocking pink hair, and a computer monitor that goes wacky with the kind of spiral video feedback that 80s kids remember from pointing their parents’ camcorder at a TV screen. Kudos has to be given for making the most of the little gear and location the crew had. The video never feels repetitive, as the rapid but not distracting editing keeps things visually interesting, and Medford’s indie style and charisma keeps things compelling. 

IAN SWEET takes to the road in the spring on next year in support of her new album, Show Me How You Disappear, with tickets going on sale Friday Oct. 10th. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Athena Merry

Liily are four Los Angeles musicians—Dylan Nash, Sam De La Torre, Charlie Anastasis & Maxx Morando—who, up until now, were mostly known for their manic and cacophonous live shows. Those performances, alongside a couple of early singles packaged together into an EP entitled I Can Fool Anybody In This Town, drove the band to some surprising early successes. Now, Lilly have returned from the sonic depths with a new track, “Anvil,” taken from their eagerly-awaited debut long-player TV or Not TV and an accompanying music video. And it must be said that the shoegazey vibe they’re sending out with this latest work is both hard-hitting and compelling. 

The track begins with sedate drums and slightly overdriven but gently-strummed electrics guitars, woozy with vibrato, with bass and vocals gradually entering (“I’ve made my death bed a lifetime too short / I like my hands on the steering wheel, already on course”). When the band unleashes the full shoegaze onslaught of massively distorted guitars, searing drums and ride cymbals, and mountainous bass, it’s a real punch to the face, even if you’re only listening through earbuds. The minimal chord changes during the chorus are tasteful and an impressive example of the “less is more” school of songwriting. 

The video for “Anvil” (directed by De La Torre), meanwhile, chooses to contrast the sonic heft of the track with an odd choice of imagery: various snails are filmed interacting with each other in a doll house that seamlessly melds into a sort of wooded wonderland, complete with color-changing lights, offering an incongruous picture of the shelled gastropods interacting with common domestic amenities, like chairs, sofas, and desks. it’s a surreal, vivid collection of scenes that gain no small amount of added emotional weight form the muscle of the music. 

Lilly has just begun a month-long tour that will end with them playing The Troubadour on Friday October 29th. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Daniel Yoon

Sunshine Boysclub, the new solo project by Sam Martin (lead singer and songwriter of local indie-pop veterans Youngblood Hawke), has released “Right Out The Window,” the latest single from his self-produced solo debut Hut on The Hill, out independently on all major streaming services.  

The “hut” referred to in the title of the album is an abandoned shack on the side of a hill behind Martin’s suburban L.A. house, which he cleaned out and renovated, making it into a small studio which witnessed the creation of the Sunshine Boysclub debut. Consider it a more temperate West Coast version of Bon Iver’s legendary cabin in the Wisconsin woods. The music’s also much more energetic and uplifting, if the lyrics are less so, according to Martin: “…The one theme that runs through this album is failure, as dark as that may seem. These songs are me working through the past, trying to close that door and move into a new space with new thoughts. I spent years struggling with depression, I stopped making music and was ready to quit. Writing these songs helped me work through those years of struggle and taught me valuable lessons about creativity and happiness, and how connected those two things are for me.”

It sounds like Martin connected creativity and happiness almost perfectly. Take the new single “Right Out The Window,” for instance. It’s a thick, syrupy cut that recalls 70s Eurodisco through a 21st Century set of ears. The bass is nimble and insistent, the compressed “four-on-the-floor” drums are locked-in and ooze with vintage squash. and Martin’s vocals recall the falsetto acrobatics of the Bee Gees with a hint of distortion tucked into the mix for some added edge. The little whistling synth touches scattered throughout the track also add a wee bit of late-70s ABBA flavor to the proceedings.

Meanwhile, the music video (directed by Kate Hollowell) is a nifty one-shot production that finds Martin lip-syncing the song while coasting down the sunny hills of Mount Washington on a mountain bike, outfitted in retro blue baseball cap and jersey, living out some sort of second childhood. According to the artist, "I wanted to capture the ease and energy of the song and felt like one long, continuous ride would help display that. The giant hill I rode down in this video is the hill I looked up at everyday while writing this album."

Hut On The Hill is out now. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Lissyelle Laricchia 

L.A.-based electro indie pop duo Magdalena Bay (Mika Tenenbaum & Matthew Lewin) have released a frenetic music video for “You Lose,” the latest single from their debut album, Mercurial World.  

The band describes the track as being about “trying to be a musician and feeling like time for success is always running out. It’s definitely melodramatic, describing ourselves as aging and nearing death, but sometimes it really feels that way.”

Fully written, produced, performed, mixed and mastered by the duo, The track begins with a short loungy section, complete with VHS-detuned vaporwave synth pads that sound like the background music for some retro afterlife suburban mall, before it’s taken over by a hyper-digital soundscape of buzzy synth bass, jagged sawtooth lead lines, and sampled late 20th century video game sounds. Tenenbaum’s beyond breathy vocal manages to sound weightless, jaded and in-your-face at the same time during the verse, while during the pre-chorus, the edginess gives way to a highly melodic, more angelic tone that adds good contrast to the rest of the track. By the time the chorus comes crashing in, the musical release, with shouted vocals and full-on synth and grunge sounds, is exhilarating. 

The quickly-edited, colorful music video, meanwhile, takes on the premise of the duo looking for their lost “dog” (in reality a Pokemon-like creature), in between their binges of video gaming and performing music in front of a wall of old-school TV screens that resemble a Nam June Paik video art piece, if it were commissioned by Atari or Nintendo. It’s a subtle but biting commentary on both the retromania that much of the music scene finds itself trapped in, as well the state of near-perpetual digital adolescence that social media seems to foster, to the detriment of society at large. 

Mercurial World is scheduled to be released on October 8 via Luminelle. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Miwah Lee

L.A.-based singer/songwriter/producer Mia Carucci has released their latest self-produced single, the hypnotic slow-burn “Pomba Gira,” along with an accompanying video. 

The track begins with a sparse but insistent Afro-Latin drum rhythm, regularly punctuated by an echoing “whoop!” that effectively creates an atmosphere of both unease and anticipation, before Carucci’s breathy, siren-like vocals inquire “what is your reflection in the ever-firing mirror of this life,” subtly referencing the titular Pomba Gira, a central figure of the Afro-Indigenous religion of Quimbanda, who represents the many and different facets of the feminine, including those who have freed themselves from the confines of sexual identity. 

Meanwhile, the video amps up the mystical aspects only hinted at in the track. It begins with Carucci, dressed only in a chainmail bikini, seductively dancing amid rows of votive candles in the dark, balancing themself on a rock in the middle of a roiling ocean, and performing devotional worship to Pomba Gira (played here—complete with devil horns— by previous DELI artist Star Amerasu). Throw in a python coiled around a belly-dancing Carucci toward the later parts of the video, and you have a perfect spooky-seductive track and visual to be played in the background at an upcoming Halloween party. 

Mia Carucci has an upcoming EP in the works, release date TBA. Gabe Hernandez

L.A.-based singer/songwriter/producer Mia Carucci has released their latest self-produced single, the hypnotic slow-burn “Pomba Gira,” along with an accompanying video. 

The track begins with a sparse but insistent Afro-Latin drum rhythm, regularly punctuated by an echoing “whoop!” that effectively creates an atmosphere of both unease and anticipation, before Carucci’s breathy, siren-like vocals inquire “what is your reflection in the ever-firing mirror of this life,” subtly referencing the titular Pomba Gira, a central figure of the Afro-Indigenous religion of Quimbanda, who represents the many and different facets of the feminine, including those who have freed themselves from the confines of sexual identity. 

Meanwhile, the video amps up the mystical aspects only hinted at in the track. It begins with Carucci, dressed only in a chainmail bikini, seductively dancing amid rows of votive candles in the dark, balancing themself on a rock in the middle of a roiling ocean, and performing devotional worship to Pomba Gira (played here—complete with devil horns— by previous DELI artist Star Amerasu). Throw in a python coiled around a belly-dancing Carucci toward the later parts of the video, and you have a perfect spooky-seductive track and visual to be played in the background at an upcoming Halloween party. 

Mia Carucci has an upcoming EP in the works, release date TBA. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Victoria Smith

Los Angeles-based indie electronic pop duo Neil Frances (consisting of Jordan Feller and Marc Gilfry) return with the effervescent late-summer dance floor confection “It’s Like A Dream,” first new track since their Stay Strong Play Long EP was dropped earlier in 2021.

The track starts up with airy synth keyboard chord stabs, finger snapping and a tumble of bongo drums, before gooey but nimble synth bass and crisp, slapping drums crash land, setting off the eminently danceable “daytime disco” groove of the kind that Neil Frances have become known for. With Gilfry’s effortlessly chill, soulful vocals floating above everything, the track simultaneously feels feather-light and as “in the pocket” as one can hope for. Neil Frances themselves describe the track as: "…about the feeling of yearning for the club. We want our music to soundtrack people’s weekends, and this one was made for that purpose. Like when you get in your car and you need that one song to set it off, we want ‘It’s Like A Dream’ to be that.”

Up next for Neil Frances is a performance slot at Outside Lands festival in San Francisco this October. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Lecomoura

Just in time for the unofficial end of summer, Poolside producer Alex Kemp and Grizfolk drummer Bill Delia combine as LA-based duo ORNAMENT AND CRIME, and we’ve got the first single from their debut EP, Another Night on The Astral Plane, the laid-back, semi-tropical groove workout “You’re a Mess,” featuring the vocal talents of Virginia Palms.

“You’re a Mess” tumbles from the speakers in a cascade of effortlessly chill bass and drum work, delicate keyboards that seem to evoke the sway of an accordion player at a bistro on the French Riviera, and even the vaguely mystical vibes of a pan flute. All of it combines into a lush, buoyant track, which is only elevated by the mixed male/female unison vocals that sing above it all. As for the lyrics, Bill Delia explains, “Everyone falls for the wrong person once or twice, right? It’s an enjoyable fail, really. This song honors the toxic lovers we all encounter at some point in our lives, the ones we have a blind eye of love for.”

The new EP by ORNAMENT AND CRIME is scheduled for release on October 15th. If the new single is any indication, we could be looking at a belated end to the summer so that this tune has a proper chance to sizzle out of earbuds and speakers across the city. Gabe Hernandez

photo courtesy of artist's instagram page

Compton born and raised artist Brittany Chikyra Barber goes by the stage name “Bee-B,” but despite the cutesy name, she has the productivity and work ethic of a veteran industry stalwart, having released multiple critically-acclaimed mixtapes and EPs, along with having written for and collaborated with some of music’s finest, including John Legend, YG, Theophilus London and Kanye West.

Her hot streak extends itself with the debut of her latest track/video, “Confidence,” an assertive and motivational pump-up track, alternating pep-talk with the types of classic self-congratulating boasts that are an defining feature of today’s female-centered rap music.

The track begins with a low, booming electronic drone, almost like the trumpet of a mechanized elephant, instantly seizing the listener’s attention. The rhythm track itself is quite simple, consisting of alternating kick drums and hand claps, carried along by electric organ-like keyboard sounds. Later in the song, buzzing synths that cascade down in tone insert a level of vague menace that compliments Bee-B’s effortless, unbothered flow.

The video itself lightens the mood. Interspersed with scenes of Bee-B and her crew strutting down a futuristic runway, complete with an attentive audience who are all wearing multi-screen video cubes that reflect the artist back onto herself. It’s a vivid metaphor for a rapper’s ambition to be ubiquitous, to “run the game,” so to speak, but it also carries a somewhat dystopian commentary on society’s obsession with celebrity and social media. Fortunately, Bee-B also has a sense of humor, posing as 1) Michael Jackson on the cover of the Thriller album, complete with 80s Jheri curl, 2)a gold medal-winning USA Olympic athlete, complete with Florence Griffith Joyner’s single-leg running pants, and 3)a winner of a $1 billion check for “confidence.”

Humor and bigger-than-life confidence both have a long lineage in the world of rap music, and Bee-B is proving that it will maintain its place as long as she’s around to put her distinctive spin on it. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: jade sadler

Claire Chicha is an L.A.-based, French-Korean artist who goes by the name spill tab, and she’s released her latest single, the effortlessly fast-paced track “Indecisive” (ft. Tommy Genesis), along with an accompanying lyric video that matches the track’s frenetic pace.

With spill tab’s high school friend, Marinelli, on production duties, the track incorporates a classic jungle-style breakbeat that perfectly accentuates both spill tab’s smoky but nimbly melodic vocals, and featured performer Tommy Genesis’ rapped contributions. True to the title, the lyrics describes the singer’s contentious relationship with someone who manages to draw out the conflicting thoughts she carries inside, as well as balancing the gradually ballooning amount of details she has to keep track of thanks to a burgeoning career. It’s a rarity: a streetwise yet emotionally realistic track that doesn’t compromise on the technical virtuosity of the music, or the sincerity of the mental health struggles of a young artist on the move.

This October sees spill tab headlining venerable local venueThe Echo before going out on tour with Gus Dapperton. Gabe Hernandez