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

Photo Credit - Ann Li

Thrill You Kill You (TYKY) is the project of DJ/producer/songwriter Fei-Fei, and today she has released her latest single, the energetic “Hotline,” on streamers worldwide.

The track begins with a classic hard rock-style drum intro, before being joined by TYKY’s feminine but assertive lead vocal, which evokes those of similar artists like Grimes. The track itself is tastefully drenched in delay and reverb, giving the mix an atmospheric quality while also managing to keep the higher-energy elements of the arrangement from washing out. The effect is of a track that simultaneously hits you in the face and seems to arrive from another galaxy.

According to the artist, the edgy yet melodic, synthpop and grunge-influenced track “…captures that feeling right before you give control, that anxious feeling of sexy dread…The excruciating cusp of fear and desire, power and submission. When you know something’s bad for you, but you just can’t resist. I’m fascinated with the exploration of our darkest desires because discovering who you are is messy…and beautiful.” Gabe Hernandez

photo courtesy of artist

L.A. by way of Florida drummer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Bloodcat (aka Jessica Vacha), has seen her fair share of the local scene as a session drummer, lending her percussive talents to several up-and-coming acts, all while steadily working on her own original music. Her latest single, appropriately entitled Summer Single and available now on Spotify and most other major streaming outlets, is a sign of steady growth for the singer-songwriter that foreshadows greater things yet to come from this talent.

A-side “Generic Script” is a propulsive, muscular, but also charmingly vulnerable guitar and drum-forward indie-pop track that displays Vacha’s talent for merging catchy melody with effortless indie cool, especially in the interplay between instruments. Taking a minimalistic approach, the bare-bones arrangement evokes 90s-era indie-pop while also dispalying a distinctly 2020s touch for the modern.

B-side “Enough,” by contrast, evokes Mazzy Star in its slower-tempo, more contemplative tone. It begins with abstract electric guitar strums that deliver a distinct feeling of floating, unmoored to any key, until Vacha and the rest of the band enter as one. Vacha’s sedate, elegant vocal radiates weariness and sadness, complementing the spare, wide-open arrangement. it’s an audio equivalent of a Mark Rothko painting: fields of muted colors hovering close enough to each other that they can’t help but be taken as one, but never truly touching, forever together but forever apart.Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Julian Burgeño

Filipino-American singer Yeek (aka Sebastian Carandang) shares a new music video for “Lumbago,” a track from his latest album Valencia.

The track begins with a deceptively cheesy-sounding electric organ intro, the kind of organ music you’d hear in your grandmother’s house. But before long, the track blossoms into a luxurious bed of steadily grooving drums, deep bass, and Yeek’s delicate yet soulful vocals. It’s a simple combination, but Yeek makes the most of the minimalism and fills the spaces in-between with deep wistfulness. Lyrically, it’s a mellow ode to family vid memories of the back pain Yeek experienced as a young boy. As such, it’s appropriate that his mother, his brothers, and his cousins are all embedded in the lyrics, making this a truly family affair.

The video, meanwhile, is a homespun collage of slice-of-life scenes, shot with a “Super 8” film look, and with many of the shots crossfading over each other, lending a slightly psychedelic vibe to the work, and enhancing the languid, melancholy, but deeply funky atmosphere of the track. Gabe Hernandez

photo courtesy artist's bandcamp page

Out this week is the single “Loser,” by New Jersey-born, L.A.-based artist CARR (Carly McClellan), along with an accompanying music video that takes on the perils of modern dating, the art of indecisiveness, and the disillusion behind today’s gut-wrenching romantic expectations.

The track begins with a stuttering hybrid electro-acoustic drum rhythm before CARR’s slightly languid, pleasingly vulnerable double-tracked vocal enters, along with muscular, ever-so-slightly distorted rhythm guitars, immediately evocative of early 2000s pop punk. They offer CARR’s vocal an interestingly muscular counterpoint, delivering the right amount of barely-contained aggression and spite. The pre-chorus adds a bit of hauntingly airy synth pads for emphasis, before the explosion of the chorus unleashes full, crunchy guitars and cacophonous drums, complete with cymbal bell clangs. Meanwhile her lyrics viciously call out an archetypal douchebag boyfriend, attacking everything from his lack of talent for lying, lack of friends, history of broken promises, and even his small penis.

It’s a throwback pop-punk sound in the vein of Avril Lavigne and All-American rejects, to be sure, but it’s more insular in its sound, and refreshingly free of the clichéd rock posing and guitar-slinging those acts performed. Here, the genre is used as a perfect aesthetic vehicle to express CARR’s disgust with partners who lie, cheat, or otherwise shatter her romantic hopes and expectations. In the process, she somehow miraculously transcends the tropes of the genre while being an exemplary example of the punk-pop genre.

Meanwhile, the video (directed by Natalie Leonard & Rachel Cabitt of POND Creative) is a comical—if slightly gonzo—affair, with CARR portraying a blood-soaked serial killer disposing of her most recent victim: a young man who has apparently done something to earn her ire, just one name on a list of the many male victims she’s killed an dismembered. it’s bold, but never overtly graphic, and evokes the sound and spirit of the song expertly. Here’s to hoping CARR keeps delivering top-notch, catchy guitar-powered anthems in the future. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Isabel Damberg

L.A.-raised artist Jordi Up Late (aka Jordan Tager) grew up around filmmaking and music production, picking things up here and there as the years passed. Eventually, her passion for visual art took her to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) to earn her BA. With a unique visual style and musical influences ranging from Daft Punk to Little Dragon and James Blake, Jordi seems to be cresting at the right time, as the video for her song “Back in LA” demonstrates.

The track opens with piercing, club-ready synth pianos banging out syncopated chords, while Jordi confidently belts her vocals in between the empty spaces. Soon after, tight electronic drums and a gooey synth bass come tumbling in, laying down a funky, instantly catchy dance groove, reminiscent of some of the 80s-90s best dance-pop tracks, but with a 2020s vibe of her own. The choruses, though, when she delivers an assertive kiss-off to the lover whose spell she’s finally broken free of (“two is for you/ and three for me/ fuck you / ‘cause I love me”) offers an ethereal, muted oasis from the previous electronic cacophony. They seem to represent, in music, the relief and freedom she feels upon regaining her sense of agency after an emotionally-trying romance.

The video itself is a pastel, Day-Glo, multi-textured, Memphis Group-inspired moving tableau of simple, looping animations that provide both evocative and humorous counterpoint to the track. It’s an impressive feat that Jordi is able to do so much with so little, and demonstrates her confidence as a modern animator. Both track and video seem to co-exist with each other, and one should experience both to understand Jordi’s full talents. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit @jeralddjohnson 

L.A.-based singer-songwriter Angelnumber 8 today releases “Habit,” the first single from his upcoming project Digital Tribal, along with an accompanying music video, released via CashApp Studios.

The track begins with Angelnumber 8’s crisp, double-tracked vocals accompanied for a couple measures by echoing synth keyboards, until the beat (complete with itchy-sounding snare) enters, alongside delicately arpeggiated, tropical-sounding electric guitar and deep, rounded synth bass. At points, Angelnumber 8’s voice is transformed with clever use of tremolo, lending a hypnotic quality to his voice and blurring the lines between vocal and instrument. When he chooses to bypass the effect, it’s in favor of double-tracking his vocals using the low bass range of his voice, which lends an additional pleasant depth to the soundscape. The track ends just as quickly as it starts, with mischievous vocal hiccups and gentle yelps seeing the drums and bass out until, at last, all that’s left is the electric guitar.

Lyrically, Angelnumber 8 seems to address some unnamed romantic interest in terms of his addiction to them, but also laments their neglect of him in favor of other distractions, including those that earn them money, but not artistic or creative output. “Breathless/I am again,/Like jeans ripped from the hem/Holding on to a thread/Bending,/Twisting,/With limbs,” he sings, describing his strung-out state of mind after bing neglected by the person he’s addressing.

The ingenious music video (directed by the artist and with visual effects by Zach Beech) finds Angelnumber 8 in an idyllic romance with a glitch-ridden, technicolor digital moth. They cavort together in the wilderness, they have dinner at a “fancy” restaurant (although she goes unnoticed, at first, by the waiter), but their time together takes an unfortunate turn toward the morbid, as well as the surreal. The final sequence is startlingly Lynchian in both its banality and its chilling effect. This writer expects bigger and better work to come soon from this artist on the rise. Gabe Hernandez

photo courtesy of the artist

L.A.-based band Inner Wave has announced the coming release of their fourth and latest album, Appotosis, on September 30th by releasing a music video for album track “Take 3.” Inner Wave are managed by Cosmica Artists + Records.

The track begins with a thick, honky, effortlessly funky bass line rolling alongside a languid but insistent four-on-the-floor drumbeat, both sharing space with polished, delayed synth mallets. Frontman Pablo Sotelo’s vocals are pleasingly lethargic in the way his syllables land in the pocket with the four-on-the-floor groove. Sotelo’s vocals are accompanied by delicate, echoed guitar strums and mournful, siren-like, infinitely stretched synth lines that seem to underline the melancholy and emotional fatigue of his vocals. Plucked synths that dominate during the chorus add an extra layer of dancefloor gloss that wouldn’t be out of step at a local club some night this weekend. The icing on the cake is the lush middle section that leads the song into it’s conclusion, which has an “everything but the kitchen sink” feel, while managing to remain stately in its unraveling.

The track is special in that its music video also marks Sotelo’s directorial debut. It’s a fairly simple affair, but full of symbolism for covid quarantiners. The singer spends the bulk of the video standing camera center, viewable only from the waist up, and wearing a simple white tank top. Footage of vintage road scenes are projected onto the upper part of his face (an enigmatic but potent visual, to be sure), which alternate with multi-exposed versions of himself. Some are lit from the front with a blood-red glow, some from behind with a single blinding white light, revealing a sea of fog at his feet. It’s definitely a pick for best use of minimal prop resources, and the shot where Sotelo slowly struts across the multicolored stage wearing a full military gas mask apparatus is a not-too-subtle nod to the Covid pandemic. It’s an effectively narcotic video for a lush and hypnotic track that accurately reflects the breakdown of time and space that the covid crisis created, and another artistic document to note the events of the past year and a half. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Jacob Boll

L.A.-based art-folk auteur Gregory Uhlmann (guitarist and vocalist with local act Fell Runner) has today released “Goosebumps,” an atmospheric one-off single—following up on his Neighborhood Watch album of last July—on Topshelf Records.

The art-folk track begins humbly with a simple muted acoustic drum fill, announcing the entry of two strummed nylon-string guitars and an hypnotic, elliptic bass line. The atmosphere of the recording is warm and open, quickly inviting the listener into its center.

Uhlmann’s voice is alternately deeply resonant and choir-boy pure, with a bit of breathiness, especially during the chorus, where his voice fades into a deep ocean of reverb on a single syllable. The addition of a gooey, tremoloed synth about halfway through the song changes the flavor but does so tastefully, as does the entrance of plucked instruments, pitched somewhere between mallets and a ticking clock, along with oceanic synth pads that resemble a school of shimmering sea creatures.

By the time the swelling single-note guitar lines double Uhlmann’s vocal melody and a lone, perfectly-timed cymbal crash signals the conclusion of the song, the listener has been taken on a unique aural journey, where contrasting timbres that shouldn’t fit well together still somehow manage to do so. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: Nell Sherman & Silken Weinberg

Runnner is the project of native Angeleño songwriter Noah Weinman. He’s recently released a music video for “Monochrome,” the latest single from his upcoming debut album for Run For Cover Records, Always Repeating, released July 16th.

The track fades in with fingerpicked acoustic guitar and banjo, with what sound like reversed electric guitar lines, all swelling into a beautiful, abstract mix, before drums kick in to establish a vaguely rollicking shuffle, dropping out to allow Weinman’s plaintive, double-tracked vocals space to enter. He sings with masterful restraint while the guitars and banjo provide delicate rhythmic emphasis on his lyrics. The music and vocals slowly build in emotional intensity, along with volume, squeezing every possible bit of pathos out of the highly personal lyrics.

“Although this isn’t the oldest song in the batch,” begins Weinman, “this feels like the first Runnner song…It’s about nuance and memory, and how hard it can be to remember something in all its color and detail. Part of me fights against that and tries to remember everything, but part of me also resigns to it.” The video was created by Weinman with the help of Helen Ballentine.

Runnner will celebrate the release of Always Repeating with two L.A.-area shows: a sold-out show July 22nd at Baader house, and a December 3rd gig at the Lodge Room in Highland Park. Gabe Hernandez

photo courtesy of artist’s bandcamp page

Dzang is the project of L.A.-based electronic producer Adam Gunther, who has released “Retreat,” the lead single from his forthcoming EP Glacial Erratic, due out July 23rd on Bandcamp, along with an accompanying music video.

The moody, downtempo instrumental track begins with ominous FM-synth bells tolling over a subtle bed of digital noise and bleeping, before a soft, swollen bass enters along with a drum pattern that resembles a ticking clock with a seizure. Gradually, sparse upper-octave synth notes and insular, beautiful synth pads enter your ears, with the entire soundscape splitting the difference between serene grooving and cautious searching. The late addition of the metallic shuffling of chains to the rhythm lends extra weight to the track, before it fades out with the same fateful bells from the beginning. Are they a warning? Or are they simply mourning?

Gunter explains that the track was meant to convey the feeling of California’s climate crisis and the need to escape. The accompanying music video “shows a talismanic bird flying through scenes of climate disruption only to arrive at an urban core, unable to escape humanity’s influence.” It’s a chilling but mesmerizing visual paired with music that is just as good at provoking deep thought about our global predicament as it is for blissing out on a late-night highway drive. Gabe Hernandez