artist photo credit: Kyle McKenzie

L.A. by way of Portland, Oregon songwriter/vocalist/producer/arranger Graham Johnson is only 20 years and makes music under the moniker quickly, quickly, but he’s showing a talent and work ethic beyond his peers, having just released “Shee,” the third single from his new album, The Long and Short of It, to be released on Ghostly International on August 20th.

“Shee” is quickly, quickly’s love letter to their girlfriend during their long-distance relationship when he moved to Los Angeles. The track begins with strummed guitar and a soulful lead vocal jumping out at the listener, bouncing across the speakers with a subtle but long echo and reverb. Sweet vocal harmonies join in for a verse before a lively but compressed drum groove drops in with force for the wordless chorus, joined by tasty lead guitar lines. A more hip-hop oriented second verse takes shape with strategic percussion drop-outs and some excellent falsetto vocals touches, before taking on more ethereal, Bon Iver-like vibes for the middle. very casual tambourine and hand percussion appear before quickly being swallowed by the drums and lead guitar again, before ending in a final swirl of acoustic guitar and falsetto, ending in abstract electronic whirring and humming, as if the music was disintegrating itself back into the basic elements of sound.

Overall, the track is an intoxicating blend of R&B, psych-pop and hip-hop that has the potential to appeal to fans of either genre, and shows the formidable young talent making musical progress by leaps and bounds. Gabe Hernandez

photo credit: vinny nolan

L.A.-based Alternative R&B singer/songwriter Amindi has released “nwts,” a track from her upcoming EP debut, nice, out July 28th through label Human Re-sources.

The track begins with muffled—but angelic—vocals slowly coming into focus, along with the lightest touch of bass, before a compressed, possibly sampled, drumbeat lands with assertive force, balanced by a more active bass line, a sprinkling of guitar (or keyboard?) ornamentation, and Amindi’s casually sung lead vocal. It’s an impressively minimal soundscape that still sounds full of activity, and sports a deadly, hypnotic groove.

Lyrically, the track appears to be a kiss-off to a relationship with someone who lacks the narrator’s self-motivated, “DIY” mindset (note the recurring lyrics: “I’m still me without you/You ain’t made shit/Self-made bitch/DIY, makeshift/Buzz so big I could sell a blank disc”) while also being a reminiscence of the artist’s aesthetic development from early school days to their current status as a formidable songwriter, oozing with talent and undeniable cool in their presentation (“And I paid my dues/Since them days in school/Since them payless shoes/I was way less cool/Now I done bossed up/“).

"nwts" comes alongside an announcement that Amindi will be presenting an innovative live album experience with OkiDoki on July 15th. During the event, fans will be able to see Amindi perform the EP for the first time and to interact with visual stories that bring her words to life via animations from artists behind novel works, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gumby, and Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken. Gabe Hernandez

image courtesy artist’s bandcamp page

L.A.-based heavy metal / stoner rock quartet DEATHCHANT have released their sophomore album, Waste, on label Riding Easy Records, and you can watch the music video for track “Holy Roller” below.

The first thing to remark on is how the album was recorded: in a rented cabin up in secluded Big Bear, CA. According to T.J. Lemieux, singer and guitarist, “we packed a big-ass van and set up in the living room and kitchen, tracked it live, with overdubs after.” Despite the humble setup, the album has both a professional clarity and a hard-hitting brutality, especially on the vinyl version, which the author of this review was able to enjoy at maximum volume at a recent evening at Permanent Records Roadhouse in Cypress Park.

Track “Holy Roller” opens with cutting, rusty distorted slices of rhythm guitar at battle with dissonant feedback howls to arrive at your ears first, before both are shoved out of the way by a pummeling bass/drum combo. Soon, the vocals enter, sounding like a platoon of demented monks yelling unholy, apocalyptic incantations from inside a cave. Meanwhile, start-stop doubled guitar lines bring the chaos to a temporary halt, before cranking back up to break-neck speed, until the half-time bridge that offers somewhat of a breather before the song transforms into an ultra-sludgy, Hawkwind-style chug. It’s part sludge metal, part grunge, part Thin Lizzy in its dual lead guitar lines, but at all points it’s compelling. Which is all the more impressive when you discover that most of the band’s music is improvised (!).

Finally, extra points to the band for connecting all the tracks on Waste together with droning, abstract interludes, giving the whole thing a sense of oneness and cohesion. DEATHCHANT work hard to create a complete atmosphere and populate it with heavy riffs, hypnotic grooves, and dark sludge. Where they’ll take us next is anyone’s guess, but one can be sure it’ll be somewhere worth heading. Gabe Hernandez

image courtesy of the artist 

Bar/None Records Artist Justus Proffit has released “Burning The Ground,” a single from his upcoming sophomore album, Speedstar, coming out August 20th, along with an accompanying music video, and his low-key indie folk-rock vibes are formidable.

The track opens with lazily-strummed acoustic guitar sharing space with gently chorused lead guitar lines. A placid bass faithfully hits the root note, establishing a solid rhythmic foundation. The tom-forward drum kit begin to tumble dizzily during the chorus, giving the song an added sense of dimension and avoiding the possibility of sounding repetitive. Meanwhile, Proffit’s lead vocal mirrors the laconic lyrics in his offhand delivery, as if you were listening to him in a chair across the bed from which he’s performing. The package as a whole is as meditative as it is catchy. 

As a whole, the track gives off strong Elliott Smith vibes, combined with a bit of the stoned effortlessness of Kurt Vile. The video, meanwhile, finds Proffit alternately ambling around a cemetery in daylight, relaxing in a very candle-lit bath tub, and dripping red wax over glass heads and religious statuettes. Shot with a VHS look, its amateur look evokes the visual work of alternative artists from the 80s and 90s, and subtly fills in the more gloomy blanks of the music. Hopefully the album will similarly ride the line between depression and dynamism. Gabe Hernandez

Rock band The Bots (led by songwriter Mikaiah Lei) have released a video for “See It,” the first single from their new album in seven years, 2 Seater, due for release on Big Indie Records September 8th.

The track begins with a hard-hitting beat, electronic squiggles, and a guitar riff reminiscent of Red Hot Chili Peppers, quickly heating up into a punk-like anthem perfect for soundtracking your latest headphone-focused skateboard spree through your local urban ruin.

The visually dynamic music video, meanwhile, portrays a day in the life of the band members as they engage in the skater lifestyle on the streets on Downtown Los Angeles, pulling off tricks and prowling the urban sprawl, and generally getting up to no good. It’s a near-perfect complement to a catchy, aggressive track that makes one eager to get outdoors after over a year of quarantine. Gabe Hernandez

L.A.-based via Houston artist DE’WAYNE releases their debut album STAINS today, June 18th, via Hopeless Records and you can view a video right now for their latest single “Super 8.”

The track itself combines emo, synthpop, and rock sounds in a tight, meticulously produced package. DE’WAYNE’s vocal jumps right out of the gate from the top, accompanied by insistent rock fuzz bass and drums. Throughout, DE’WAYNE’s energetic vocal yelps are punctuated with Suicide-style delays that send their vocal into infinity. With lines like “I wanna film a porno on a Super 8” the lyrics are straightforward and not insightful by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re not really the focus here. They’re throwaway, a vehicle for the excellent production, hooks, and DE’WAYNE’s vocal performance. One gets the feeling that with the right song DE’WAYNE will be a household name.

Meanwhile, the video (directed by Joe Mischo) alternates between scenes of DE’WAYNE and a “friend” getting into various stereotypically “porno” role-playing antics and more performance-oriented footage of DE’WAYNE and their drummer among a curtain of chains and hooks. One shows the more deadpan comedic side of the artist, while the other adds a mild bit of sexual edge, although DE’WAYNE never strays into even PG-13 territory. It’s clear in his energy and confidence in performance that there’s a lot of promise here in DE’WAYNE. One hopes that their future material will show a maturity in songwriting that rivals their considerable pop idol-to-be talents. Gabe Hernandez

Photo courtesy of the artist

LA-based electro-acoustic composer Celia Hollander has released “12:55 PM a track from her upcoming album, entitled Timekeeper, out July 23rd on eclectic local label Leaving Records.

Hollander, with an MFA in Music Composition & Experimental Sound Practices from Cal Arts, describes her output as “…work that critically engages ways that audio and the act of listening can shape temporal perception, generate narratives, question cultural infrastructures, and cultivate social connection.” For us, it’s the audio shaping temporal perception part that draws our attention to “12:55 PM.”

The instrumental track begins with a clock-like shuffle rhythm, the sound of which is reminiscent of the electronic fizz of retro drum machines, before helium-tinged synth stabs begin bubbling up in the mix. Occasionally, tasty drippings of silicone-coated synth bass add some welcome low-end thickness to the soundscape.

On the whole, the track presents a vaguely tropical vibe, but not so much that you feel like serving up mai tais. “12:55 PM” fades in and out like an ocean breeze, but it’s also a chilled, yet caffeinated sonic landscape that entices you to dance, but could just as easily soundtrack your next dose of edibles. Hollander clearly has a way with manipulating a listener’s perception of time. The other tracks on Timekeeper are all titled after very specific times of day. What we can say with confidence is that we’re looking forward to losing some more precious minutes and hours in her delicate, enticing aural playground. Gabe Hernandez

Photo Credit: Erik Hayden

L.A. based singer-songwriter Sara Noelle is a self-described “ambient-folk” artist and she’s released the first single for her upcoming album (title and release date TBD). Entitled Do I Have To Feel Everything, it’s her first release since her late 2020 single Christmas at Sea.

Produced by Dan Duszynski, the new track begins with insistent harmony synths, before a lush, lightly vocoder-tinged chorus of Saras fills the listener’s ears. Throughout, liquid synth pads tastefully bathe the arrangement, like layers of crystal blue seawater. A simple but weighty bass drum heartbeat holds down the rhythm while toms occasionally tumble through. The song gently crescendos with a full complement of electronic drums and angelic, wordless vocals. Melodically, there are (not unwelcome) similarities to Fleetwood Mac and Death Cab For Cutie, but overall the track gives the impression of being both propulsive yet meditative. It’s a difficult balancing act but one that Noelle and Duszynski pull off with grace, as nothing seems out of place, although many things are happening at once.

Lyrically, the mention of the “silent year/like time stopped,” instantly brings to mind our collective Covid year. And while the vibe of the music is a positive one, lines like “I don’t know where and I don’t know where I am/The closer I get, the farther I am” hint at a persistent sense of limbo and uncertainty about the future that many of of are likely feeling. Although it’s especially resonant at this time in history, Sara Noelle’s track carries a certain timelessness in its lyrical feelings of alienation. Gabe Hernandez

Photo Credit: Yanin Gzv

L.A.-based Chicago native Tatiana Hazel’s latest track/video, <i>It’s All Right</i>, is a preview of her latest EP (after 2020’s <i>Duality</i> EP), and it’s difficult not to enjoy the track’s laid-back danceable groove and breezy vocals, while also being touched by it’s casual honesty about facing mental health challenges.

At points throughout the song, Hazel delivers some sobering lines about facing ones mental illness as well as general disillusion with “truths” presented by the larger world: “maybe i should take a good look at myself / and mirror check on mental health / couldn’t be clearer that I’m not doing well, darlin’ / and maybe everything you told us was a lie / maybe all we gotta do is pass the time / maybe everything is gonna be all right.”

Ultimately, though, the chorus takes solace in the idea that, as crazy as this life can be, having someone who loves you along for the ride can make things somewhat more tolerable: “It’s all right / It’s all right / as long as I know that you love me / as long as you are thinking of me.”

Listeners will find Tatiana Hazel’s pleasingly unaffected voice similar to other electropop chanteuses such as Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso. However, if one looks past her admittedly polished, Top 40-ready public image, one will quickly realize that, with Hazel not just singing, but writing, producing, recording, mixing, and mastering all but one of her EPs tracks herself, she’s a one-person indie pop dynamo well on her way to bigger, better things. Gabe Hernandez

Self-described L.A.-based “poptronic princess” Ah-Mer-Ah-Su has released “No One,” a track from her upcoming Hopefully Limitless EP, due late this summer, along with an accompanying music video filmed in collaboration with filmmaker Roge Stack. Judging by the track’s life-affirming lyrics and club-ready sound, she may have released this summer’s first big Alt Pop empowerment anthem.

The track starts with a tropically psychedelic keyboard flourish, before Ah-Mer-Ah-Su’s effervescent, nimble lead vocal enters in full, buoyed by impactful, elastic bass and fizzy but hard-hitting electronic drums, making for a formidably danceable rhythm section. Later, saxophone and chorused lead guitar lines deliver a refreshingly non-clichéd dose of carefully-arranged 80s pop bliss.

The lyrics are seemingly self-addressed and allude to the challenges the black trans artist has undoubtably had to face on her career path. With lines like “you dont’ got it easy / you’ve always had to work / for it and so / work it you do,” it’s clear that the challenges, although formidable for Ah-Mer-Ah-Su (the name is a paraphrase of Amaterasu, the goddess of the Sun in Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan) have been taken on with the same deftness and grace as her songwriting and vocals.

Overall, “No One” delivers the kind of catchy vibes that fans of Laura Mvula, Robyn, and Whitney Houston will enjoy, while also delivering a glimpse of an artist on the rise. Gabe Hernandez

Electropop singer, songwriter & producer MINDY (Mindy Song) has released “Am I Alive,” the first single/video for her upcoming debut solo EP Version 1.27, premiering July 23. The new track/video provide an intriguing glimpse into MINDY’s sonic and visual world.

“Am I Alive” begins with a grungy bass/drum intro before MINDY’s breathy but confident lead vocal takes the stage. When the chorus crashes in shortly after, it’s with a flood of 90s electronica/dance sounds, but without any of the cliches that those sounds typically bear. Overall, the track is a full-bodied electro pop banger, but with lyrics that suggest there’s an perceptive artistic soul behind things.

Meanwhile the accompanying music video (directed by Adrian Pruett) adds precious context to MINDY’s enigmatic lyrics, cutting between the singer performing her heart out for the jaded and image-obsessed denizens of a blue-lit nightclub, and striking scenes of self-harm. It’s a delicate balance to keep things both serious and entertaining, but it works.

About the video, MINDY states in a press release: “‘Am I Alive’ is about my struggles with violence and the relentless cycles of murder, pain, and healing. Director Adrian Pruett and I turned my internal agony into a performance in which we ask, ‘what does it mean to be alive and engage with others when so much suffering continues right before our eyes?’” Certainly, a prerequisite for being alive is being moved by MINDY’s well-crafted, emotive new track. Gabe Hernandez

Photo Credit: Annie Rhodes Kane

L.A.-via-Chicago artist appleby spent much of his early childhood competing on the international tennis circuit, before reassessing his priorities as a young adult, shifting to pursue his music-making ambitions. Judging by his latest single, the soothing yet cathartic “Half Life,” and its accompanying zen-like poolside video, it seems his dedication to honing his craft hasn’t wavered a bit.

The track begins with a simple repeated electric piano note, setting the stage for appleby’s soulful harmonized vocals to enter shortly thereafter, followed by warm and full-bodied piano chords, all of which are later joined by a skittering electro-acoustic beat that propels the track just enough to inject it with energy without shattering the overall life-affirming vibe. The track gets fuller throughout, but it never gets too busy. And all the while, appleby’s vocals—which brings to mind other alt-soul auteurs such as Moses Sumney—keep things comforting and uplifting until the track gently crescendos, his vocal finally fragmenting like the beat.  Perhaps it’s a fracturing or, possibly, a transcendence? 

There’s hardly any help in his lyrics, which find him in a state of limbo: “I’ve been stuck in this half-life full time / and I don’t know what to do.” In press releases, though, appleby describes the genesis of his latest track as “…organic and borderline magical…” If that’s the case, here’s hoping he indulges his taste for both on his upcoming releases. Gabe Hernandez