Sun Looks Down, a band made up of recent Columbia grads Diana Flanagan, Spencer Horstman, Jacob Sunshine, and David Su, writes songs both incandescent and swoon-worthy. The tracks on “Sungaze,” the band’s latest EP (and an appropriate genre name for the band), are hazy, feverish, and entirely unafraid of dissonance or experimentation. Take, for example “Wash Out the Red” (streaming). The song begins sparsly, built upon Horstman’s subtle keyboard arrangement and Flanagan’s ethereal vocal passages, while a transcendent distorted guitar, shimmering and racing light years ahead, cuts through the softness like a bloody knife, gradually taking the track to a louder place. “Sungaze” is all the more impressive for being the band’s debut. The EP captures a sense of tense balance and dynamic awareness of a band at their prime. Make sure to catch Sun Looks Down and The Graveyard Kids at The Mercury Lounge on July 5. – Emilio Herce
