Kills Birds derive their name from the first verse on their album: “This flower / kills birds / When she dies / she rots like flesh.” It’s the whole album in a couplet — beauty, peril, mystery, anxiety — conveyed over throbbing, then exploding, post-punk/noise-rock primitivism.
The narrator is Nina Ljeti, a self-professed outsider, a filmmaker and a Bosnia-born Canadian whose parents fled Sarajevo as the city was on the precipice of war. She eventually matriculated to NYU to study drama and then to L.A. to further her film career. A few years ago, she befriended musician Jacob Loeb (of the band Golden Daze), and they intermittently began collaborating on music, at first with no serious intentions.
When the project did get more serious the band added bassist Fielder Thomas and drummer Bosh Rothman came on board — things did not immediately go smoothly. There was an ill-fated recording session, which fostered doubts. Then producer Justin Raisen, founder of KRO Records found them. “Kills Birds,” which comes out September. 20th, was recorded in virtually one eight-hour session.
The album is 26 minutes of exposed nerves. Ljeti’s speak-singing builds to primal caterwauls, then recedes again. The music’s paroxysms open a vein to her inner frustrations, even if they are only opaquely described in the lyrics. It’s visceral and physical music — as led by somebody who didn’t know punk rock until one fateful night after she watched “American Idol” (stay tuned for that story).
Ashworth’s songwriting often presents itself as a lens through which the listener can see themselves, dissolving barriers between the artist and audience.
Sasami Ashworth’s debut solo offering is a sidestep away from her previous output with Cherry Glazerr and into the fog. It’s fuzzy and melancholic, with train-of-thought musings that feel both self-prescriptive and healing – a sonic processing of emotions with broader relevance and appeal. It poses singular questions of love and loss, finding solace in their universality: “Thought I was the only one/Turned out I was everyone.” Sasami – “Free (feat. Devendra Banhart)”, from the debut self-titled album, out now on Domino Records
SASAMI (Sasami Ashworth) has been making music in the Los Angeles area, in almost every way you can, for the last decade. From playing French horn in orchestras and studios and playing keys, bass, and guitar in local rock bands (Dirt Dress, Cherry Glazerr), to contributing vocals/string/horn arrangements to studio albums (Vagabon, Curtis Harding, Wild Nothing, Hand Habits, etc.) and producing on tracks for other respected artists (Soko), she has gained a reputation as an all-around musical badass.
She spent the previous two and a half years touring the world non-stop playing synths in the band Cherry Glazerr and is now taking a turn to focus on her own music.
The video for “Take Care” starts out pleasantly enough—Sasami wakes up in a rowboat floating across calm blue waters. As grainy shots of the artist lying in the boat flash by, the scene gives the impression of a vintage film memento. She sings the lines, “You don’t need my help anymore / I tried to show up at your door.” But soon enough, Sasami starts to let out some hostility, tagging a wall with black spray paint and then, well, beating the living hell out a car with a baseball bat. Finally, we see her lighting a shrine of personal effects on fire in the desert and screaming at the burning pyre.
“Take Care” features on a brand new digital 7” from SASAMI. SASAMI’s debut self-titled album is out now on Domino Recording Co.
“All We Want Anymore” has everything you’d want in a classic pop song—the dizzy, the dreamy and the grand. Stone brings bright vocal harmonies and everything but the kitchen sink—lush string arrangements, waves of rippled guitars, both happy-go-lucky and melancholy keyboards, distinctly vintage drums and horns that shout “hurrah” during the grand finale. It’s a must-hear for fans of the California pop songs of yesteryear and crushingly beautiful songs that play when the end credits roll.
Stone Irr is the product of a special kind of Midwestern religious folk. Just start with the name: what seems like anobvious pun was, in fact, an honest mistake, and as soon as Stone’s parents found out, they offered to take him to the Lafayette, Indiana courthouse and change it. He was already in middle school. True story.
Stone’s growth as an artist, songwriter, and arranger since his 2017 debut album ‘Sinner’ is obvious on the standout track “All We Want Anymore.” The song features a bright, Beatles-like melodic structure and a cascading finale of strings and horns that pushes Stone’s voice deep into the mix.
That voice, often multi-tracked with layers of harmonies, is Stone Irr’s defining quality. It floats through the record, at times whispered and ethereal and at others gritty and broken. Album art by William Schaff (Okkervil River, Songs: Ohia).
releases September 20, 2019,
All songs written and performed by Stone Irr
Melina Duterte is a master of voice: Hers are dream pop songs that hint at a universe of her own creation. Recording as Jay Som since 2015, Duterte’s world of shy, swirling intimacies always contains a disarming ease, a sky-bent sparkle and a grounding indie-rock humility. In an era of burnout, the title track of her 2017 breakout, Everybody Works, remains a balm and an anthem.
Duterte’s life became a whirlwind in the wake of Everybody Works. After spending her teen years and early 20s exploring an eclectic array of musical styles—studying jazz trumpet as a child, carrying on her Filipino family tradition of spirited karaoke, and quietly recording indie-pop songs in her bedroom alone—that accomplished album found her playing festivals around the world, sharing stages with the likes of Paramore, Death Cab for Cutie, and Mitski.
In November of 2017, seeking a new environment, Duterte left her home of the Bay Area for Los Angeles. There, she demoed new songs, while also embracing opportunities to do session work and produce, engineer, and mix for other artists (like Sasami, Chastity Belt). Reckoning with the relative instability of musicianhood, Duterte turned inward, tuning ever deeper into her own emotions and desires as a way of staying centered through huge changes. She found a community; she fell in love. And for an artist whose career began after releasing her earliest collection of demos—2015’s hazy but exquisitely crafted Turn Into—in a fit of drunken confidence on Thanksgiving night, she finally quit drinking for good. “I feel like a completely different person,” she reflects. Positivity was a way forward.
The striking clarity of her new music reflects that shift. After months of poring over pools of demos, Duterte, now 25, essentially started over. She wrote most of her brilliant new album, “Anak Ko”—pronounced Anuhk-Ko—in a burst during a self-imposed week-long solo retreat to Joshua Tree. As in the past, Duterte recorded at home (in some songs, you can hear the washer/dryer near her bedroom) and remained the sole producer, engineer, and mixer. But for the first time, she recruited friends—including Vagabon’s Laetitia Tamko, Chastity Belt’s Annie Truscott, JustusProffitt, Boy Scouts’ Taylor Vick, as well as bandmates Zachary Elasser, Oliver Pinnell and Dylan Allard—to contribute additional vocals, drums, guitars, strings, and pedal steel. Honing in on simplicity and groove, refining her skills as a producer, Duterte cracked her sound open subtly, highlighting its best parts: She’s bloomed.
Inspired by the lush, poppy sounds of 80s bands such as Prefab Sprout, the Cure, and Cocteau Twins—as well as the ecstatic guitarwork of contemporary Vancouver band Weed—Anak Ko sounds dazzlingly tactile, and firmly present. The result is a refreshingly precise sound. On the subtly explosive “Superbike,” Duterte aimed for the genius combination of “Cocteau Twins and Alanis Morissette”—“letting loose,” she says, over swirling shoegaze. “Night Time Drive” is a restless road song, but one with a sense of contentedness and composure, which “basically encapsulated my entire life for the past two years,” she says—always moving, but “accepting it, being a little stronger from it.” (She sings, memorably, of “shoplifting at the Whole Foods.”) Duterte focused more on bass this time: “I just wanted to make a more groovy record,” she notes.
The slow-burning highlight “Tenderness” begins minimally, like a slightly muffled phone call, before flowering into a bright, jazzy earworm. Duterte calls it “a feel-good, funky, kind of sexy song” in part about “the curse of social media” and how it complicates relationships. “That’s definitely about scrolling on your phone and seeing a person and it just haunts you, you can’t escape it,” Duterte says. “I have a weird relationship to social media and how people perceive me—as this person that has a platform, as a solo artist, and this marginalized person. That was really getting to me. I wanted to express those emotions, but I felt stifled. I feel like a lot of the themes of the songs stemmed from bottled up emotions, frustration with yourself, and acceptance.”
The title, Anak Ko, means “my child” in Tagalog, one of the native dialects in the Philippines. It was inspired by an unassuming text message from Duterte’s mother, who has always addressed her as such: Hi anak ko, I love you anak ko. “It’s an endearing thing to say, it feels comfortable,” Duterte reflects, likening the process of creating and releasing an album, too, to “birthing a child.” That sense of care charges Anak Ko, as does another concept Duterte has found herself circling back to: the importance of patience and kindness.
“In order to change, you’ve got to make so many mistakes,” Duterte says, reflecting on her recent growth as an artist with a zen-like calm. “What’s helped me is forcing myself to be even more peaceful and kind with myself and others. You can get so caught up in attention, and the monetary value of being a musician, that you can forget to be humble. You can learn more from humility than the flashy stuff. I want kindness in my life. Kindness is the most important thing for this job, and empathy.”
Shannon Lay is a singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles. The title to her sophomore full-length is a reference to the month she decided to quit her day job and devote herself to her music full-time, back in 2017. “Nowhere” is a song about living in the moment without fear of where the road you’re on may take you. August is out August. 23rd on Sub Pop Records.
Transcendent folk-pop artist Shannon Lay will release this August, her Sub Pop Records debut, worldwide on August 23rd. You can now watch to her latest offering “Death Up Close” which serves as the album’s centerpiece. “With that song, I wanted to recognize that everyone else is going through something and reflect on that. Don’t be so close-minded to think you’re the only one who’s got issues, in fact, find comfort in the thought that everyone is on their own journey” Lay explains. What starts as an Eastern-influenced song morphs into an avant-garde sound bath. “I had this idea of the violin ascending. Then Mikal Cronin came in with the saxophone and just blew me away. I love the idea of building a song like that, take people by surprise.”
Shannon drifts into nostalgia and loss while sitting on a couch in a familiar place we could all call home. “Death Up Close” from the Shannon Lay album “August”.
As previously reported, Shannon Lay will be a member of Ty Segall’s Freedom Band for the full album residencies in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, Berlin, and Haarlem.
August is now available from Sub Pop. LP .UK, and Europe will receive the limited Loser edition on orange vinyl (North America) and Sun Yellow vinyl (UK/EU) while supplies last.
Fans of Colleen Green probably know that blink-182 has always been an influence on her lo-fi indie punk — she released a cover of “M+Ms” off their 1995 debut album Cheshire Cat back in 2010 — and now she is releasing a full covers album of their 1997 sophomore album “Dude Ranch”. She says that she actually first recorded the album in 2011 but lost it when her computer crashed, but now the idea is finally fully coming to fruition. Colleen drastically slowed down and recorded with just her voice and a distorted bass. It’s blink-182 like you’ve never heard them before, but the melodies remain untouched and these stripped-back renditions remind you how good blink were at writing pop songs even before the TRL days.
I don’t remember where or when I got the idea to cover my favorite album of all time. , I don’t remember much of 2011. All I know is that sometime about 7/8 years ago, I decided that I was going to cover Blink 182’s “Dude Ranch” in its entirety…on bass. I borrowed a short scale from my friend Sandy Vu and gave myself 2 weeks to complete the project. 13 days later as I was applying the finishing touches, my computer started acting funny. I thought to myself, “Gee, I sure hope my computer doesn’t crash.” 14 days later, my computer crashed. I had no back ups because I always fly by the seat of my pants! I tried to recover my work to no avail. I was heartbroken, so much so that I was unable to revisit the project in earnest until October 2018. Today I can say with much pride, happiness, and relief that “Blink 182’s Dude Ranch as played by Colleen Green” is finally real and ready to be enjoyed by fans of Colleen Green and/or Blink 182. This was truly a labor of love and I hope that those fans can recognize and appreciate that. And to the band who has influenced me and my life in so many ways: Thank you.
“Dude Ranch” by Blink 182 as Played By Colleen Green available on Burger Records (2019) Released August 6th, 2019.
‘Bet My Brains’ is the lead single from Starcrawler’s forthcoming album “Devour You”, to be released on October 11th on Rough Trade Records. Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, YYYs, Arctic Monkeys), ‘Bet My Brains’ distills Starcrawler down to its essence with a massive guitar riffs, rollicking drums and a wide screen performance by Singer Arrow de Wilde that illustrates just how ready this band is to explode into the mainstream.
Devour You drops October 11th!! Limited edition version on blood marbled vinyl with a scratch + sniff sleeve available from the Rough Trade Records webstore and indie record shops!
There is transformative power bursting through the 12 songs on “Emily Alone”, the new album from indie-folk project Florist. It’s not loud or showy or self-serving or generous. It’s just there, simple and plainspoken, waiting to be engaged and willing to move through anyone who needs it. Presumably, that’s what happened to Emily Sprague, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter named in the album’s title. Last winter, she wrote and recorded Emily Alone during a period of isolation and personal reflection spurred by the unexpected death of her mother and a move across the country, away from her collaborators in Florist (the band’s home base is still listed as New York on their Bandcamp). On Emily Alone, Sprague strips down her songs to their barest elements, leaving only her voice, words and plucked acoustic guitar (plus an occasional exception) to carry the message. What’s left is not just bedroom-recorded confessional music, but pure introspection, confusion, revelation and emotion rubbed raw and exposed to the world.
These songs are not sad so much as they channel the ebbs and flows of life lived inside a human brain with startling accuracy. Perhaps you have to be in the right place—emotionally, spiritually, spatially or whatever—for Emily Alone to impact you fully. But if you’re there, you’ll feel it. And if you’re not there, that’s okay. When you’re ready, Florist will be there waiting for you.
There is a metaphysical quality to the songs as they search for meaning in existence, swaying between the mundane and the spiritual. Emily believes deeply in the magic and connectedness of all things. The album Emily Alone is the creation of a self reflective lens through which we can view that omnipresence of love and life and the energy of all things around us as well as within us.
Featuring Emily Sprague Additional Vocals by Marguerite Sprague on Double Double Whammy Records
Since the 2015 release of Drab Majesty’s debut Careless, and the release of the acclaimed sophomore album The Demonstration the following year, artist Deb Demure and collaborator Mona D. have firmly established themselves amongst the pantheon of dark synth-pop greats, establishing a devoted fan base worldwide with their singular hypnotic sound and mysterious, constantly-evolving presence.
Following intense and extensive touring in support of the first two albums, Drab Majesty escaped to the inspirational landscapes of Athens, Greece to channel the songs for their most ambitious album creation yet: Modern Mirror.
On their third album Modern Mirror, Los Angeles synth-pop duo Drab Majesty sound more majestic than ever. Their futuristic vocals, entrancing rhythms, bittersweet sentiments and lush guitars emit forces of woe and uplift that never feel contradictory. The record was inspired by the group’s trip to Greece, and they take influence from the ancient myth “Echo and Narcissus,” taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. They explore the story of the dangerously ego-driven Narcissus who falls in love with his own reflection, but it’s retold through the lens of postmodern triggers for self-obsession like technological proliferation and lack of quiet self-reflection. Drab Majesty’s lustrous synth escapades and intergalactic bleeps are just as slick as their commentary on modern day romance and personal conundrums.
Blowing the dust off the antiquarian myth of Ovid’s “Narcissus”, Drab Majesty uses its premise as groundwork for a modern reinterpretation. Each song tells a piece of the story, in which the listener’s own self-identity has become warped and dissociated through rapidly expanding technology, losing touch with the origins of their own personalities. Setting the stage as a romantic saga of antiquity, “A Dialogue” asks the listener if they are truly in love amid a building wash of guitars and reverb. Elements of classic tragedy weigh heavily in the reflection of Modern Mirror in songs like “The Other Side”, possessing a fundamental sound that is energetic, luminous and hopeful. Fusing the sonic aesthetics of predecessors like New Order and The Cure within the cautious instruction of Greek mythology and modern science fiction, Drab Majesty has birthed a hybrid of dreamy malaise, captured for a future moment.
The first single “Ellipsis”, romantically plays up the distorted concept of courting through modern technology in a world that has yet to adapt, while on “Long Division”, Deb’s resounding guitar cascades around the chorus shared with No Joy’s Jasamine White-Gluz,wistfully warning us against our vanity and self-obsession. Even when hope for everlasting love peeks through in “Oxytocin”, a sparkling and stoic track sung by Mona D., we are firmly reminded our fleeting existence.
The third single “Oxytocin” from Drab Majesty’s third album: Modern Mirror, out 7.12.19 on Dais.
The second single from Drab Majesty’s third album “Modern Mirror”, released July 12th 2019 on Dais Records. “Long Division points to an elusive impasse one may face in a personal relationship; a fundamental difference whether it be culturally, physically, or emotionally, that reaches a tipping point where both people involved have ultimately lost sight of their own identities through the futile act of trying to accommodate one another. It’s about a crafted dissonance in an attempt to harmonize.” Produced by Josh Eustis (Telefon Tel-Aviv) with guest vocals by No Joy’s Jasamine White-Gluz
Modern Mirror is a journey of self-reflection, nostalgia, love, beauty, and heartbreak told across eight addictive and emotional synth pop anthems – a seemingly classic tale delivered unblinkingly through the frame of the modern world.
Mikal Cronin has announced his fourth solo album album. “Seeker” is due out October 25th via Merge Records. Check out the Yasi Salek-directed video for his new single “Show Me.” Cronin has also announced an upcoming tour—find those dates at the Merge website.
“Show Me’ is a song about feeling small in an overwhelming world,” said Cronin. “There’s a not-quite-subtle hint of the Heartbreakers in the instrumentation and arrangement, having asked many friends to play or sing. It’s one of my favorite songs from the album, I hope you like it too.”
Seeker is Mikal Cronin’s fourth and finest full-length to date. Recorded live with a crew of close friends and engineer Jason Quever at Palmetto Studios in Los Angeles, it finds Cronin pushing his often devastating power pop into darker territory. “Fire—specifically its cycle of purging and reseeding the landscape—is a central theme to the record. Death and rebirth,” says Mikal. “I was looking for something: answers, direction, peace. I am the seeker.”
Mikal Cronin recorded Seeker with engineer Jason Quever. He was backed by Ty Segall’s Freedom Band on the album, which is his follow-up to 2015’s MCIII.
The Fat Angel Sings 