Milly is a rock band from Los Angeles led by principal songwriter Brendan Dyer and backed by Spencer Light on guitar, Yarden Erez on bass, and Zach Capitti Fenton on drums. In January, 2020, Milly drove to rural Colorado to record their new five song EP, Wish Goes On, with Corey Coffman of Gleemer at his home studio. With its sweet bounce of a melody carved into a wall of dense guitars, “Denial” is the second single released from these sessions. Milly’s new track is sadder and more subdued than their previous Wish Goes On single “Star Thistle Blossom,” which Lizzie Manno described as “the most straightforward rock song they’ve released so far” and a “delectable wash of grunge-tinted shoegaze guitars” upon its October release. “Denial” is more of an off-speed pitch, albeit one with hooks aplenty. “Galaxies wish you well / Come back again, come back alone / Do you wish that you could come back here?” sings frontman Brendan Dyer, longing for something he can’t bring himself to acknowledge that he can’t have. “We’re gonna wish on it,” he insists over a comforting blend of acoustic and electric guitar fuzz, cymbal crashes roiling as the song crescendoes, only to collapse.
‘Denial’ is about the idea of being fixated on something but knowing deep down it’s gone,” Dyer explains in a statement. “I was living in N.Y. at the time I wrote it and was going back and forth between there and Connecticut. I was really trying to capture the feeling of being alone and why it was hard for me to digest how that felt. My hometown spots feeling different after leaving, people moving on with their lives,
L.A. slowcore quartet Milly’s first new material of 2021 is the second single from their forthcoming Wish Goes On EP, due out April 9 on Dangerbird Records. “Denial” arrived Friday alongside a surreal music video, directed and animated by Mark Cheche.
Official video for “Denial,” from MILLY’s new EP ‘Wish Goes On’ coming April 9th, 2021.
Los Angeles duo Girlhouse practice the art of surrender on their latest single “the fatalist.” “I think I’ve learned that the only way to feel control in a shitty situation is to find a way to laugh about how we have no control over anything at all,” explains vocalist Lauren Luiz of the bittersweet chugger, which finds a kind of quiet liberation in letting go.
Rising artist Girlhouse, duly reflected through her latest single “The Fatalist”. Not afraid to explore and emote a dizzying headspace, Girlhouse impeccably captures the intimidation of feeling a lack of control over yourself and the world around you–something particularly relatable in everyone’s own personal current contexts.
Confessional in her lyrical style, Girlhouse’s ability to be unapologetically raw elicits a deep catharsis that feels freeing–it’s as if she’s giving everyone the greenlight to follow in her footsteps and be intrepid enough to be brutally honest too. Unabashed vocals that hold a certain authority meet soft-grunge sounds for an apt pairing that feels like they pull inspiration from the past to present a contemporary artifact.
The track continuously builds momentum, leaving you at the four-minute mark not only completely enraptured in the sonic universe of Girlhouse’s deepest cogitations, but also longing for more. With a tenacity that feels almost tangible, Girlhouse is an artist that proves the worth in being your most sincere self and we can’t wait to hear more.
100% of Bandcamp profits from “Pictures of Flowers” will be donated to Harriet’s Apothecary, an intergenerational Brooklyn based healing village led by Black Cis Women, Queer and Trans healers, artists, health professionals, magicians, activists and ancestors. The intention of Harriet’s Apothecary is to continue the rich healing legacy of abolitionist, community nurse and herbalist Harriet Tubman.
Written by Jess Williamson
Performed and recorded by Jess Williamson, Meg Duffy, and Jarvis Taveniere remotely from their homes during quarantine
Recorded in Los Angeles, April 2020Jess Williamson – Acoustic guitar, Vocals Meg Duffy – Electric guitar Jarvis Taveniere – Bass, Drums, Mellotron
Phoebe Bridgers knows how to leave an impression. The singer-songwriter made her debut as the musical guest on the February. 6th episode of Saturday Night Live, which was hosted bySchitt’s Creek star Dan Levy, with a memorable performance.
Bridgers kicked off her two-song set with “Kyoto,” the second single off her sophomore album, 2020’s Punisher. Like in the song’s video, the artist and her backup musicians sport the skeleton onesies while performing the tune, which is up for the best rock song and best rock performance Grammys.
For her second song, the 26-year-old offered up Punisher’s “I Know the End” on a darkened stage bathed in soft red lights, her skeleton onesie gone, though the baubles she wore resembled a rib cage. She once again started soft and dreamy, but about two thirds of the way into the tune, Bridgers let loose, her guitar roaring, the singer-songwriter screaming at the top of her lungs.
Bridgers eventually walked to the front of the stage toward an amp, and for the last 30 seconds or so, repeatedly smashed her guitar against the amp — causing sparks to fly — eventually giving the amp a kick for good measure and finally dropping her instrument to end the set.
Bridgers, who is based in Los Angeles, is up for a total of four Grammys this year. In addition to the two she’s earned for “Kyoto,” the musician is up for best new artist — in which she’s up against Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, Ingrid Andress and others — and best alternative music album for “Punisher“. The Grammys are set to air March 14th on CBS.
Musical guest Phoebe Bridgers performs “Kyoto” and “I Know The End” on Saturday Night Live.
The Paranoyds have made a name for themselves as one of the most exciting Los Angeles bands since forming in 2015, playing festivals like Coachella and touring with the likes of DIIV, Albert Hammond Jr., Sunflower Bean, and BRONCHO. Today the band finally announce their long-awaited debut album, “Carnage Bargain”—a raucous blend of garage rock grit, new wave swagger, classic horror film soundtrack campiness, and a myriad of other left-of-centre influences. The exhilarating ten-track LP released via Suicide Squeeze Records.
It’s ironic that the band’s moniker winds up being an apt summary of the band’s general outlook on technology and modern culture given that The Paranoyds’ humble beginnings can be traced back to a friendship forged between Staz Lindes (bass/vocals) and Laila Hashemi (keys/vocals) over Myspace in their early teens. Bonded by a shared interest in local underground music, the pair eventually moved their online friendship into the real world. Laila’s childhood friend Lexi Funston was brought into the fold and the first vestiges of The Paranoyds began to take shape. “We would all go to our friends’ shows and it hit us that we could start a band and play shows too,” Funston says. With the addition of drummer David Ruiz in 2015, the band found the perfect personnel for their sonic balance of jubilant energy and foreboding undercurrents.
To celebrate the album announce, The Paranoyds share the record’s lead single “Girlfriend Degree.” A mid-tempo stomper of clap-along beats, fuzz guitar leads, and call-to-arms vocals described by the band as an ode to “being a badass woman who’s taking time to make sure she’s doing things for herself,” “Girlfriend Degree” makes the band’s mission to reject the status quo clear on this initial track. Read a bit more about the track below, and watch the Ambar Navarro-directed (Cuco, Soccer Mommy, Stef Chura) music video.
“‘Girlfriend Degree’ is a call to arms, a reminder to be a supremely self-loving woman, to just do you. There’s all this pressure about being ‘the ideal woman,’ and it’s easy to get caught up in that—to spend your time trying to be all these things that others think you should be. Getting a ‘girlfriend degree’ is about settling, selling oneself short and not believing in yourself—valuing your partner’s beliefs or opinions over your own. It’s cool to be a girlfriend or wife or whatever, but there’s so much more to being a woman than that. This desire to be above that is also somewhat a telling of how our band came to be. We were all going to a bunch of shows and obviously having a great time and it took us a bit for us to realize that we could also make and perform our own music….and that nothing was preventing us from doing that besides ourselves. We all have power and we should use that power to exercise our own agency.
“We’re living in the dystopian future. Our lives are completely tracked and programmed, our extension of ourselves is a handheld computer with a microphone and camera that stays on while were unaware, and, on top of everything, the extreme right is gaining continuous world power,” The Paranoyds explains of its name. “What isn’t there to be paranoyd about?”
“Carnage Bargain” captures this chemistry perfectly—channelling the genre-mashing weirdness of guitar-and-keyboard provocateurs like The Intelligence on tracks like “Laundry,” the fever-dream kitsch of early B-52s on “Ratboy,” krautrock’s motorik groove on “Hungry Sam,” and the beguiling pop of Blondie on the sweet-and-salty highlight “Courtney.” The band may indeed be paranoid, but they offer a solution to our modern ills through the simple act of being an inspiring, independent, and unflappable musical force.
Pet Cemetery EP came out back in November 27th, 2020, on Suicide Squeeze Records.
Having originally been born as a solo drum machine project by Bert Hoover, Hooveriii (pronounced “Hoover Three”) has now evolved into it’s true final form – a six member band adept at creating their own brand of psychedelic space rock. And after almost a decade in, the band is set to release their sophomore album and debut for The Reverberation Appreciation Society, “Water For The Frogs”. Influenced by Iggy’s The Idiot, Bowie’s Berlin records, and Soft Machine, the LP sees the band creating their own version of prog rock, circa 2021.
In 2019, Hooveriii took their live show to Europe for the first time. Bert Hoover shares, “seeing all the old cities and beautiful landscapes while becoming closer as a band had a huge impact on this album. A lot of our favourite music came from the Krautrock scene in Germany from the late 60’s-70’s, and when we had a day off in Furth, Germany, we spent most of it writing the record,” he continues, “we were able to rehearse in an old German bunker that has been converted to rehearsal space. It definitely had a strange energy that helped give this album light.”
Sarah Tudzin released her debut album as Illuminati Hotties, “Kiss Yr Frenemies”. It was named as one of the best albums of 2018, so naturally each bit of Hotties news this year has been something worth paying attention to. Amidst touring pretty relentlessly, Tudzin’s given us a couple new releases: “I Wanna Keep Your Dog” and a cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna DanceWith Somebody,” and a standalone single called “ppl plzr”. And now, Tudzin’s back with one more new one called “Post-Everything.” As you might guess by the name, there’s a certain end-times vibe to the song. “The world’s burnin, so why the hell not,” Tudzin wrote in a note on Bandcamp before continuing, “Happy 2020.” On Twitter, she elaborated a bit more: “2019 was somehow the absolute Best & absolute Worst year of my life. so here’s a song about the apocalypse.” Fittingly, the lyrics feature snapshots of people losing it, screaming on the street in some form or another — they sound like pretty run-of-the-mill scenes in 2019, which is to say they do sound a bit like the encroaching end of the world.
Skullcrusher, the musical moniker of Los Angeles based singer/songwriter Helen Ballentine, has shared a new song, “Song for Nick Drake,” via a video for it. Ballentine spent the fall in rural New York State, working on new material with her collaborator Noah Weinman, and this is another fruit of those sessions. Ballentine and Weinman both directed the video, which seems to have been shot on VHS or some other tape format. Skullcrusher’s understated energy radiates with the atmosphere of waking up to the quiet terror of shapeless, structureless days, but it finds power in eschewing the pressures of careerism and a vapid culture of productivity. Instead, as Skullcrusher, Ballentine has the audacity to be comfortable enough with herself, and to simply accept the unknown as her life.
Ballentine had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Song for Nick Drake’ is about my relationship to the music of Nick Drake. It recalls moments in my life that are viscerally intertwined with his music, specifically times spent walking and taking the train. The song is really my homage to music and the times I felt most immersed in it.”
It follows the previous track “Farm,” a new song released in October. At the same time she also released a cover of Radiohead’s “Lift.” They followed her self-titled debut EP, released in June 2020 via Secretly Canadian.
Skullcrusher featured four tracks, written by Ballentine and produced by Noah Weinman, all about the influx of media she consumed after leaving her 9-5 day job. The EP is available digitally and on Vinyl,
Storm in Summer EP Tracklist: 01. Windshield 02. Songs for Nick Drake 03. Steps 04. Storm in Summer 05. Prefer
Why We Love Them: We simply don’t deserve Haim. The world is far too broken to fully appreciate Women in Music Part III, the sister trio’s subtly spectacular third LP, which further establishes them as more than expert pop students-turned-teachers. Released in June, WIMPIII cuts to the center of a Fleetwood Mac and Sheryl Crow mix CD-R and extracts all its sun-kissed ‘70s soft-rock (“Don’t Wanna”), ‘90s California-pop (“Gasoline”) and a list of thrilling surprises — all courtesy of a band inadvertently shouldering a genre with their breezy brilliance. Though it isn’t just what the Haim ladies accomplish with their undervalued guitar, bass and drums that make them the year’s most vital band. It’s everything else; the psych-tinged Janet Jackson tribute that is “3 AM,” the pulsing exploration of “Now I’m in It,” which sounds like Savage Garden breathlessly dancing at a Robyn concert. Their song writing has only become more dauntless since Days Are Gone put them on the map and they help rock transcend its perceived limitations in 2020 without declining to rock altogether. We bow down to Danielle, Este and Alana, our three-headed summer girl.
These sisters had a hit a few years back and Iv’e always like their cool LA vibe but this album kicked it up a notch . This song is great but the whole album is worth a few hundred listens.
Finest Moment: Pick one: “Man from the Magazine,” a percussion-free middle finger to mansplaining journalists and their dumb-ass questions (“Do you make the same faces in bed?”) or the accidentally apt “I Know Alone,” whose opening line “Been a couple days since I’ve been out” has become a coronavirus quotable (despite being written months before the pandemic). Far too many people can relate to both
In 2017, the New York Times declared, “Rock’s not dead, it’s ruled by women.” Iterations of this thesis, equal parts tone-deaf and impressed with itself, have proliferated over the last several years, as the word “women” has been whittled down to a buzzword. Women have created complicated, vulnerable, muscular music since the dawn of rock, yet every few months, someone discovers it for the first time.
While there’s plenty of genre-hopping on Women in Music Pt. III—hip-hop, reggae, folk, heartland rock, and dance—HAIM has created an album that’s defined not just by exploration, but by their strong sense of individuality. Unlike the sparkling, thoroughly modern production of 2017’s Something to Tell You, this album’s scratchy drums, murky vocals, and subtle blending of acoustic and electronic elements sound ripped straight from an old vinyl. It’s darker, heavier fare for Haim, for sure—a summer party record for a troubled summer. Haim’s instincts to veer a little more left of the dial result in an album that strikes a deft balance between the experimental and the commercial, the moody and the uplifting. You’re unlikely to hear these songs on Kroger’s in-store playlist—on which 2017’s “Little of Your Love” seems to have become a permanent staple alongside the likes of “Eye of the Tiger” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”—but these songs are riskier, and ultimately that much more rewarding.
The best album of the Haim sisters’ collective career is a smorgasbord of genres. From the R&B worship of “3AM” and “Gasoline” to the Paul Simon-referencing “Up From a Dream”—via “Man From the Magazine”‘s raw-edged raised eyebrow—the record broadens the band’s horizons while also holding onto the core pop-rock sensibility beloved by their fans. Establishing them even further as the current torchbearers of long-haired California guitar music, Women In Music Pt. III is the record that believers have long known HAIM had in them.
On Women In Music Pt. III, Haim poke fun at the trope and prove its validity. They drift from boundless joy into hazy dream states, skipping around the vibrant streets of LA and then going through the motions in a fog. WIMPIII’s sound is similarly layered; R&B slow jams, country crooners, and melodic indie-pop build on HAIM’s soft rock foundation. Some of the album’s best one-liners and biting salvos confront the experience of being othered by men — during interviews, booty calls, relationships — but there’s no mistaking who’s in control.
The singer and guitarist of Los Angeles based punk quintet SPANISH LOVE SONGS is referencing his band, but he could just as easily be talking about himself. Since forming in 2014, Spanish Love Songs certainly have been heard, from legions of underground audiences at The Fest and South By Southwest to outlets like NPR, who hailed the group’s 2018 album, “Schmaltz”, as a “wellspring of big ideas, bigger riffs and the biggest possible feelings about love, war, fear and existential crisis.”
“Schmaltz” was an album coloured by guilt and self-doubt, an insular collection of soul-searching songs that found the singer amplifying his grief while kicking back at a world that seemed to be doing its best to keep knocking him down. It was a cathartic album, one that admittedly took a lot of Slocum’s soul to create. (“I don’t want to be the band where each album is me complaining about myself for 40 minutes,” he says.)
So instead, Slocum decided to look outward for Spanish Love Songs’s third album, “Brave Faces Everyone”, released in February 2020 on the band’s new label, Pure Noise Records. Steeped in the same detail-rich storytelling of Bruce Springsteen, The Menzingers and Manchester Orchestra and filtered through the band’s sweat-soaked punk fervor, the songs on “Brave Faces Everyone” represent the situations Slocum and his bandmates — guitarist Kyle McAulay, bassist Trevor Dietrich, drummer Ruben Duarte and keyboardist Meredith Van Woert — experienced during 30-some weeks of rigorous touring during the “Schmaltz” album cycle.
These are character stories set in small-town America and anxious urban jungles alike, unfurling heart-breaking tales of addiction, depression, debt and death juxtaposed alongside looming societal bogeys like mass shootings, the opioid epidemic and climate change. They’re all at once personal vignettes and universal truths of life in the 2010s, the lines blurred between Slocum’s own experiences and those of his friends and acquaintances. Because, as he sings in “Beachfront Property,” “Every city’s the same/Doom and gloom under different names.” These are the things that affect us all.
But for all its emotional heft, Slocum doesn’t see “Brave Faces Everyone” as a pessimistic album. Rather, the album — produced by McAulay at Howard Benson’s West Valley Recording seeks to find balance between realism and optimism. It implores us to harbour less judgment and more empathy, to talk less and listen more. To understand that life never goes off the rails all at once. Rather, it’s a years-long series full of seemingly imperceptible events that snowball into life-altering issues like heroin addiction, mental illness or suicide. But just as things didn’t break overnight, happiness and redemption aren’t as simple as a flip of the switch. It’s a day-by-day, step-by-step climb we have to work to attain.
Ultimately, “Brave Faces Everyone” boldly declares that even though things might be bad, they’re not hopeless. On the appropriately named “Optimism,” Slocum sings, “Help me weather this high tide/But don’t take me out back and shoot me,” while the album-closing title track bears the album’s central thesis: “We were never broken/Life’s just very long.”
Ultimately, Spanish Love Songs are trying to break through that pessimism however they can. Sometimes that’s as simple as a hopeful lyric or soaring chorus to cut the tension in an otherwise weighty song, a brief respite that gives listeners a comforting melody to rally around.
“If you sing something loud enough and long enough,” Slocum muses, “hopefully people are able to find some peace in that.”
Experimenting with more traditional song structures and fewer forwardly caustic moments this time around haven’t dulled the band’s sound. If anything, they’ve accentuated the most important parts of it. When everything is loud and urgent, nothing is. But when Slocum’s voice swells to a roar on a song like “Generation Loss,” the undeniable power grabs you by the collar and forces you to pay attention — and that’s the difference between simply being heard and truly being understood.
The Fat Angel Sings 