I saw Vanaprasta do a live taping for a TV show and was blown away by their performance. A few weeks later, I saw them at the Satellite and the audience was just as enthusiastic.
Vanaprasta’s debut album “Healthy Geometry” came out last November, and it presents yet another niche of the growing Los Angeles indie rock scene. The band unleashes catchy, anthemic tunes throughout, creating a melodic sound that borrows heavily from elements of classic rock.
Stream “Self Indulgent Feeling“:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Track “G-” begins with a looping bass and …

From KCRW DJ Jeremy Sole:
The Decoders are a project from respected LA musicians Itai Shapira and Todd Simon (trumpeter/arranger for Mayer Hawthorne, TV On The Radio, etc.)
Both of these cats are massive talents in their instruments, as well as in vintage and contemporary recording techniques. They both are players in my recording project as well (Musaics), so I’ve been hearing whispers about this Decoders concept for a while… and sure as can be it’s as fresh as I knew it would be…
Earlier this week, they dropped by KCRW’s studios during …

Local house music producer Urulu is as mysterious a figure as his namesake and all that it implies.
That being said, his productions are some of the best new dance music coming out of LA. Although steeped in traditional classic house sounds with soulful vocal flourishes and fresh fills, the vibe of Urulu’s tracks have a laidback tempo that has DNA strains of West Coast funk boogie and R & B. Like a glossied up, Hollywood glam version of Moodymann’s Detroit rollerskate jams.
He’s got a number of forthcoming releases in 2012, and a couple of …

I must admit at the beginning of this article, that I was never a big fan of Bradley Hana Carter’s first band, Steriogram. Their Green Day-ish pop punk sound never resonated with me. When I was at Indie 103.1 we played their hit “Walkie Talkie Man” in regular rotation. It burned on me pretty quick, but it was nice to see a band from New Zealand raising some eyebrows here in the states.
Today, I am a huge fan of Carter’s music thanks to his new band NO. Carter settled in LA in …

As local heroes go, SFV Acid (neé Zane Reynolds) is, in my humble opinion, one of the most exciting artists making music in LA right now.
Trafficking in a lo-fi deep acid house sound that would be perfectly at home on a Rephlex Records compilation, SFV Acid simultaneously embodies a uniquely 21st century LA punker than punk aesthetic.
It was may great pleasure to start 2012 with him in studio for a Guest DJ set (which you can catch in the archives here) and he’s offered us an unreleased track called “Illegal Rave at Pierce” for …

The band Electric Flower formed in an elevator. Seriously.
Okay, let me back up a bit… In 2006, Imaad Wasif and Josh Garza were in London’s BBC studio for a Top Of The Pops performance where they got stuck in an elevator. A chance meeting, but one that was easy to remember. Three years later they met up in LA and began jamming for real. Electric Flower was born.
Electric Flower has a massive sound for a duo. Imaad Wasif has performed with many bands over the past 15 years including lowercase, …

At the turn of the millenium it became de riguer for bands of 20 somethings in leather jackets to look back and ape bands like Television, Gang of Four, & Talking Heads. Mining “Post-punk” and then labeling your band “post-punk” became the genre equivalent of microwaving a burrito, and instead of honoring the spirit of “post-punk” people were simply borrowing chord progressions and skinny tie aesthetics.
Consequently, in a pretty short span of time, this lead to a kind of homogeneity that lead to a quick (microwave burrito) stale-ification of the concept. However, it …

Pageants is the new project featuring Rebecca Coleman from Avi Buffalo and Devin O’Brien.
When I saw the band perform at the Bootleg Theatre a few months ago, it was a duo performing with a drum machine. The crowd was small, but the attendees were telling. Mostly writers and other music industry folks. One listen to the band reveals why.
Gorgeous soaring vocals with a familiar garage-y sound lending some credibility to the current surge in female-fronted indie rock. The vocals are key for me because while a lot of the other …

A lot of tiny black punk hearts were broken when legends of The Smell, Mika Miko called it quits in late 2009.
The various members (rooted firmly by the rambunctious (and brilliantly snotty) Clavin sisters) decided they wanted time to finish school and invest in other life endeavors. Like the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon where the iris closes and everything goes black, it seemed that those (with the tiny black punk hearts) would never hear from the Clavin sisters again.
However, thankfully, after one of the Clavin sisters returned to …

DJ Mario Cotto picked Poolside’s “Do You Believe” as the potential “song of the summer” and while that may not have entirely come to fruition, a couple other KCRW Djs are expressing support for the band now too!
DJ Raul Campos has been spinning “Take Me Home” and I heard him singing their praises, and anxiously anticipating their full length release, on air. The track is out now as part of Aeroplane’s “In Flight Entertainment compilation and will be on the new album, due next year.
Poolside – Take …