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 …

From KCRW DJ Chris Douridas:
When I first met this lovely Georgia peach she was still bartending at Hotel Cafe, the famed Hollywood haven for up-and-comer songwriter types that birthed her.
This was long past the point of her budding notoriety as a girl with solid songs and a soft-spoken Southern allure (her curious moniker comes from having Japanese ancestry on her mother’s side).
Tonight Meiko stops by School Night -my weekly clubnight showcasing up-and-comers, willing icons, and favorite DJs – to celebrate her finest work yet.
Her “I’m In Love” EP features the …

I’ve worked at KCRW for Jason Bentley’s entire tenure as Music Director and when he really loves a record, I can just tell. As is the case with Honey Honey’s forthcoming release “Billy Jack” on Lost Highway Records (out October 24).  It’s clear the Americana sounds of LA-based duo of Suzanne Santo and Ben Jaffe have captured his attention.
Jason had thrown the CD into his player knowing nothing about the band (it was an advance copy that didn’t even have album art!) and was immediately taken aback by the lyrics …

By DJ Valida -
One of the perks of being the DJ and Talent Coordinator for one of West Hollywood’s most intimate live music series, Desert Nights at the Standard in Hollywood, is being in a position to meet an incredible array of artists from all walks of life. Some are well-established, having 5+ records behind them, but some are in the early spring of their career…perhaps a little rough around the edges, but with a promise that something great will ensue, if they just stick with it.
And every once in …

There’s a saying in Spanish, “Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres.” It literally translates to, “Tell me who you walk with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
If this is the case, then LA’s Boom Bip, is a psychedelic wizard like his Neon Neon collaborator Gruff Rhys, a haunting siren like Cate Le Bon, a surly disco-punk like Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, and truly more than anything else an excellent spacey soundscape creator like M83, Four Tet, and Mogwai.
Earlier this decade, Boom Bip (known to his familials as Bryan Charles …

The Peach Kings’  Paige Wood and Steven Dies won an unsigned artist competition thrown by Paste Magazine and Alternative Apparel late last year and – even though I’m yet to see them live myself — I’m sure it’s due in no small part to the sweetness of their self-described “gypsydelic” sound and their reported on-stage chemistry. In the time since, they’ve moved to Los Angeles, toured extensively, and have put together an album called, “Trip Wop” (which you can sample via their Soundcloud page.)
A fitting name as one could give them, Peach Kings has a sound has …