Comprised of Tim Foley and Kate Clover, indie rock duo ExSage have started to receive attention across the blogosphere for an aesthetic that’s inspired by their relocation into the desert — the surreal landscapes, baked by the sun’s blazing heat and cooled by the night sky, which reveals the indifferent faces of the stars and to exist there is to defiantly withstand its vastness and cruelty. Interestingly, the duo’s soon-to-be released EP Out of the Blue was produced by Alain Johannes, who has collaborated with Mark Lanegan, Them Crooked Vultures, Brody Dalle, and Queens of the Stone Age, and as you’ll hear on Out of the Blue’s first single “Tripwire,” the band sonically speaking sounds as though they were indebted to The Raveonettes and The Kills. In other words, enormous blazing power chords are paired with thunderous and propulsive drumming and harmonized vocals led by Clover’s pop star-like vocals, and a rousingly anthemic hook — all of which gives the song a larger than life swagger just underneath the song’s bluesy psychedelia.
The recently released video for the song is indebted to creepy, Grindhouse movies and includes a deranged doctor performing surgery without anesthesia, and his bandaged victims walking around like mummies before being driven around in the duo’s sweet Dodge Charger.