Tag: Los Angeles CA

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Index Shares a Bruising and Forceful Ripper

Formed last year, and currently split between Los Angeles and Philadelphia, Index — Alan Creedon (he/him) and Alex Lichtenauer (they/them) — is a subversive, electronics-influenced hardcore punk band featuring two close friends, who are also former members of Control Top, an act that I’ve covered here on this site. When Creedon and Lichtanauer started the band, it quickly became clear that their band’s sound would grow out of their friendship. Stripping away the dense orchestration of their previous band, Index sees the duo leaning into sweaty, visceral physicality with Creedon’s guitar intuitively locked into Lichtanauer’s drums, navigating complex rhythms. The result is music that feels as immediate as it does immediate — with the two longtime collaborators and friends reinvigorated by the act of creating something altogether new together.

Produced by Arthur Rizk, the duo’s debut single “Cellophane” was written across coasts, recorded at Show Me The Body‘s Corpus Studios and released through Lichtanaeur’s Get Better Records. The single is a bruising, eardrum shattering ripper that pairs snarling and roaring hardcore punk fury with pummeling rhythm and howled vocals. “Cellophane” captures someone barely holding it together in a brutal, absurdist hellscape. It’s the sort of song that would turn a room into a sweaty, moving mass of bodies.

“‘Cellophane’ is a song about self-deception and the rituals we perform to convince ourselves we’re holding it together,” the bicoastal based duo explain. “Musically, we wanted to move away from anything riff-based and write in a way that felt fluid and unstable. The two of us function as a single organism, threading through shifting time signatures rather than locking into them. We were interested in the physicality of electronic body music pushed through a hardcore framework. Something precise and controlled, but still capable of impact in a room.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ Primitive Ring Shares a Bluesy, Black Sabbath-Styled Ripper

Loa Angeles-based power trio Primitive Ring — Bert Hoover (bass, vocals), Charles Moothart (guitar, vocals) and Jon Modaff (drums) — formed back in 2024 when Hoover and Moothart came together seeking a new creative outlet. They hauled amps and drums into bars to hone their sound, quickly settling into a sound that aimed to capture the primal essence of rock,

Last year, the band release four 7 inches on four different labels — Greenway Records, In The Red Records, Reverberation Appreciation Society and Fuzz Club. They closed out a busy year by recording their self-titled full-length debut at Echo Park-based Station House Studio with Mark Rains.

Their 11-song, self-titled, full-length debut dropped today through In The Red Recordings. Clocking in at 42 minutes, the album showcases the distinct writing styles of each member, but while anchored around an overall aesthetic of a spawning of a collective vision. The result is a pummeling, psychedelic joyride that arrives on the heels of a recent tour supporting Ty Segall.

The album features the previously released “Lies From The Other Side,” “Heads Will Roll,” and the album’s latest single “The Callous Man” Beginning with a bluesy Pink Floyd meets Cream intro, “The Callous Man” quickly morphs into an early Black Sabbath-styled ripper in which the musicians’ dexterous and muscular playing is the star of the show. Play loud and rock out y’all.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Night Talks Shares Strutting and Defiant “People Pleaser”

Los Angeles-based trio Night Talks — Soraya Sebghati (vocals), Jacob Butler (guitar, synth, vocals) and Josh Arteaga (bass, synth, vocals) — features three lifelong friends, who wanted to start a band. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the three Angelenos are also filmmakers and film lovers, because Los Angeles, after all. Their music is sparkly alt-rock/indie rock that’s inspired as much by the films they’ve created and consumed, as much by LCD Soundsystem and Queens of the Stone Age. Fittingly, their work is centered around cinematic stories, dance floor friendly grooves and intricate layers of sound, meant to transport you to a dance floor anywhere you’re listening to their music.

The trio’s 2022 effort Same Time Tomorrow featured “On and On” KROQ’s #1 Locals Only song of the year. Written and produced during the pandemic, the band was able to create an entire visual world of music videos for each track of the album. As a result of both the album and its music videos, the Los Angeles-based trio received rapturous praise and coverage from GrimyGoods, Buzzbands LA and more, as well as airplay from KROQ’s Locals Only. Their songs have been featured on playlist like Fresh Finds, All New Rock and All New Alternative.

Building upon a growing profile, the band has opened for the likes of Couch, Circa Waves, Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner and Kississippi. Last year, the band returned to the studio with a fresh pop-forward approach to their songwriting for a new album. Those recording sessions resulted in the release of two singles, “Shadows On The Run” and “Targets” feat Grammy Award-nominated, genre-defying songwriter, producer and guitarist Cory Wong. The collaboration can trace its origins back to 2024, when Night Talks’ Soaya Segbhati appeared as a surprise guest at several shows on Wong’s 2024 tour.

This year, they did a Jam In The Van session and with a renewed energy and big plans ahead, they’re gearing up for a big year. The Los Angeles trio’s latest single, the Eric Palmquist co-written and produced “People Pleaser”features a disco and pop-leaning groove, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses and Segbhati’s soulful, powerhouse delivery. The song is a defiant celebration of a woman finally putting herself first, instead of bending over backwards to people people who aren’t remotely worth her time.

“‘People Pleaser’ is a celebratory song about overcoming your tendencies to put everyone else first, and not wasting time with a person who makes you bend for them constantly,” Night Talks’ Sebghati explains, “Lyrically, we wanted it to be vague whether it’s about a friend or a partner, since this kind of dynamic can apply to any relationship.”The band’s Jacob Butler adds, “We tried to create something more sparse than songs we’ve done before, with fewer layers that each serve to either be either funky or percussive; even the acoustic guitars feel more like shakers in the track.”

Directed by Logan Sage, the accompanying video for “People Pleaser” is a slick, feverish yet textured daydream that features the band’s Sebghati singing, dancing and vamping it up in a studio and various locations in and around Los Angeles. Shot at the band’s Night Talks HQ, Butler says, “We shot on three different cameras, one regular, one with an old TV zoom lens, and a VHS, so that gave the video a bit of a multimedia effect that added to the daydreaming angle.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Healing Power of Horses Share Slinky “i wait, i sink”

The Healing Power of Horses is a mysterious and emerging East Anglia, UK-based duo, who defy easy categorization, as they prefer. They’ve spent too much time in the attic making music and not enough time outside, and as a result, they’re pallid, bug-eyed, knock-kneed and on and on.

The duo caught the attention of Los Angeles-based section1, who signed the UK-based duo and released their debut single, “i wait, i sink.” “i wait, i sink” is a slinky and sultry bit of Garbage-like trip hop that rattles, shakes and stomps about the room before fading out into the ether. Their debut single showcases a remarkably self-assured outfit that can craft a brooding yet sexy tune with incredibly catchy hooks.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Alex Amen Returns with Homesick and Weary “California Blues”

Alex Amen is a rising, 26 year-old Texas-born, Los Angeles-based indie folk/country singer/songwriter. When he was four, he took up piano and studied with the same Houston-based jazz pianist through the end of high school. The rising, young country folk artist started playing guitar in his mid-teens after discovering Nirvana, Neil Young and the like. When he was 18, Amen relocated from Texas to California to study filmmaking — with the intention of making documentaries about rock climbing, one of his lifelong passions.

After one semester, he dropped out to focus on music full-time and moved to the Dittman Family Commune, an Anaheim-based commune with historic ties to the countercultural movements of the mid 1960s, where he started his first band, a psychedelic folk rock outfit named American Slang in 2017.“The commune was a crazy place to live—there were hippies and punks and skaters, all in this beautiful house that used to be on six acres of strawberry fields but now it’s surrounded by strip malls,” the Texan-born singer/songwriter says. ““The house was owned by a professor who’d bought it in the mid-’60s and still lived there with his family, so it had this fascinating history with the anti-war movement and renowned civil-rights/psychedelic activists from that time. We’d have these big communal meals every day and debate art and God and food and politics. It was a pretty amazing place to live for a while.”

The band broke up shortly after its formation. And Amen relocated yet again from Southern California to an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound. Over the course of the next three years, Amen spent n relative isolation, taking up interests in mycology, mountaineering, poetry and wooden boat building. But as the years began to pass, he felt an increasing need to return to California to pursue music. 

In January 2023, Amen self-produced his debut EP, last year’s The Zorthian Tapes in a self-built studio at Altadena, CA’s historic Zorthian Ranch. He now resides in Los Angeles, releasing music among the city’s growing folk/Americana/country scene and playing shows across North America and elsewhere. 

The past 18 months or so have been very busy: Last year he toured with Folk Bitch Trio, a tour that included a stop at Baby’s All Right. He has also made the rounds of the international festival circuit, playing Pitchfork Festival London and Pitchfork Festival Paris, Newport Folk Festival, Iceland Airwaves, Austin City Limits and Outside Lands. And he participated in the Americana Music Association‘s annual Grammy Eve concert at the Troubadour to honor the legendary Neil Young. 

The rising young singer/songwriter recently signed to ATO Records, who will be releasing his highly-anticipated debut Sun of Amen on June 12, 2026. The album will include “Cabin by the Sea,” which features some gorgeous and expressive pedal steel from Tommy de Bourbon and strutting bass from Grammy-nominated Billy Mohler, and the album’s second and latest single “California Blues.”

Subtly channeling a mix of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and the Laurel Canyon sound, “California Blues” features a homesick vagabond and wandering troubadour narrator, who illuminates an uneasy contrast between the quintessential California dream and its lived reality of heartbreaking isolation and desperation. “‘California Blues’ is a song I wrote years before I ever lived in California that somehow expressed the things I felt living there years later,” says Amen. “More than any other song made during my time in California it touched on the balance between excitement and isolation one can face when they chase their dreams out West.”

Amen is currently on tour. And along with the new single, he announces a summer run of tour dates that includes a July 29, 2026 stop at Elsewhere Rooftop. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Womack Sisters Share Strutting and Urgent “Chauffeur”

Rising Los Angeles-based soul trio The Womack Sisters — Kucha, Zeimani and BG — can trace the origins of their careers to their childhood: The trio were singing before they could even walk. They grew up on stages and in studios across the globe, singing behind their parents, as well as their legendary uncle, Bobby Womack. And adding to The Womack Sisters’ remarkable pedigree, their grandfather was the iconic Sam Cooke. 

No matter where they called home at the time — London, Thailand, Amsterdam, Kenya, West Virginia, The Bahamas — music and family were always a constant at the center of their lives. Of course, as the sisters grew up, each with their own respective journeys, experiences and heartaches, they managed to find their own voices and their own path.

Each member of the trio has their own individual vocal, but they playfully trade leads and effortlessly (and perfectly) blend their harmonies in a way that only siblings can. 

Back in 2016, a mutual friend introduced The Womack Sisters to Daptone Records co-owner and producer Gabriel Roth, a.k.a. Bosco Mann, who heard them sing and fell quickly and deeply in love with their voices. Shortly after, they met, they went to Daptone’s Riverside, CA-based Penrose Studios to record their label debut, “If You Want Me“/”I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye).”

The rising Los Angeles trio’s long-awaited self-titled, full-length debut is slated for an August 14, 2026 through Daptone Records. The album’s latest single “Chauffeur” is a strutting bit of old-school-inspired soul that showcases the trio’s remarkable vocal range, impeccable sense of harmony and their deeply personal, lived-in lyrics.

On “Chauffeur,” the sisters recount the trials, tribulations they each faced while trying to make ends meet as Uber drives. In each of their respective verses, they recount the hustle and drive required to make ends meet — by any legal means possible — while having greater ambitions, and grappling with the futility of trying to stack meager fares into rent money. While deeply soulful, the song evokes the drive, unease, desperation and seething frustration of someone who has to grind — to barely survive. And it’s rooted in the plain language of struggle and cash flow.

“’Chauffeur’  is about the hustle of life that we all are in – the day to day, trying to survive, and looking forward to your day in the sun,” The Womack Sisters’ Zeimani Womack says. “It’s a song for the underdogs, and the encouragement to keep pushing. Things can be rough and get a little rocky, but as long as you have the faith, you will make it.”

Directed by Shauna Presto, the stylishly shot accompanying video features each of The Womack Sisters as the song’s titular chauffeur, driving passengers who seem completely unconcerned sit in the back seat. They may be struggling to survive but they have their dignity and their dreams of making it.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Dominque and the Diamonds Share Heartbreakingly Gorgeous “I Don’t Mind”

Led by Colombian-American frontwoman Dominque Gomez, Los Angeles-based country band Dominique and the Diamonds can trace their origins back to 2024: the band came together on a whim, after Gomez was asked to perform a country set at the local summertime concert series The Grand Ole Echo. 

Friends from cosmic country outfit Caravan 222 and rock band Triptides were recruited to play as Gomez’s backing band, and over the course of the subsequent year started to gain attention locally for a sound that seemingly channeled Linda Ronstadt, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Townes Van Zandt and the Laurel Canyon sound — but with a contemporary feel. 

The Los Angeles-based outfit’s Glenn Brigman-produced full-length studio debut album Honky Tonk Queen is slated for a June 26, 2026 release. Recorded at Crestline, CA-based Skyforest Sound, the group tracked the album’s material on tape with a Tascam 388 and then mixed digitally, offering that old-timey/classic grit while being remarkably modern. “The recording sessions for Honky Tonk Queen had such a family vibe to them,” Brigman says. “The band would leave the city behind and trek up to my cabin in the mountains where we recorded on tape, built fires, listened to Grateful Dead records, drank wine… I even made some homemade country biscuits for breakfast just to make sure we had all the vibes dialed in properly. And of course we celebrated after the last session with a night out at the local mountain saloon.”

Brigman is also heavily featured on every song playing a variety of vintage Rhoes, Wurlitzer, piano, Mellotron, organ and some lead guitar, making Brigman the unofficial fifth member of the band.

Honky Tonk Queen reportedly sees the Los Angeles-based quartet summoning the spirt of 1970s Sunset Strip and Laurel Canyon, weaving vintage-era country storytelling with shimmering, reverb-kissed pedal steel and gorgeous harmonies and melodies. While their sound openly and lovingly draws from the likes of The Flying Burrito Brothers, Exile from Main Street-era Stones, Harvest-era Neil Young and Townes Van Zandt, the album’s material never feels imitative; in fact, the band reinterprets those influences through a distinctly contemporary lens in which dreamy and cosmic textures meet down-to-earth, lived-in storytelling.

Fittingly, the album is the product of Dominique Gomez’s comfortably poised footing as a California-based country artist. “I’m a vocalist first. But I grew up singing all kinds of genres, country being one of them. In my younger days, I couldn’t really decide on which one I wanted to pursue more because I just loved it all,” Gomez says. As a working songwriter, who has worked in the worlds of sync and music libraries since 2020, the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter found strength and reassurance in country. “I’ve always written different types of songs; soul, pop, rock, country, R&B, blues, etc. But I kept getting hired to write more and more country songs,” she recalls. This helped pushed Gomez to dive deeper within country, and the release of the band’s debut will mark one of many milestones in her career.

Representation is central to the album. The Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter is proudly Latina and she carries that identity into every performance. Her visibility and leadership are deeply intentional: to create a space where her community feels safe, seen and accepted in a genre that admittedly has a troubled history and is still evolving — albeit sometimes, slower than it should. ““I had my hesitations of getting involved in country music for many reasons, but being a daughter of Colombian immigrants was by far the biggest reason why I didn’t think I would fit in. I’m half white and half Colombian but very Latina presenting.”

But as the band progressed and began to build a fanbase, she quickly realized how important her role was, “Connecting with our fans on tour is what really did it for me. In Sacramento, I had a girl come up to me after the show and tell me, ‘I love country music but I don’t feel safe in those spaces being Latina. Because of you, I feel safe to love it now,'” Gomez recalls. “Representation matters and I hope to continue to deliver safety and inclusion to everyone who comes to our shows or listens to our music.” Though the band sounds nostalgic, they’re also a promise — that classic country can expand its circle, embrace new voices and still honor the soulful and gritty roots that inspired it.

Honky Tonk Queen‘s latest single, album title track “I Don’t Mind” is a classic country-styled ballad that showcases some gorgeous, shimmering pedal steel, Gomez’s mesmerizing delivery and her lived-in, story-as-song driven songwriting rooted in a mix of heartache, uncertainty, hope and gratitude.

“I moved to LA in 2021 for music, but the entire reason I ended up in southern CA in the first place was from fleeing a dangerous relationship in the Bay Area,” Gomez recalls. “I didn’t want to leave West Marin. I was heartbroken over that, not so much the relationship itself. I had plans of making it back to that small coastal town I lived in, but when I found out my ex had planted roots there, I knew it wouldn’t be safe for me to go back.” Though Gomez’s heart will always live in that small town, she also knew that Los Angeles had much bigger plans for her

“Moving to LA was the best decision of my life. Yes, what I had experienced was terrible, but unfortunately, I don’t think I would have ended up here if I hadn’t gone through it all. There would be no Dominique and the Diamonds, no songwriting opportunities, no touring. This incredible, dream-like life that I live now because of this project would have never existed. So in the end, I don’t mind that my ex took that old dream away from me. This is exactly where I’ve always wanted to be all along.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sugar World Shares Buzzy “Terra Incognita”

Los Angeles-based duo Sugar World — Ryan and Katryn Stanley — can trace its origins back to 2013: The duo started their careers in earnest a member of the Tallahassee-based bedroom pop outfit Naps. After Naps split up in 2016, Ryan and Katryn Stanley started releasing a series of singles and EP as Sugar World, which saw the pair crafting a sound that’s an idiosyncratic mix of lo-fi, twee pop and fuzzy electronica.

The duo released their Sugar World full-length debut, Lost & Found back in 2022. But since 2024, the Los Angeles-based duo have been increasingly exploring a more digital sound that draws from noise pop, hyper pop and underground internet hip-hop that features fuzzy, distorted guitar noise and blown out autotuned vocals.

Their sophomore album supercassettevision is slated for release later this year. The album, which will include the previously released “In Magazines,” will see the band further cement what they’ve dubbed a “new version of classic twee pop for the 2020s” that combines catchy melodies with harsher noisy elements.

supercassettevision’s second and latest single “Terra Incognita” derives its title from the Latin phrase “unknown land,” and sonically seems to channel a woozily lysergic synthesis of Mogwai and Evil Heat-era Primal Scream. The band explains that the song “was an experiment to see if we could bring our indie rock and jangle pop songwriting into a sonic environment inspired by electronic music and digicore. It’s fundamentally about making a bunch of money and then putting that money into car, and then driving the car off a cliff.”

Fittingly, the accompanying visual is comprised of fuzzy, VHS-style shot footage, treated in harsh color negatives. The result is a video that videos the lysergic buzz of the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TANGIENTS Share Dream-like “The Ether”

Los Angeles-based duo TANGIENTS — multi-instrumentalists Chelsea Ray and Be Hussey — specialize in a unique take on shoegaze that draws from 80s post-punk, 90s shoegaze and dream pop anchored around Chelsea Ray’s dream-like delivery […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: ssiv Shares Gorgeous, Painterly “all the time”

ssiv is an emerging Danish indie out that features three, individually accomplished musicians:

  • Stephen (bass, vocals), an American-born musician, who recorded and toured for over seven years as a member of Los Angeles-based psych rock band Triptides, an act that has made the run of the global festival circuit with sets at Desert Daze and LEVITATION France. He’s a founding member of experimental pop band Cosmo Gold. And he has a solo recording project Little Rituals.

  • Sasha (guitar, vocals) is a Copenhagen-based multi-instrumentalist, who originally began her career in earnest as a jazz singer, before gradually moving towards writing her own original material, which saw her experimenting across genres and styles. Since then, the Danish-born and-based artist has become a local underground scene stalwart working in a number of different projects singing, playing bass, guitar and piano.

  • Sara (drums, vocals) is a Copenhagen-based drummer rooted in pop and indie music. She is drawn to what she describes as “the living improvisation between musicians — the presence and spontaneity that allow a song to expand beyond itself.” She has played in a number of Danish-based acts including Noras Have, Radiant Arcadia, Højkvist, Kara Moon, Gurli Octavia and Josa Barck. Currently she plays with Ameli Dot and Johanne.

ssiv can trace the origin back to when Sara and Stephen shared a rehearsal room and decided to jam. After some jam sessions, Sara invited her long-time collaborator and friend Sasha to join in. Their first session as a trio, which they recorded, became “a beautiful, 2-hour fluid improvisation,” as they described.

Listening back, they realized that they had many ideas already taking root. They counted meeting, developing fragments from those early recordings and occasionally writing lyrics together on-the-fly. Eventually, the trio decided to call it a band, although they didn’t originally intend to start one. As they explain, “we didn’t want to ruin the magic.”

The band’s name manages to reflect that carefree attitude. “It’s an ‘s’ for each of other names, it means nothing really — a ‘non-name’ for our ‘non-band.'”

Sonically, the trio work in a trust-based space between dream pop, psych pop and indie folk, rooted in collective improvisation and strict limitations with arrangements anchored around guitar, bass, drums and vocals, and drawing from the likes of Galaxie 500, Low, Yo La Tengo and Big Thief. They view their work as quietly human in a cultural moment increasingly defined by generative AI systems and perfectionism.

The Copenhagen-based trio’s debut EP, 2024’s ssiv 1 drew from their first jam session, while their sophomore effort, between 1 and 2, which was released earlier this year was “made from spontaneous improvisations from another gathering.”

Their latest single “all the time” is a gorgeous, painterly tune that seemingly channels Slowdive and Forever So-era Husky that feels both improvised and deliberately crafted while showcasing their equally gorgeous harmonies.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Crocodiles Shares Noisy and Swaggering “Time Is Wasting Me”

Crocodiles‘ Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell have had a nearly 30 year history together: After initially become acquainted at a local Anti-Racist Action meeting, Welchez and Rowell found their respective teenage bands booked on the same bill at a punk gig hosted by a local Mexican restaurant in their native San Diego.

As their mutual friend Russell Cash put it in a previous band bio, a young Welchez watched in awe as a teenage Rowell clambered up a confused family’s table and proceeded to bash the living hell out of his cheap guitar. When his set was through, Charlie melted into he crowd and found himself awestruck as the young Welchez took the stage and proceeded to shriek, croon, howl and spit his way through his own band’s allotted 20 minutes.

When the show ended, the pair found each other, expressed their mutual admiration, and over a shared Coke agreed to dissolve their respective bands and work together.

After a few false starts, the duo found their footing professionally with noise punk outfit The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower. They spent five years crisscrossing the country, playing every dump that would let them play, while building a cult following. They met and inspired other like-minded freaks — and occasionally, they’d get beaten up by feral rednecks. Eventually the band imploded in a crowd of poverty, frustration and addiction. But Welchez and Rowell kept their partnership going.

After several years experimenting with their songwriting and sound, and trying out various lineups and different names, they decided to kick out the half-assed, half-committed losers and jokers they ere working with at the time and replaced them with a beat-up, old drum machine. They then set out to work on the batch of songs that would become Crocodiles debut, 2009’s Summer of Hate.

18 years later, Welchez and Rowell have proven to be restlessly creative and endlessly shape-shifting bouncing between garage rock, psych punk, noise pop, art gaze and more. They’re relocated multiple times with stints residing in San Diego, New York, Paris, Mexico City, London, and Los Angeles. But a few a couple of things have remained: They’ve continued to tour incessantly, bringing their unique brand of rock to fans in almost every corner of the globe. And they’ve never wavered on their teenaged mission to help achieve other escape a life of drudgery, boredom and expectation through music, art, friendship, and of course, adventure.  

The duo’s forthcoming album ninth album, Greetings From Hell is slated for an April 24, 2026 release through Indianapolis and L.A.-based Invisible Hits. The album’s latest single, album opening track, the swaggering and noisy “Time Is Wasting Me” is pure, classic Crocodiles — forceful, crunchy riffs, the duo’s unerring knack for catchy, earworm-y hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming paired with Welchez’s punchy sneer. It’s a song meant to be played at ear drum shatteringly loud levels.

Directed by Sam Macon and edited by Eric Arsnow, the accompanying video is a deft mix of live concert photography, collage and animation that captures the swaggering and frenetic pulse at the core of the song.

The duo will be embarking on a short run of tour dates to support the new effort. Hopefully, they’ll be more dates soon. Perhaps an NYC date?

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: st. art Shares Shimmering “Lonely People (Special Edition)”

st. art is a Los Angeles-based collective of self-described “quantum artists.” In a a lengthy statement, the collection writes: “We do not create — we tune the field.

We are synthesizers of probabilities.

Our canvas is the energy field.

We are the Quantum Synthesizer. We assemble reality from probabilities, synthesize worlds from sensations, and create music from fields and meaning. We do not simply play notes — we give birth to new layers of being, shifting the “quantum” states of perception. For us, silence and light are equal oscillators. We are the voice of the Universe, passing through the soul. . . .”

The Los Angeles-based collective’s latest single “Lonely People (Special Edition)” is a sleek, futuristic banger featuring layers of glistening and twinkling synths and a supple and soulful bass line paired with thumping beats and a chopped up sample from The Beatles‘ “Eleanor Rigby.” The result is a song that places a beloved and familiar song within a bold, completely novel and modern context while being accessible.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Cherry Bomb Shares Glistening and Anthemic “Digital Girl”

For over a decade, the Los Angeles-based artist Mandy Lee has led acclaimed alt pop outfit MisterWives with her distinctly compelling vocal and commanding stage presence through four studio albums, a live album and a deluxe album, several tours and a run of the global festival circuit.

Earlier this year, Lee debuted her solo recording project Cherry Bomb with the attention-grabbing, upbeat banger “Never Be Me (M★ther★cker),” which sees the MisterWives frontperson boldly shaping a sonic universe that’s completely her own — while blending party bops with profundity.

Lee’s latest Cherry Bomb single “Digital Girl” is a slickly produced, rousingly anthemic bop anchored around glistening synth arpeggios that seemingly channels early Lady Gaga and Madonna while confessing a deep-seated frustration and annoyance with the hyper-connected social media world.

Directed by frequent collaborator Matty Vogel, the accompanying video for “Digital Girl,” evokes the constant overstimulation of the modern world with harsh contrasts, flashing images and impossible shapes crammed together– in the same frame.

“Who doesn’t want to smash their phone in 2026 and be met with confetti to celebrate?” Lee asks. “In this hyper-digital day and age, it’s near impossible to not fall down the algorithmic rabbit hole of comparison spirals, curated perfection, and infinite doomscrolling. I wanted to visually represent the tension that exists between conforming to the pressure or rebelling against it and what it feels like when the two coincide.”

Through “Digital Girl,” Lee sees Cherry bomb as a symbol of fiery resistance to the pressures of modernity. “I hope she is a much needed reprieve from the Digital World that lives in the palm of our hand.” She adds, “‘Digital Girl’ is my love/hate confessional to my dreams and the systems they exist within. An unsettling reflection of modernity and how much we sacrifice who we really are in response to who we are told to be.” As her first song she wrote for her solo project, the new track “ignited the spark and unapologetic energy that I needed for this project — a total rejection of the impossible shapes we are constantly pressured to bend to.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Alex Amen Shares Breezy “Cabin by the Sea”

Alex Amen is a rising, 26 year-old Texas-born, Los Angeles-based indie folk/country singer/songwriter. When he was 18, Amen relocated from Texas to California to study filmmaking. After one semester, he dropped out and moved onto the Dittman Family Commune, a commune with historic ties to the countercultural movements of the mid 1960s. While on the commute, he formed his first band in 2017. The band broke up shortly after, resulting in his relocating from Southern California to an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound.

Over the course of the next three years, Amen spent in relative isolation, taking up interests in mycology, mountaineering, poetry and wooden boat building. But as the years began to pass, he felt an increasing need to return to California to pursue music.

In January 2023, the Texan-born artist began self-production his debut EP, last year’s The Zorthian Tapes in a self-built studio at Altadena, CA’s historic Zorthian Ranch. He now resides in Los Angeles, releasing music among the city’s growing folk/Americana/country scene and playing shows across North America and elsewhere.

Just in the past year, he has toured with Folk Bitch Trio, a tour that included a stop at Baby’s All Right. He has also made the rounds of the international festival circuit, playing Pitchfork Festival London and Pitchfork Festival Paris, Newport Folk Festival, Iceland Airwaves, Austin City Limits and Outside Lands. And he participated in the Americana Music Association‘s annual Grammy Eve concert at the Troubadour to honor the legendary Neil Young.

The rising young singer/songwriter recently signed to ATO Records, who will be releasing his highly-anticipated debut album late this spring. He also announced that he signed to Rick Rubin’s American Songs/PULSE Music Publishing. Adding to a what may be a breakthrough year, he has a busy touring schedule that incudes a just started, month-long NYC residency across three boroughs, performances at Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion at SXSW, Analog Reunion Festival and Green River Festival. (As always, tour dates below.)

In the meantime, “Cabin by the Sea,” his debut album’s first single is informed by his proclivity for nature and his time spent at the Dittman Family Commune and the Puget Sound. Featuring some gorgeous and expressive pedal steel from Tommy de Bourbon, strutting bass from Grammy-nominated Billy Mohler, Amen’s deftly plucked guitar, accompanied by his easy-going John Denver-like yet subtly Texan drawl singing lyrics describing a simple yet beautiful scene — a bluebird that he sees flying near his cabin. And naturally, he envies the birds ease, simplicity and freedom.

The result is a song that sounds a bit like a mix of classic Nashville-era country and Laurel Canyon-era folk while showcasing a songwriter that pairs poetry and songcraft with a breezy ease.