Tag: Los Angeles CA

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Faetooth Returns with Bruising “White Noise”

Led by Jenna Garcia (vocals, bass), Los Angeles-based outfit Faetooth specializes in a sound that they’ve dubbed “fairy-doom:” a unique and eclectic amalgamation of doom metal paired with vocals that alternate between spellbinding melodies to guttural shrieks and howls. 

Right as last week closed out, the Los Angeles-based outfit announced that their highly-anticipated sophomore album Labyrinthine will be slated for a September 5 release digitally through AWAL and on vinyl and CD by Flenser. The sophomore album will reportedly see the band further establishing their “fairy-doom” sound while embracing a newly softened, more intimate tone, anchored around emotional rawness. Throughout the album, the material touches upon themes of loss, self-pity, personal relationships and more. The inmate balance doesn’t dilute their intensity; rather it reframes it, offering listeners a haunting yet delicate atmosphere, layered with entrancing textures that build up to explosive catharsis. The result is an album that’s a hauntingly visceral and disturbing vision, anchored by deep introspection.

Labyrinthine will feature the previously released, “Death of Day,” a slow-burning and forceful dirge anchored a classic grunge song structure that features swirling shoegazer-like guitar textures, thunderous drumming, enormous power chords and eerie, banshee-like wailing paired with Garcia’s sonorous croon.

While channeling the likes of Tool, JOVM mainstays Slumbering Sun and others, “Death of Day” the song as the band’s Jenna Garcia explains “came to be after reading into the deity, Lilith. I was initially transfixed to the myth of her spawning from the ‘dregs,’ or lowest realm of evil. I perceived that as her coming from the dirt, the earth, and having to confront a life where her very existence is viewed as malevolence, as ugliness. She is cast out into isolation from the moment she came into being. I began to view that as a strong parallel to the existence of queer and trans people in a world that is constantly trying to exterminate and diminish them.”

Faetooth’s frontperson adds that the song’s lyrics “are written as a bit of ode to the Lilith archetype, and simultaneously celebrating and lamenting her forced seclusion from society. The first verse is about her coming into being, how she can only come out at night, and then the second verse is like, yeah, you all hate me, I’m gonna bring all my friends that you also deem as a scourge on society, f*** you.”

The album’s latest single “White Noise” is a bruising ripper, rooted in a palpable and unsettling mix of anguish, despair, loathing and fury that feels both lived in and deeply familiar. The band explains that the song emerged from a diary entry and is a relentless and intense reflection on inner turmoil. We’re often drawn to the familiar, when we don’t quite know why and even when we don’t immediately realize that we’re reaching out for it. And as a result, the song is an emotional upheaval, carrying the sort of harsh and uneasy truths that weigh heavily on one’s heart and soul.

The band’s guitarist Ari May says, “Performing the song always takes me back to a specific place, even if just for a moment.”
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Gabriel da Rosa Performs “Nunca Mais”

Gabriel da Rosa is a rising  Cruz Alta, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and guitarist. Growing up in rural, southern Brazil, da Rosa’s radio DJ father exposed him to a wide variety of music from the homeland. But it wasn’t until he relocated to Los Angeles that he began curating Brazilian records and DJ’ing himself. 

da Rosa wound up bonding with Stones Throw Records‘ label head, founder, artist and DJ Peanut Butter Wolf over their shared love of Brazilian music. Later, he began writing own original Bossa nova, inspired by traditional Bossa nova, but with a contemporary edge while collaborating with Pedro Dom, a highly sought-after musician, who has worked with some of Brazil’s beloved and internationally known artists like Seu Jorge, Rodrigo Amarante, and Latin Grammy Award-winner Ian Ramil. 

The Brazilian-born artist’s full-length debut, 2023’s É o que a casa oferece was anchored around traditional Bossa nova and samba-inspired sounds with subtle elements of jazz. 

Officially dropping today through Stone’s Throw Records, da Rosa’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Cacofonia, derives its title from the Brazilian Portuguese word for “cacophony,” while referencing the album’s overall clash of “notes, tensions, surprises and moods.” 

Thematically, Cacofonia is an ode to his homeland — including his family, its environment and the country’s indigenous and working-class people. The album is inspired by — and is the result of da Rosa’s emotional return home after eight years away. His family and travels led him back to his hometown of Cruz Alta. Though he’d often felt like an outsider growing up, seeing Brazil with fresh eyes mae him feel more connected to his country and his people than ever before. And when he returned to Los Angeles to work on the album, he kept those memories close. 

Cacofonia sees da Rosa eschewing much of the more traditional Bossa nova and samba-inspired elements of his sound. And while Bossa nova is still a part of the album’s overall sound and aesthetic, da Rosa wanted to pair and experiemnt with new influences, including Brazilian artists working in other genres and styles like Rodrigo Amarante and O Terno, as well as American artists like David Byrne (!) and Sam Evian. 

da Rosa’s lyrics sung mostly in Brazilian Portuguese have a trace of saudade — the longing for something or someone that you can’t get back or no longer exists. The album also features the Brazilian-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s parents and siblings discussing their heritage on voice notes, which sets the album’s overall scene with tropical birds in the background.

Cacofonia also comments on our discordant and polarizing world: da Rosa’s mother performs a poem about the devastating war in Gaza on “Sabor Humanidade,” and other songs speak to class inequality in Brazil and the impact of Bolsonaro’s mining policies on the Amazon and its people. Several album songs see da Rosa bearing witness to the lives of Brazil’s working class — a songwriting style influenced by years of listening to narrative-based songs and his grandmother’s life stories. 

After eight years away from family, da Rosa pledges to “never disconnect from my people and roots for this long again.” Cacofonia sees the Brazilian-born artist making good on that promise. It’s “me, in this moment of my life.” Gabriel saw “how proud I was of my culture. I used to be lost, scared, and trying so hard to please others.”  And although he has settled in Los Angeles, where he makes music among the city’s growing scene of of Brazilian musicians, regular DJs with his collection of rare Brazilian records, cooks churrasco and lets his “inner child play freely” through painting, Cruz Alta will always be home. But he says that home is also whenever there are “friends, some sort of security, safety, and community.” 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I managed to write about two of the album’s previously released singles:

  • “Pê Patu Pá,” a song that opens with a repeating tropical songbird sample and glistening Rhodes that unfurls into a gently swaying, Bossa nova groove with a buzzing psych rock-like guitar solo serving as a lush and dreamy bed for da Rosa’s dreamy coo-like crooning. The song talks about the preservation of the sabía, the songbird of São Paulo State since 1966 — and the national songbird since 2002. The character “Vira-Mundo” represents the fight to preserve the bird, which is seen as representative of Brazil as soccer and Bossa nova.

  • “Seu João,” which continues a run of breezy yet deliberately crafted material that channels samba and bossa nova-driven jazz’s golden age — but with a mischievous modern sensibility. Lyrically, the song is a portrayal of market workers da Rosa observed outside of his family home in São Paulo — and he does so with a deep-seated empathy and pride.

Cacofonia’s final single “Nunca Mais,” which translates to “Never again,” is a ethereal and dreamy bit of Bossa nova, featuring twinkling keys that’s anchored by an underlying sense of ache and betrayal, as the song’s narrator describes a bitter heartbreak.

The live footage was shot on the costal hills of Los Angeles from an undisclosed yet breathtakingly gorgeous location that da Rosa and his collaborators lovingly call Petrichor. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hand Habits Shares Optimistic “Wheel of Change”

Meg Duffy is a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who over the past decade has spent the bulk of the past decade on the road with acclaimed artist Perfume Genius and as a solo artist, […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Gabriel da Rosa Performs “Seu João”

Gabriel da Rosa is a rising  Cruz Alta, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and guitarist. Growing up in rural, southern Brazil, da Rosa’s radio DJ father exposed him to a wide variety of music from the homeland. But it wasn’t until he relocated to Los Angeles that he began curating Brazilian records and DJ’ing himself. 

da Rosa wound up bonnding with Stones Throw Records‘ label head, founder, artist and DJ Peanut Butter Wolf over their shared love of Brazilian music. Later, he began writing own original Bossa nova, inspired by traditional Bossa nova, but with a contemporary edge while collaborating with Pedro Dom, a highly sought-after musician, who has worked with some of Brazil’s beloved and internationally known artists like Seu Jorge, Rodrigo Amarante, and Latin Grammy Award-winner Ian Ramil. 

The Brazilian-born artist’s full-length debut, 2023’s É o que a casa oferece was anchored around traditional Bossa nova and samba-inspired sounds with subtle elements of jazz. 

Slated for a June 6, 2025 release through Stone’s Throw Records, da Rosa’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, Cacofonia, derives its title from the Brazilian Portuguese word for “cacophony,” while referencing the album’s overall clash of “notes, tensions, surprises and moods.” 

Thematically, Cacofonia is an ode to his homeland — including his family, its environment and the country’s indigenous and working-class people. The album is inspired by — and is the result of da Rosa’s emotional return home after eight years away. His family and travels led him back to his hometown of Cruz Alta. Though he’d often felt like an outsider growing up, seeing Brazil with fresh eyes mae him feel more connected to his country and his people than ever before. And when he returned to Los Angeles to work on the album, he kept those memories close. 

Cacofonia reportedly sees da Rosa eschewing much of the more traditional Bossa nova and samba-inspired elements of his sound. And while Bossa nova is still a part of the album’s overall sound and aesthetic, da Rosa wanted to pair and experiemnt with new influences, including Brazilian artists working in other genres and styles like Rodrigo Amarante and O Terno, as well as American artists like David Byrne (!) and Sam Evian. 

da Rosa’s lyrics sung mostly in Brazilian Portuguese have a trace of saudade — the longing for something or someone that you can’t get back or no longer exists. The album also features the Brazilian-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s parents and siblings discussing their heritage on voice notes, which sets the album’s overall scene with tropical birds in the background.

Cacofonia also comments on our discordant and polarizing world: da Rosa’s mother performs a poem about the devastating war in Gaza on “Sabor Humanidade,” and other songs speak to class inequality in Brazil and the impact of Bolsonaro’s mining policies on the Amazon and its people. Several album songs see da Rosa bearing witness to the lives of Brazil’s working class — a songwriting style influenced by years of listening to narrative-based songs and his grandmother’s life stories. 

After eight years away from family, da Rosa pledges to “never disconnect from my people and roots for this long again.” Cacofonia reportedly sees the Brazilian-born artist making good on that promise. It’s “me, in this moment of my life.” Gabriel saw “how proud I was of my culture. I used to be lost, scared, and trying so hard to please others.”  And although he has settled in Los Angeles, where he makes music among the city’s growing scene of of Brazilian musicians, regular DJs with his collection of rare Brazilian records, cooks churrasco and lets his “inner child play freely” through painting, Cruz Alta will always be home. But he says that home is also whenever there are “friends, some sort of security, safety, and community.” 

Last month, I wrote about “Pê Patu Pá.” Opening with a repeating tropical songbird pattern and glistening Rhodes, the song unfurls into a gently swaying, Bosas nova groove with a buzzing psych rock-like guitar solo serving as a lush and dreamy bed for da Rosa’s dreamy coo-like crooning. The song talks about the preservation of the sabía, the songbird of São Paulo State since 1966 — and the national songbird since 2002. The character “Vira-Mundo” represents the fight to preserve the bird, which may be seen as representative of Brazil as soccer and Bossa nova.

Cacofonia‘s third and latest single “Seu João” is continues a run of breezy yet deliberately crafted material that channels samba and bossa nova-driven jazz’s golden age — but with a mischievous modern sensibility. Lyrically, the song is a portrayal of market workers da Rosa observed outside of his family home in São Paulo — and he does so with a deep-seated empathy and pride.

The live footage was shot on the costal hills of Los Angeles from an undisclosed location that da Rosa and his collaborators lovingly call Petrichor.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ John The Solomon Shares an Anthemic Rocker

John The Solomon is the recording project of an mysterious and emerging, Los Angeles-based producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who has developed a reputation for crafting high-energy, guitar driven songs packed with riffs, big` hooks, and feel-good vibes.

The project’s latest single “Come Back For Me” continues a run of crafted, big riff and big hook-driven numbers that seemingly recalls The Smithereens and Hüsker Dü — but with a modern sensibility.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dominique and the Diamonds Share Playful and Buoyant “Lovely Dream”

Led by Colombian-American frontwoman Dominque Gomez, Los Angeles-based country band Dominique and the Diamonds can trace their origins back to last year: 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 asked to perform as a backing band for Gomez and over the course of the year gained buzz locally for a sound that seemingly channels Linda Ronstadt, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Townes Van Zandt and the Laurel Canyon sound — but with a contemporary feel. 

The Los Angeles-based country outfit’s Glenn Brigman-produced debut EP, For a Fool is slated for a June 13, 2025 release. Recorded using a mix of analog and digital equipment in Brigman’s Crestline, CA-based studio, For a Fool EP channels the golden age of classic country with the material touching upon tried-and-true themes of romance, lonesomeness, revenge, drunken playfulness while anchored around the old school song-as-story. And the material sees the band weaving the experiences of the contemporary world, too. 

“I write country music and love to sing country songs, but I’ve always associated myself with the Colombian half of my identity more than the white side. My Dad and his immediate family immigrated to the US from Colombia in 1966 and they’d endured so much struggle in the process,” Dominique and the Diamonds’ Dominque Gomez says. “Then, you have my Mom’s side who were small town farmers in Minnesota and Southern trailer park girls. When you look at me, you see a brown girl, and I fucking love that. And when I was younger, I felt like I was forced to fit into a category, but I was too white to be Latina and too Latina to be white. It’s a beautiful thing to have the wisdom now to embrace both and just be me.”

Last month, I wrote about “For a Fool,” a Patsy Cline-styled ballad of heartbreak, despair and uneasy acceptance anchored around some gorgeous pedal steel and Gomez’s Linda Ronstadt-like vocal. Inspired by the modern “situationship” phenomenon and Gomez’s experiences dating in Los Angeles, the song describes a bitterly common scenario: dealing with a love interest you really dig, who’s an unserious time waster that’s playing with your heart and emotions. And while the song’s narrator is heartbroken, she clearly recognizes her time and her worth, offering a bit of wisdom for anyone who encounters this sort of lover — leave that fool alone before you get played for a fool. 

For a Fool‘s second and latest single “Lovely Dream” is a playful, Hank WIlliams-like bit of honky tonk, anchored around an oompah-like groove and a gorgeous and expressive pedal steel solo that’s simultaneously lush and spacious enough for Gomez’s big, Linda Ronstadt-like delivery.

The song’s buoyant nature is deceptive, because at its core, is a narrator waxing nostalgically on the honeymoon phase of a relationship from the perspective of a heartbroken narrator looking back at the whole experience with some bittersweet — and perhaps just bitter — retrospect.

Sometimes the end of a relationship can make you feel as though you had been walking around with a mix of rose colored glasses, wool, blind hope and naiveté. The retrospect at the core of the song gives that heartache and the feeling of being a made a fool a proper sense of perspective, and hopefully the understanding that you won’t be fooled again.

“’Lovely Dream’ is a silly little love song that I had written for an ex back in 2018, so it’s been sitting in the archives for awhile [sic]. The words ‘lovely dream’ were just the best way to describe the beginning of that relationship,” Dominque and the Diamond’s Dominque Gomez explains. “Emphasis on the beginning… Ha! I was in my early to mid twenties at that time; young, naive and only saw through rose colored glasses. I tie nature into my songwriting at any chance I can get. The relationship to me, at the time, was as harmonious as a budding meadow in the springtime— full of new life, color and energy just waiting to be embraced by the sun.”

Directed by Hamilton Boyce, the accompanying video for “Lovely Dream” features Dominque Gomez in the brush and foothills, before sitting down for a makeup session to make her done up like an old-fashioned rodeo clown.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Frankie and the Witch Fingers Shares Punchy and Grimy “Dead Silence”

Acclaimed Los Angeles-based psych punk outfit and JOVM mainstays Frankie and the Witch Fingers — currently founding duo Dylan Sizemore (vocals, guitar) and Josh Menashe (lead guitar, synth), along with Death Valley Girls‘ Nikki “Pickle” Smith (bass) and Mike Watt’s Nick Aguilar (drums) — have spent the past decade restlessly mutating their sound into bold, electrifying new forms with every new release. 

Slated for a June 6, 2025 release through Greenway Records and The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the Los Angeles-based JOVM mainstay’s eighth album, the Maryam Qudus-produced Trash Classic reportedly sees the band plunging into a sewer-slick fusion of proto punk venom, fractured New Wave and industrial grime. Sonically brimming with wiry synths, angular melodies and squirming and biting grooves, the material is delivered with a sly, playful balance between smirk and sneer. The band layers playful unease while exploring themes of escapism, decay and overindulgence. 

The songs were born in the grime of Vernon, Los Angeles — a wasteland littered with gutted RVs and rusting machinery, where the air tastes like asphalt and dog food. But the alchemy happed during recording sessions at Oakland‘s Tiny Telephone Studio, where producer Maryam Qudus helped transmute the tracks into the final forms with unhinged tones, unconventional recording experiments and wild sonic detours. 

Each day of the recording sessions began with cartoons blaring at full volume — a Looney Tunes ritual that turned the madness of the recording process into something childlike. Late night, sugar-fueled candy binges kept the energy spiking, pushing the sessions into a fever dream of jittery, spastic playfulness. The end result is a raw, twisted monument to rot and excess — and to toxic glamour and nihilistic salvation.

So far I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

  • “Economy,” which offered a glimpse of what to expect from the album: grimy synth pulse right at the front, alongside angular guitar fuzz and muscular yet mathematically precise drumming paired with punchily delivered vocals and mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Sonically, the result is a scuzzier and grimier take on Freedom of Choice-era DEVO — with a similar, tongue-in-cheek sensibility. 

  • “Total Reset,” a sweaty ripper that sees the band pairing angular guitar fuzz with squiggling synth pulse, mathematically precise drumming and Sizemore’s punchy delivery with the band’s penchant for mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Sonically, “Total Reset” strikes me as a being a synthesis of King Gizzard and Devo — but with a mischievous sense of menace and unease. 

Trash Classic‘s third and latest single “Dead Silence” continues a run of grimy and mischievous DEVO-meets-garage rock rippers, anchored around the band’s unerring knack for rousing, mosh pit friendly hooks paired with Sizemore’s punchy delivery singing lyrics about existential dread and death. Oh, how fitting for our fucked up, dire time!

“This one’s got a nice little origin story,” the band explains. ““We played a festival in Boise with Spacemoth, Maryam Qudus’ brainchild, and met her for the first time there. Cut to a year later, and she’s deep in the guts of this record – producing, engineering, twisting knobs, and arranging sounds with us.

“On the flight home from that Boise show, Josh threw on the Spacemoth album for the first time and got his brain microwaved. He also recorded the plane taking off, just on a whim. That roar ended up in the bridge of ‘Dead Silence’. It’s a nice crusty texture, but it also weirdly bookmarks the start of it all.

Maryam’s all over this record. She sings, plays, distorts, haunts – leaving smudges on everything in the best way. She rules, and we were happy to accidentally mark the occasion sonically with a little jet-engine weirdness.”

The accompanying video is a mischievous and menacing psilocybin trip featuring cartoonishly bright, analog fuzz and crude, hand-drawn animation, and graffiti that pulses and undulates with the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Starling Shares “120 Minutes”-era MTV-LIke “I Can Be Convinced”

Founded and led by Kasha Souter Willet (vocals, guitar), rising Los Angeles-based indie outfit Starling was started without a vision of what it would eventually become. Last year, the project became a full-fledged band with the addition of Erik Sathrum Johnson, Grace Rolek and Gitai Vinshtok.

With their debut EP, last year’s 2324, the quartet quickly established a sound and approach with a soft heaviness that effortlessly weaved from classic grunge to singer/songwriter and shoegaze. They combine bedroom warped production with angular leads and rich vocal melodies. Although the band’s sound is genre agnostic, the feel is a general yearning for contentment, a person, a place. The result is a vulnerable yet enthralling style of rock.

The Los Angeles-based quartet’s highly-anticipated sophomore EP, Forgive Me is slated for a June 27, 2025 release through San Antonio-based label, Sunday Drive Records. Confusion, frustration, love and loss are all expressed through the new EP’s material. Written over the course of roughly a year, the band recorded themselves in various sheds, apartments and garages. Adding to the DIY ethos, the EP was mixed by the band’s Erik Sathrum Johnson and the EP’s artwork was shot by the band and their friends. The material was mastered by Greg Obis, who has mastered work by MJ Lenderman, Wishy and Duster.

Forgive Me is a fully DIY and deeply personal effort in which the band has shaped every sonic detail themselves. So, every chord, melody, rhythm and feeling is internationally placed and wholly theirs.

The EP’s lead single “I Can Be Convinced” would fit in perfectly on a 90s grunge/120 Minutes-era MTV themed playlist as the song features angular and jangling guitars and soaring synths for the song’s verses and fuzzy and scorching power chord-driven choruses and hooks serving as woozy, barely controlled bed for thunderous drumming and Willet’s dreamily coquettish cooing. While reportedly one of the EP’s more upbeat tunes, the song is ironically deceptive with the song examining all-consuming, contradictory and confusing love that’s simultaneously exciting and confining.

“Smothered. Wrapped up in a warm blanket so tightly you cannot move. A song written about needing stillness, to be told no, to be confined all in a confused love,” the band says. “Kasha did not intend the song to take such an upbeat direction when she brought it to the band. Although it is a sad and yearning song, the beat and arrangement made this song our lead single.”

Directed by David Milan Kelly, the accompanying video for “I Can Be Convinced” was shot in and around Los Angeles and features a collection of ballerinas dancing on the streets and in the studio as the band performs the song.

“The ‘I Can Be Convinced’ music video came together with a lot of hard work from our friends who believed in the project, scraping all resources to make it happen,” the band told the folks at Flood Magazine. “David Milan Kelly is a close friend of ours who directed the video and worked with us to create a visually interesting music video that honored the feeling and matched the pacing of the song. David and Kasha both separately had the thought to add ballet dancers to the mix, so when it was brought up by Kasha, they knew it had to come to fruition. From the big white skirt Kasha found at a thrift store not knowing what it would be used for at the time of purchase, to the dancers who came ready to improvise and learn poses on the spot; as much planning as we did a lot of this came together by trusting the process and allowing things to fall into place.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Gabriel da Rosa Celebrates Brazil and Its National Songbird in “Pê Patu Pá”

Gabriel da Rosa is a rising  Cruz Alta, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and guitarist. Growing up in rural, southern Brazil, da Rosa’s radio DJ father exposed him to a wide variety of music from the homeland. But it wasn’t until he relocated to Los Angeles that he began curating Brazilian records and DJ’ing himself.

da Rosa wound up bounding with Stones Throw Records‘ label head, founder, artist and DJ Peanut Butter Wolf over their shared love of Brazilian music. Later, he began writing own original Bossa nova, inspired by traditional Bossa nova, but with a contemporary edge while collaborating with Pedro Dom, a highly sought-after musician, who has worked with some of Brazil’s best, internationally known artists like Seu Jorge, Rodrigo Amarante, and Latin Grammy Award-winner Ian Ramil. 

The Brazilian-born artist’s full-length debut, 2023’s É o que a casa oferece was anchored around traditional Bossa nova and samba-inspired sounds with subtle elements of jazz.

da Rosa’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, Cacofonia, derives its title from the Brazilian Portuguese word for “cacophony,” while referencing the album’s overall clash of “notes, tensions, surprises and moods.”

Thematically, the forthcoming album is an ode to Brazil — including his family, its environment and the country’s indigenous and working-class people. The album is the result of da Rosa’s emotional return home after eight years away, following the release of his full-length debut. His family and travels led him back to Cruz Alta. Though he’d often felt like an outsider growing up, seeing Brazil with fresh eyes mae him feel more connected to his country and his people than ever before. And when he returned to Los Angeles to work on the album, he kept those memories close.

Cacofonia reportedly sees da Rosa eschewing much of the more traditional Bossa nova and samba-inspired sounds of his debut, and while Bossa nova is still a part of the album’s overall sound and aesthetic, he wanted to pair and experiment with new influences — Brazilian artists working in other genres and styles, including Rodrigo Amarante and O Terno, as well as American artists like David Byrne (!) and Sam Evian.

Against a colorful musical backdrop, Cacofonia‘s lyrics sung mostly in Brazilian Portuguese, have a trace of saudade, longing for something or someone that you can’t get back — or no longer exists. da Rosa’s parents and siblings discuss their heritage on voice notes in the background of the album’s opening track, setting the scene with an immersive soundscape, alongside the sounds of tropical birds.  

Cacofonia also comments on our discordant and polarizing world: da Rosa’s mother performs a poem about the devastating war in Gaza on “Sabor Humanidade,” and other songs speak to class inequality in Brazil and the impact of Bolsonaro’s mining policies on the Amazon and its people. Several album songs see da Rosa bearing witness to the lives of Brazil’s working class — a songwriting style influenced by years of listening to narrative-based songs and his grandmother’s life stories.

After eight years away from family, da Rosa pledges to “never disconnect from my people and roots for this long again.” Cacofonia reportedly sees the Brazilian-born artist making good on that promise. It’s “me, in this moment of my life.” Gabriel saw “how proud I was of my culture. I used to be lost, scared, and trying so hard to please others.”  And although he has settled in Los Angeles, where he makes music among the city’s growing scene of of Brazilian musicians, regular DJs with his collection of rare Brazilian records, cooks churrasco and lets his “inner child play freely” through painting, Cruz Alta will always be home. But he says that home is also whenever there are “friends, some sort of security, safety, and community.”

Cacofonia‘s latest single “Pê Patu Pá” begins with a recurring tropical songbird sample and some glistening Rhodes, before unfurling into a gently swaying, Bossa nova groove with a buzzing psych rock-like guitar solo serving as a lush and dreamy bed for da Rosa’s dreamy coo-like croon.

The song talks about the preservation of the sabía, the songbird of São Paulo State since 1966 — and the national songbird since 2002. The character “Vira-Mundo” represents the fight to preserve the bird, which may be seen as representative of Brazil as soccer and Bossa nova.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: JOVM Mainstays Frankie and the Witch Fingers Share a Grimy Ripper

Acclaimed Los Angeles-based psych punk outfit and JOVM mainstays Frankie and the Witch Fingers — currently founding duo Dylan Sizemore (vocals, guitar) and Josh Menashe (lead guitar, synth), along with Death Valley Girls‘ Nikki “Pickle” Smith (bass) and Mike Watt’s Nick Aguilar (drums) — have spent the past decade restlessly mutating their sound into bold, electrifying new forms with every new release. 

Slated for a June 6, 2025 release through Greenway Records and The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the Los Angeles-based JOVM mainstay’s eighth album, the Maryam Qudus-produced Trash Classic reportedly sees the band plunging into a sewer-slick fusion of proto punk venom, fractured New Wave and industrial grime. Sonically brimming with wiry synths, angular melodies and squirming and biting grooves, the material is delivered with a sly, playful balance between smirk and sneer. The band layers playful unease while exploring themes of escapism, decay and overindulgence. 

The songs were born in the grime of Vernon, Los Angeles — a wasteland littered with gutted RVs and rusting machinery, where the air tastes like asphalt and dog food. But the alchemy happed during recording sessions at Oakland‘s Tiny Telephone Studio, where producer Maryam Qudus helped transmute the tracks into the final forms with unhinged tones, unconventional recording experiments and wild sonic detours. 

Each day of the recording sessions began with cartoons blaring at full volume — a Looney Tunes ritual that turned the madness of the recording process into something childlike. Late night, sugar-fueled candy binges kept the energy spiking, pushing the sessions into a fever dream of jittery, spastic playfulness. The end result is a raw, twisted monument to rot and excess — and to toxic glamour and nihilistic salvation.

Last month, I wrote about the album’s first single “Economy,” which offered a glimpse of what to expect from the album: grimy synth pulse right at the front, alongside angular guitar fuzz and muscular yet mathematically precise drumming paired with punchily delivered vocals and mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Sonically, the result is a scuzzier and grimier take on Freedom of Choice-era DEVO — with a similar, tongue-in-cheek sensibility. 

Trash Classic’s second and latest single “Total Reset” is a sweaty ripper that sees the band pairing angular guitar fuzz with squiggling synth pulse, mathematically precise drumming and Sizemore’s punchy delivery with the band’s penchant for mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Sonically, “Total Reset” strikes me as a being a synthesis of King Gizzard and Devo — but with a mischievous sense of menace and unease.

“’Total Reset’ is a spasmodic blast of punk and synth freakery, a tech product launch for the post-human era,” the band says. “Writing and recording a song can be such a hassle, so we let AI handle it this time (faster, cheaper, zero complaints). It spat out a nice little doomsday ditty: humanity is toast, a lucky few will be spared to reboot civilization. Weirdly enough, the song kind of rips, so maybe we don’t need humans to make things after all.” 

The accompanying lyric video by Nespy 5Euro is a grimy, low-budget mix of crude, hand-drawn animation, graffiti. edited video and more that pulses with the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers Perform “Wild Thing” at The Record Plant, 1982

Originally airing only once on MTV in February 1983, the Cameron Crowe directed Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party is a fun, candid and fast-paced film that captures Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers as they finish, promote and tour their groundbreaking Long After Dark album, their third and final album with the legendary Jimmy Iovine.

Nearly 40 years after the film had become folklore to fans, musicians and the music industry, the tapes from Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut were finally found. Interestingly, this also coincides with the Tom Petty Estate opening up the vaults and sharing previously unreleased music and some never-before-seen and rarely seen, remastered films from one of the band’s prolific and commercially successful eras — 1982 to 1983.

Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party was restored from its original 16mm source tapes and is exclusively streaming on Paramount + in the States, Canada, UK, Australia, Latin America, France, Italy and Germany, marking the first time that the now-fully restored version of Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut is widely available to international audiences.

The Tom Petty Estate has also released newly restored footage of Petty and company performing a rollicking and boozy, barroom blues-meets-Damn the Torpedoes-era Petty and Heartbreakers-like rendition of The Troggs‘ beloved and oft-covered 1966 rendition of “Wild Thing” filmed at Los Angeles-based studio The Record Plant in 1982.

Directed by Justin Kreutzmann, the video, which now boasts newly remastered audio, features footage of the band’s performance at The Record Plant, filmed for French TV program, Houba Houba, alongside never-before-seen footage originally filmed by Cameron Crowe for Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party.

Along with long-awaited release of Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party, Geffen/Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) just released the digital only Heartbreakers Beach Party: The Soundtrack, which includes 35 songs from the film with tracks from Long After Dark (Deluxe Edition).

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Crocodiles Side Project Psychic Pigs Share a Noisy and Gritty Ripper

San Diego-based singer/songwriter and musician Brandon Welchez is best known for being one-half of the grade psych pop duo Crocodiles. Over the past two decades, Welchez’s work has gravitated to the mid fi and melodic end of the sonic spectrum.

However, Welchez’s latest project Psychic Pigs shows a much different side of his work and sound, revealing that the raw and bleeding hardcore punk and power pop bands on the Killed by Death compilations have influenced his work as much as The Jesus and Mary Chain has been on him. The project can trace its origins to when Welchez started writing music he knew was too discordant for Crocodiles’ pop-leaning sound.

Slated for a May 23, 2025 release through Slovenly Recordings, Psychic Pigs’ self-titled, full-length debut was recorded last April in London over a breakneck four day recording session with Fucked Up‘s and Career Suicide‘s Jonah Falco handling production and drums. Once they were finished recording the album’s material, Welchez returned to the states with the goal of forming a live band that could replicate the aggressive, live-to-record sound capture on the recordings.

Connections made throughout Welchez’s two-plus decade music career proved fruitful with the band’s live lineup featuring members of Fake Fruits, Surfbort and Choir Boy, including Welchez (vocals, guitar), Bee Wright (lead guitar), Jeff Kleinman (bass) and John Hodge (drums).

The project will make its live debut on March 19, 2025 at Los Angeles‘ The Escondite and they’ll play their record release show at Permanent Records Roadhouse in late May. And from my understanding more live dates are to come. But in the meantime, the self-titled album’s first single and album title track “Psychic Pigs” is a breakneck and noisy ripper featuring scorching riffage, thunderous drumming paired with Welchez’s adopting an old school punk sneer. Of course, because Welchez has spent the past two decades as one-half of Crocodiles, “Psychic Pigs” will remind some fans of Crimes of Passion-era Crocodiles — think of a song like “Cockroach” — but with a gritty beer and sweat soaked vibe.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Hello Cosmos Shares Furious and Urgent “Turn Off The News”

Manchester, UK area-based genre-defying, multimedia collective Hello Cosmos — Kendal Calling Festival founder Ben Robinson (vocals), Ben’s sibling Simon Robinson (drums), Placebo‘s and Lanterns on the Lake‘s Angela Chan (strings, keys) and Deathretro‘s Adrian Ingram (guitar, synths) — released their latest EP, Keep Digging earlier this year.

Written and recorded over a two-year period, the Jamie Lockheart-produced Keep Digging EP is the first of a batch of yet-to-be announced, forthcoming releases from the British outfit, which were created in Leeds-based Greenmount Studio, as well as studios in Manchester, New York, Florida, Los Angeles and Stockport, UK. The EP comes with a bold vision for the band, their Cosmic Glue imprint and their future live show.

Keep Digging EP‘s latest single “Turn Off The News” is also the first official single from the band’s forthcoming sophomore album slated for release next year. “Turn off the news,” begins with dramatic violin screeching before turning into blisteringly furious post-punk ripper anchored around alternating quiet-loud-quiet song structure that features scorching guitar riffage, thunderous drumming and a mosh pit friendly screamo-like hook paired with Ben Robinson’s incisive, politically-charged lyrics. Although rooted in UK political commentary, “Turn Off The News” captures the furious urgency of our moment here in the US with the daily normalization of fascism, lies and bullshit — with most decent people realizing they’ve been conned either by someone or the system as a whole.

The initial recording taking place the day after the UK left the European Union, the British outfit developed from a studio session that reflected the dark, uneasy, doom-laden and intense atmosphere throughout the country’s inner cities with the original working title “The Day After.” As the track progressed during sessions at Greenmount Studios during 2020, the song’s lyrics gradually developed around themes of negative news stories and who they serve, seeing the band tackling media manipulation and bullshit. And the song title’s changed to “Turn Off The News.”

“The story of this song threads through some dark times for me personally, the UK and the globe,” Hello Cosmos’ Ben Robinson explains. “I always aim to be positive with Hello Cosmos vocals, writing from a place of sadness or negativity is much easier than making a positive statement interesting. But this track was a sign of the times so I went through my darker lyric notes, a lot had been written in the harder moments of lockdown, the 5 o’clock updates from Witty and Borris [sic], the Twitter rabbit holes on info on how PPE contracts had been abused, the whole circus show of Hancock and the media shitshow surrounding UK politics. This is where the title of the track comes from, at that time the news was so unhealthy and was constant, it wasn’t helping people it was beating us down with doom and paranoia constantly, while the media was celebrating having something to run with that had the attention of the world . . .

“Frustrating times all bottled up, so I took every bit of my anger and went into the vocal booth for the first scream I’d done since lockdown happened, I channelled everything I could into that chorus and let it all out, what you hear is the first and only take.”

Photography by William Ruben Helms

Live Concert Photography: Molchat Doma with Sextile at Knockdown Center 2/14/25

Live concert photography of Molchat Doma with Sextile at Knockdown Center earlier this month.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Dream Bodies Shares Shimmering and Brooding “Dream Hangover”

Steven Fleet is a Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist, poet, writer and artist, who has been in several music projects that have allowed him to play shows across the US, the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic. Fleet is also the creative mastermind behind the solo recording project Dream Bodies. With Dream Bodies, Fleet crafts “witchy, dreamy, gothy, post punk, dream pop, cold wave with poetic, philosophical lyrics.”

“Dream Hangover,” Fleet’s Dream Bodies debut single is centered around a Joy Division-meets-Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen-like soundscape feature swirling, reverb-drenched guitars, angular bass lines and mathematically precise drum patterns paired with Fleet’s young Ian McCulloch-like vocal and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

“‘Dream Hangover,’ is about losing your identity in a toxic relationship, but then finding yourself and your inner strength again in its aftermath,” Fleet explains.