Blog: Buzz Bands

Anybody who's heard Haim over the past few years, or seen sisters Este, Danielle and Alana unleash classic-rock covers with their parents, has had wonder: What songs are hiding underneath all that long flowing hair? What will these twentysomethings sound like when their writing grows into their estimable chops? These week we found out, as the band released a free three-song EP, "Forever." It's rhythmic indie R&B highlighted by Danielle's bluesy vocals, sibling harmonies and mixed-bag percussion. Ready, set go. ||| Download: "Forever" [...]

By Erik Ehlert Sometimes you need a funeral to remind yourself of your gifts. And Mark Lanegan keeps giving. The Mark Lanegan Band this week dropped a new album, "Blues Funeral," the first solo work from the 47-year-old singer-guitarist since 2004. It's the perfect vehicle for his brooding baritone, filled with rock dirges composed by a man with a quality in his voice that cannot be faked. On Thursday night at the Echoplex — his band's first date before embarking on a European tour — Lanegan gave a show [...]

Today's Buzz Bands LA Show on Moheak Radio will cover a lot of ground stylistically — I have some indie-rock, electro, pop and folk flavors from some of your favorite L.A. artists — and it will cover some turf geographically too. My guest on the show will be Georgia-bred singer-songwriter Tyler Lyle [ whom we introduced earlier this week ], fresh from his show Thursday night at the Mint. Lyle will be stopping by for a little conversation and to do a couple of acoustic numbers off his newly released album "The Golden Age [...]

Sometimes you just need to laugh. In two languages. Nous Non Plus makes highly irreverent (and just as catchy) French pop music, circa the 1960s, and their third album, "Freudian Slip," released last fall, is a hoot. Very little gets lost in translation at the hands of the band who have fake French names to go with funny French music — Céline Dijon, Jean-Luc Retard (L.A.'s Dan Crane of the Quick Hellos and World Air Guitar Championships fame), Bonnie Day, Cal d'Hommage, Professeur Harry Covert, Morris "Mars" Chevrolet and and François Hardon. The band has carried on in [...]

Kicking off Grammy weekend ... ► Dr. Dog plays the Orpheum behind its new album "Be the Void." That's the Philadelphia outfit's video for "That Old Black Hole," above. ► Spindrift brings its spaghetti Western psychedelia to the Satellite, celebrating 10-plus years, four albums, movies scores and more with a night full of special guests. Gangi supports. ► Freshly inked to Tooth & Nail Records, Abandoned Pools headlines the Viper Room, supported by Graham Colton. Also: [...]

[Recent remixes that have come across our radar. They may help bring the weekend faster...] Active Child , "Johnny Belinda (White Arrows Remix)" — L.A. electro rockers White Arrows give the last track on Active Child's "You Are All I See" a little boost by dropping a beat and adding shiny synth riffs, slightly changing it from a somber tune to a slick one. White Arrows play Feb. 23 at the Observatory with Starfucker and Feb. 25 at the Echoplex [...]

For a large chunk of 2009, songwriter Jacob Summers, doing business as the Rhone Occupation, occupied a big chunk of my music memory I'll call The Pop Place (to cop an old Trashcan Sinatras song title). It's where the sounds of the '60s and '70s — shimmering and tremeloed guitars, vocal hooks and AM radio-ready motifs — get a gentle kick in the behind, an update for these times. Summers is at it again as Lauralaura , recording more gorgeous psych-pop with producer Raymond Richards. Lauralaura has unveiled only two songs so far, but each feels like a Polaroid [...]

Besides its obvious charms — agile melodies, caffeinated percussion and twinkling keyboards — the debut album from Soft Swells feels like a pep talk from a old friend. It's full of polite but candid imperatives. "Say It Like You Mean It." "Put It on the Line." "Shake It Off." "Never Leave Home." "Make It Go Away." Songwriter Tim Williams has obviously given a lot of thought to what is righteous and true, introspection likely triggered by his move to Los Angeles from New York in 2009 after open-heart surgery. Williams' three previous solo albums were fine singer-songwriter meditations, [...]

Your jam-packed Thursday itinerary: ► Its new album "Blues Funeral" just out, the Mark Lanegan Band [ praises sung earlier this week] headlines the Echoplex. ► Brooklyn electro-pop outfit Class Actress — the brainchild of producers Mark Richardson and Scott Rosenthal and singer Elizabeth Harper, headline the Echo behind their recent release "Rapprocher." That's Harper and Sina Araghi, above, starring in the Paris-filmed video for "Bienvenue," directed by Clement Gino and Gregory Faure. Supporting their Echo gig are Superhumanoids and American Royalty . ► Joss [...]

American Royalty have always been good a slamming rock and electronica together. "Lately" from their debut "El Ardemo" EP featured an interesting wrestling match between the blues and synth-pop, and their new "Matchstick" EP (out this week on vinyl, next week digitally via Gun in the Sun Records) doesn't stray far from mashing the unlikely genres together. Here, the trio of Marc Gilfry, Billy Scher and Mat Ungson explore more sonic textures, playing with the fine line between analog and synthetic. Electronic drums using samples of live percussion and synths running through grungy amps to make them sound like [...]

Nobody told the Darkness the joke was over. The cartoonish Brits found more than 720,000 saps customers for their 2003 debut "Permission to Land" (it sold 1.3 million in the U.K.) before going quietly into the booze- and drug-filled night, its second album face-planting at 100,000 in sales and frontman Justin Hawkins ending up in rehab. Now, even though today's anything-goes marketplace has encouraged a new breed of young bands to regurgitate rock clichés, the Darkness is back. There they were in a Samsung commercial during the Super Bowl, and they plan to release [...]

On her first couple of releases, Nite Jewel's astral explorations in synth-pop imagined a space-age lounge, the kind of dive George Jetson might escape to in his flying car to drown his sorrows after a family squabble. Songstress Ramona Gonzalez's forthcoming release for Secretly Canadian, "One Second of Love," is not the stuff of gin joints; the album (due March 6) is a sophisticated, still-futuristic take on electronic R&B that fuses deep grooves and her increasingly sultry vocals. Gonzalez seems to have a lot to say about matters of the heart, and on this album she comes through [...]

Tyler's Lyle's rhythmic folk music springs from the fertile loam of Americana, where broken hearts mend, indomitable spirits prevail and sad smiles tell a thousand tales. His voice carries the wizened optimism of a Ryan Adams, and his sharp lyrics, buoyant melodies and deft orchestration make the songs on his new album "The Golden Age & the Silver Girl" something special. Well, I say "new" because it was released to major digital outlets this week — actually, Lyle self-released the album via Bandcamp last year. It was recorded right before the native of Carrollton, Ga., moved to [...]

Your Wednesday fare: ► Coldplay , with three Grammy nominations from its fifth album "Mylo Xyloto" visits Club Nokia for a Clear Channel-sponsored benefit show that helps out two Los Angeles-based youth charities, A Place Called Home and Youth Mentoring Connection. ► Acclaimed Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson performs at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery; the program with the Formalist Quartet will be a retrospective concert. ► Oregon songstress Laura Gibson visits the Echo behind her new release on Barsuk, "La Grande." That's her video for the [...]

Don't let the spelling of their name fool you. The Colourist is not from the U.K. On the contrary, they're an electro-pop quartet from Costa Mesa, and their songs, filled with boy-girl harmonies and crisp guitar lines enveloped by punchy synth, are undeniable odes to sunny SoCal. But Adam Castilla, Maya Tuttle, Justin Wagner and Lollin Johannsen could be well on their way to breaking Orange County boundaries thanks to songs such as the warm "Yes Yes" and the sprightly "Oh Goodbye" from their self-titled EP. They've also gained fans from tour dates with Yellowcard and Grouplove. The [...]

When Briertone first started playing around southern California, they were something of a novelty: Imagine, indie-rock played with folk instruments, like ... banjo and violin and mandolin . "Punk rock-meets-'Deliverance,'" I wrote in September, 2006. Turns out the San Luis Obispo-bred quintet fronted by Adam Pasion was ahead of the curve, considering the hills indie-rock has headed for in the interim. "Outlaw rock," Briertone called their sound, but it was not so much lawless as it was just plain audacious — a combination of the pop-folk that has Mumford & Sons [...]

This should surprise no one who's followed U.K. trio Band of Skulls since they arrived on this shores in 2009: Their new album "Sweet Sour" is a scorcher. Out today via iTunes (and next week in general release), the follow-up to "Baby Darling Doll Face Honey" flexes every muscle a power trio can. Guitarist Russell Marsden, bassist Emma Richardson and drummer Matt Hayward work the loud/soft dynamic brashly; they can segue from sludgy to bluesy to psychedelic in a heartbeat; and the conjugal vocals of Marsden and Richardson suggest all manner of excess. You've heard variations on all [...]

Tips for your Tuesday: ► Buzz Bands LA's monthly songwriter series continues at Lot 1 Cafe in Echo Park , topped by Chicago-bred, L.A.-based songstress Haroula Rose (pictured), freshly returned from Athens, Ga., where she was working on recording her next album. Rose figures to have some new songs, and she'll be joined by Geronimo Getty , Harley Prechtel-Cortez and Sloan Martin . ► Com Truise heads up a big Check Yo Ponytail 2 night at the Echoplex, with Teengirl Fantasy , Soft Metals [...]

The epic pop jam of Shadow Shadow Shade turns to jelly a little bit in the latest song from the Los Angeles sextet, "Maybe I Could Love." The band's 2010 debut album was described in turns as cinematic and "poperatic" — a rousing indie cocktail of Queen, Arcade Fire, Pink Floyd and the Mamas and the Papas — but recently the band (Brian Canning, Steven Scott, Aaron Burrows, Brent Turner, Tom Biller and Claire McKeown) allowed as how it was going to release songs in small batches, or as singles, rather than embark on another full-length. "Maybe I [...]

Considered in the moment, the Mark Lanegan Band's new album "Blues Funeral" seems the perfect antidote to today's falsetto-wielding pop stars and harmony-high folkies. Of course, Lanegan's moment has been going on for nigh three decades now, from his early work with grunge gods Screaming Trees to collaborations with Queens of the Stone Age, the Twilight Singers, the Gutter Twins, Soulsavers and Isobel Campbell. And he's never sounded more real than he does on his first solo album since 2004 — the 47-year-old possesses a voice that conjures up more horrors than Stephen King, and over the course [...]

• “The Gravedigger’s Song̶... » thegravediggerssong.mp3