File under: Classic guitar pop. Glitter girls who like to skateboard and make art. Stylish and sharp. Bubblegum punk. Love rock for heartbreakers who don't mess around.

For fans of: The Buzzcocks, The Breeders, Blondie, Best Coast, B Girls, Beach Boys

From: Los Angeles

Personae: Jennifer and Jessie Clavin

When women and girls listen to love songs written by and/or performed by men, we have to filter stuff out, switch pronouns and, often, navigate a sexist point of view. After a lifetime of listening to male-dominated pop music I’m used to making these kinds of adjustments in my head, but I still feel starved for love songs that I can actually identify with and dance to without a power struggle. This drives me to write my own songs and actively seek out pop groups that give voice to a female perspective on desire. I want to know what girls want, not just what guys tell us we want.

Bleached’s Ride Your Heart is quickly becoming my favorite American guitar-pop album since The Breeders’ Last Splash. Upbeat, infectious melodies are enhanced by minimalist arrangements reminiscent of power pop by Nick Lowe or mid-period Ramones. The songs explore the tension between narcissism and objectification, desire and attraction, longing and sweet sadness, real feelings and true crushes. It’s the sound of a girl’s fast-beating heart. You don’t have to be a teenager to feel like one; just put this album on repeat.

It was my pleasure to chat on the phone with Jennifer and Jessie Clavin about their evolution from Mika Miko, their visual aesthetic, and the L.A. music scene.

On playing in the all-teenage-girl punk band Mika Miko:

Jennifer: We would tour so much, but we were all like best friends. We learned how to play our instruments playing in that band; I learned how to book our tours. Also the hard parts of touring: how to deal with being so close to people all the time and work through situations. Just a lot of crazy things would happen, and we’d have to deal with it on tour and being really young. One night in Texas — it was our first tour around the U.S., and we stopped at SXSW and met this guy who invited us back to his house to party. So we went, and like — we know, you know, “don’t eat like shit, drink water” — but we were smoking weed from this huge bong and all of a sudden the cat started throwing up all over the house and the guy who lived there came out of this dark hallway and he was totally green and someone in Mika Miko started freaking out. I think there was something else in the weed, and we had to take her to the emergency room.

Another time this guy was like, “Oh come play our festival” and we had a day off so we were like, “Why not, we’ll just go play our set.” So we finally get there — and it was so out of the way — and he’s like, “You’re playing in the living room.” So we play in the living room and he was literally the only person in the living room watching us, the only other people in there were just walking by to go to the bathroom. Finally, he was like, “Sorry I can’t pay you guys any money because I had to buy the keg just to get people to come here.” We were like “whatever” and ended up stealing one of his pedals.

That made me realize that maybe doing everything yourself doesn’t always work out. At that point I was still booking the tours myself. I realized that if we wanna keep doing this, we have to get a booker.

On the musical aesthetic of Bleached:

Jennifer: In Mika Miko we were just playing straight punk. My favorite bands were Black Flag, Redd Kross, Circle Jerks, TSOL, and that’s what Mika Miko was trying to do. Jesse and I started getting into different kinds of music, like Fleetwood Mac, Rolling Stones, Gun Club. We’re writing songs that are punk, but also rock ‘n’ roll with a little bit of pop. We’ll pretty much write the whole song and I get to sing whatever I wanna sing. With Mika Miko, I was kinda scared to sing about what I wanted because there were so many people’s opinions. In Bleached I feel comfortable and we can experiment and we get to have a lot more control over everything.

On making stuff look cool:

Jennifer: When we first started, we didn’t know if we were gonna take Bleached seriously or not. We didn’t know where we wanted to go with it. We were really excited to have a visual side that wasn’t just live. The record art I really wanted to have a similar look and feel. I think when you look at all our record art, you kind of get the same feeling from each picture. They’re beautiful, but also dark in a way and they say something about love. I got that from the bands I grew up liking. They all have a visual side. It’s also just like taking what you have and expressing it. Like the Smiths records, you know [by looking at it] that it’s a Smiths record or like Black Sabbath art or Rolling Stones. Those are all my favorite bands, so I was inspired by that. If you have a band, why not take the art side of it seriously too, and make it look just as cool as you want it to look?

Jessie: Growing up, our dad was working in the industry as a sound engineer at Universal, so he was around movie sets a lot and we were always visiting him. Someone always had a video camera. I remember even just being in a car and playing some punk song, and someone would just push record on the camera. Sometimes we’d go film our friends skateboarding. Most of it was just fun, but then we started doing little shorts and did some videos for Mika Miko. I have a box of so much footage of us, but I have to find the equipment to set it up to watch it again. There’s so much Super 8 footage from tour that I keep because I’m gonna use it for something.

On making the record:

Jennifer: When we record we have a drummer, but me and Jesse do everything else. I play rhythm guitar and sing and Jessie does lead guitar and bass. When we first started, we just wanted it to be Jessie and I, because we had already been in a band where it was so hectic trying to get everyone together all the time. We were like, “We’ll just do it ourselves.”

On hanging out in the L.A. music scene:

Jennifer: It’s actually been really fun lately. There was a period where there weren’t that many fun bands, then it just started up again. FIDLAR are really good live, and Tangea are really fun live, too. And our friends Chad and the Meatbodies. There was just a festival in Santa Ana called Burgerfest because Burger Records is a label from Santa Ana and it was all these bands that are on Burger, like Gap Dream and they’re so good. That festival was soooooo fuuunnn, just so many kids going crazy. It was insane. I don’t know how many people that place holds, but it must be at least 1000. It was so crazy.

On where they will be 10 years from now:

Jessie: Jen will have her own clothing line. Possibly lingerie. She also wants a flower shop. Next to Jen’s flower shop, I’ll have a restaurant and it will be, like, all the food we ate on tour. Our band will still play shows. Maybe not tour as much — festivals would be cool. In 10 years we’ll be ready to do things at home.

But right now, we’re in this moment with Bleached. This is what we are doing right now. This is what’s in front of us to do. If you wanna go back to school, you can always do that later. This is the right time to be doing Bleached. It’s what we’re supposed to be doing.

File under: Noisy crash pop for art-school kids who like to dance to live music. Melodic guitar-driven songwriting with DIY/punk sensibilities. Scottish nerdcore for girls who put on all-ages shows and collect vinyl.

For fans of: Veronica Falls, Look Blue Go Purple, The Pastels, The Vaselines, Brilliant Colors, Grass Widow

From: Glasgow, Scotland

Personae: Eilidh Rodgers (drums, vocals), Ruari MacLean (guitar, vocals) and Rachel Aggs (guitar and vocals)

I interviewed Golden Grrrls before their show with Brilliant Colors in Olympia; they had just flown from London to Seattle to start their first U.S. tour. We ordered pizza and sat on the floor of Bikini Kill Records HQ to get to know one other. I quickly discovered they’re record nerds who prefer nothing more than to geek out about music: Drummer/vocalist Eilidh Rodgers works in a record store owned by Stephen Pastel where my band, Spider and the Webs, hung out for a day when we played Glasgow. We bonded and immediately started arguing about the Beatles.

Guitarists/vocalists Rachel Aggs and Ruari MacLean picked George as their favorite Beatle, which Rodgers thought was a total cop-out. (Aggs was about to write Harrison a fan letter when he died, so she wrote it and then ceremoniously burnt it in memoriam. At this, MacLean changed his mind and chose Paul.) Rodgers confessed that when she was younger she always picked John, but went with Ringo in the end, possibly for comic relief. In a way, their choices make total sense: Golden Grrrls are interested in pop music and experimenting with forms — like Paul — and in musicianship and aesthetics, like both Paul and George. They have a sense of humor (Ringo), and while they want to be taken seriously, they don’t wanna seem “too serious” (John).

After the interview, we headed to the show. Watching them made me remember hearing the Pastels for the first time, and illustrated an unlikely continuum from ’80s underground to today’s DIY, an international network that connects Olympia to Glasgow.

On the origins of Golden Grrrls:

Rodgers: I started playing the drums in high school. I used to just sit in the front room and play the drums. I used to play along to that film with Tom Hanks, That Thing You Do! It’s pretty silly. I think I really just loved the song. It all started with Tom Hanks didn’t it?

MacLean: The first band I ever played in was my dad’s cover band. Kind of like pub rock — classic jukebox hits. I was 15 or 16 and got to go into a bar and not be thrown out and got paid at the end of the night. My history teacher was the singer.

Aggs: My family plays music too. My mom just started playing double bass and my dad plays banjo and guitar. We play old timey bluegrass music. I play fiddle and mandolin.

On their troublesome name:

MacLean: My grandmother was from West Virginia and I used to watch Golden Girls with her. When I finished University I had to have surgery on my knee so I couldn’t work for like a month or two and I thought, “Now’s a good time to record some songs.” I didn’t think there would be any shows involved. It was just me messing around, like playing the drums and everything. I just thought that’s a silly name because, like, I’m a young guy, I’m not an old woman, there’s one of me, there’s four of them and then somebody had a side project called Golden Girls so I had to change the spelling and now it’s just a big load of trouble.

Rodgers: It’s fine. Who cares, fuckin’ hell!?

MacLean: Then we actually started playing. As stupid as it sounds, when we started playing live, I hadn’t made the connection between there being women in the band and the name at all.

Rodgers: I think it’d be a really bad name if we were all girls. I wouldn’t be in that band.

Aggs: I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think it’s funny and if people do associate it with riot grrrl that’s not bad. It’s not like that’s a terrible thing to be associated with.

MacLean: I think it’s more that it’s related to a cheesy TV show.

On music and community:

Aggs: I make zines and stuff, I do drawings. In school I studied fine art and I made sound art but I actually just wanted to play music so I felt like I was wasting my time.

Rodgers: I think it’s easier to start playing music than it is to establish yourself as an artist.

Aggs: Music is so instantaneous. If you have an idea and you wanna do something with someone it’s so easy to make a demo and put it out there. It’s easy to communicate in that sense, because you know where the community is gonna be. You can just go play with your friends’ bands. If you make some art, it’s like, “Oh what am I gonna do with this? Where am I gonna exhibit it? Who’s gonna care?”

MacLean: With music there’s a really immediate response.

Rodgers: I think we used to joke that the minute Rachel met someone she liked, she’d say, “Let’s start a band.”

Aggs: Yeah, I need to stop. I’m already in too many bands.

On the ’80s indie-pop aesthetic:

MacLean: It’s easy for people to go “Glasgow, mixed gender…they sound like The Pastels or The Vaselines,” but I don’t have a problem with that.

Aggs: Before I joined the band I really liked Golden Grrrls, but I knew very little about indie pop except for New Zealand stuff. I’d actually never listened to the Pastels before and not really the Vaselines much. So I’ve listened to loads of new music since joining. But I like the band, because it’s really tuneful, fun music and I actually had no reference, which is really nice for me. It’s been fun coming up with guitar parts. What were we listening to? The Byrds and stuff like that.

MacLean: We like a lot of ’60s music, and I’m sure those bands did as well, but I can’t play guitar like [The Byrds'] Roger McGuinn. So maybe if you try and fumble along a little bit, it comes out sounding a little bit like us.

Aggs: When I used to go watch Golden Grrrls, it was really noisy and loud and fun live. I was going to see hardcore punk bands and stuff as well, and it was a similar thing. Me and my friend put them on in his bedroom, in a really small bedroom, and people were moshing and stuff.

Rodgers: There weren’t enough mic stands, so there was a mic attached to a mop or a broom or something.

Aggs: Golden Grrrl’s has a soft side but it has a crazy side too.

On the current DIY scene:

MacLean: The UK scene is looking pretty healthy just now with some cool new spaces and promoters doing shows, like Riots Not Diets in Brighton, Neen Records in Newcastle and the Audacious Art Experiment space in Sheffield. And promoters like Upset the Rhythm in London and Comfortable on a Tightrope in Manchester are amazing.

Rodgers: Before Rachel joined Golden Grrrls she was on tour in Glasgow with her band Trash Kit and Grass Widow, and we played in Glasgow together, and it was really great.

Aggs: Silverfox are one of my favorite bands in the UK at the moment.

MacLean: I think people like us like a broad range of stuff from different years. We toured with Edible Arrangements from Brighton.

Aggs: They’re amazing. They’ve got organ and guitar. They play spooky horror-movie music.

MacLean: We played with another band called Sex Hands, from Manchester. They sound completely different than us and completely different than Edible Arrangements. All the bands are totally different but there’s a love of melody and using that as a basis for making something.

Rodgers: I think it’s more interesting when you play with people who are into different things and you can meet in the middle somewhere.

Aggs: I had to learn to play guitar properly to join Golden Grrrls. Scales!

Rodgers: If you actually know how to play, you’d just play the same as the next guy. But if you’re kind of struggling —

MacLean: I’m constantly struggling.

Rodgers: — It sounds nice.

File under: '70s country folk with hints of rustic psychedelia and spiritual malaise

For fans of: Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Iron & Wine, The Black Twig Pickers

From: North Carolina via California

Personae: Primarily Michael Taylor (guitar, mandolin, voice), but occasionally Scott Hirsch (bass, guitar) and Terry Lonergan (drums)

It feels odd to ask “Who is…?” of a guy who has been making music for nearly 20 years, but veteran Michael Taylor is just now finding his largest audience with Hiss Golden Messenger. It’s actually his third band, following the short-lived punk group Ex-Ignota and the longer-lived San Francisco alt-country act The Court & Spark. When the latter broke up in 2007 — after four albums and nearly a decade of near-constant touring — Taylor settled down in Durham, North Carolina, where he started a family, pursued a degree in folklore, and made music more as a hobby than as a priority.

Over several albums — a few self-released, a few more via North Carolina indie label Paradise of Bachelors — Hiss Golden Messenger has alternated between an austere solo acoustic project for Taylor and a full band featuring Scott Hirsh on guitar and Terry Lonergan on drums. For Haw, the fourth and arguably best release under the HGM moniker, they added members of Lambchop, Megafaun and the Black Twig Pickers to the line-up.

Whether alone or with friends, however, the primary elements of Hiss Golden Messenger remain constant: Taylor’s voice, which sounds both genial and mysterious, and his lyrics, which examine thorny issues of faith, fidelity, and family. Stephen M. Deusner caught up with Taylor to discuss North Carolina, the South, and that strange little word “haw.”

On growing up in a musical family:

My father is a musician. When he was growing up during the early to mid ’60s, the folk revival was a really big part of what was going on in the country. He went to high school with Steve Martin, who, besides being a comedian, is a huge fan of bluegrass. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Jackson Browne also went to that school. So he had an interest folk music, and that was how I heard a lot of the music that ended up being the points of entry into traditional folk and country. It’s not that far from the Byrds to Merle Haggard to Doc Watson to The Anthology of American Folk Music.

On moving to North Carolina:

I draw a lot of inspiration from Southern music. It’s one of the big reasons why we ended up here. I felt like I needed to live in the South to understand the music that I love so well. I think about region as very specific places, like there was a time when people could hear a song and they could tell what county is was from. I don’t think my music works the same way, but there’s certainly a sense of place in Hiss Golden Messenger records. I feel very connected to this place. This is my home. We bought a house here. Our son was born here. Our daughter will be born in July and she’ll be a North Carolina native. I’m proud to live here and make music here.

On being a non-Southerner playing Southern music:

I would never refer to myself as a Southerner. That is reserved for people who are born and raised here. I do have a deep appreciation for what the South has given to American culture. I’m certainly using Southern instrumentation and song forms in my music, but I’m not discussing Southern issues or concerns as much as I’m talking about what is going on in my heart and in my head.

On the word “Haw”:

I think of this record as a very dark record, certainly the darkest that I’ve made. And I thought there was something a little comical about calling it Haw, if you think of haw as laughter. It’s the name of a river in this region that I live very close to. There’s Hee Haw, too, which was a great show. It perpetuated a lot of stereotypes that people certainly disagreed with, but on the other hand, it presented a lot of incredible music. It’s a complicated show.

On Hiss Golden Messenger as a solo vs. band project:

I don’t write with a band. I write by myself. There are a lot of parts of Hiss Golden Messenger that are very solitary. When I started Hiss Golden Messenger in earnest, I was pretty isolated out here and I was concerned with writing these internal narratives and puzzling out personal issues I was dealing with. So Hiss Golden Messenger is me and whoever is playing me. If I’m playing with a band, then Scott Hirsch is going to be there. He recorded Haw, he mixed it, he played bass and a bunch of other stuff on there. And Terry Lonergan is really crucial to the full band records we make.

On confronting spiritual issues in song:

I was talking to someone about this last weekend and was flipping through some notebooks. I always have multiple notebooks with me, and as I was trying to sum up the record with a concise thesis, I flipped to a page that read, “I will not pray in fear.” This record is me trying to understand my inner life, my spiritual place in the world. Is faith rooted in fear or is it rooted in peace? I have a lot of questions, but I don’t have any answers to them. It can be frustrating. And I’m not convinced that my ideas of faith and spirituality are getting any clearer they older I get. In fact, I think they’re getting hazier. Let me say, I’m not a churchgoing person. I think the Bible is a great book and also incredibly flawed. I don’t know what my idea of God is. That’s what these records are about.

On re-recording old songs for new albums:

I’ve recorded a bunch of my songs a couple of times. [Haw features a new version of "The Serpent Is Kind (Compared to Man)," which originally appeared on 2010's Bad Debt.] There’s a long history in traditional music of people re-recording songs, but it’s not something that happens so much in the independent music world. I don’t like the idea of a recording of a song being static. These things should live. Certainly the ideas being presented in these songs are worth revisiting over and over again, because a lot of times the words just come through me and I don’t even fully understand them. So it’s good to go back and sing them again, although some of them can be very painful to record and talk to people about. But I think it’s a good pain.

On being part of North Carolina’s music scene:

People have been very kind and welcoming to me here, although I feel like I’m still sort of an outlier — for purely logistical reasons, though. For a multitude of reasons, I’m not out and about very much. But there is a brotherhood — or sisterhood — of musicians in this region that feels very special and very different from other places I’ve lived. For how small of a place it is, there’s a very high ratio of really incredible bands: Megafaun, Mount Moriah, Mountain Goats, Spider Bags, It’s endless. I’m very close with Phil and Brad Cook [of Megafaun]. Phil played on most of Haw. The entire cultural scene here is just really vibrant, from food to writing to music to visual art. It’s a beautiful place to be. To put it this way, my wife and I just bought a house, and I hired Ash Bowie of Polvo to do the electrical work.

File under: Experimental post-punk with haunting, reverb-soaked vocals

For fans of: Sonic Youth, Broadcast, Cat Power

From: Oslo, Norway (by way of Midland, Michigan)

Personae: Carmen Hillestad

Though modeling might sound like a dream job to some, Carmen Hillestad looked the part in front of the camera, but was all the while dreaming of another fantasy occupation. Music was always on her mind, beckoning her to abandon the silence of magazine shoots and finally unveil the songs that had been incubating in secret for six or seven years.

Her earliest musical endeavors involved classical piano and clarinet lessons but upon falling in love with the electric guitar, she turned lo-fi multi-instrumentalist, eschewing perfectionism for the beauty of off-kilter beats and bent waves of distortion. Her otherworldly vocals and noisy cut-and-paste experiments that pile layer upon layer of wandering guitar lines, hypnotic loops and primal beats eventually caught the ear of Emil Nikolaisen (of the Oslo noise-pop band Serena-Maneesh). He soon joined forces with Hillestad, co-producing and playing drums and keyboards on her entrancing debut album Sleeper and subsequently connecting her to the venerable Oslo indie label Smalltown Supersound.

Hillestad now technically lives in London, but she’s spent much of the last three years in Norway recording, mixing and performing. While Hillestad was winding down from a music festival in Oslo, she spoke with eMusic’s Amre Klimchak about her love of lo-fi rock, finding her voice, and making the leap to full-time musician.

On becoming an experimental multi-instrumentalist:

I’ve always played instruments. I started learning the piano when I was about eight or nine, and I also played the clarinet, so I learned a lot about musical theory. I stopped playing piano when I was about 15 because I got bored — I was a stupid teenager. I wasn’t necessarily bored of the piano, but I was kind of bored of the restrictive method I was learning. It was very classical training, and I was more interested in learning the pieces quickly so I could sit and improvise, or play the pieces a lot faster and keep the sustain pedal in — because I like reverb a lot, as you probably can imagine from listening to the music now. What properly brought me into writing music again was being given [an electric] guitar [at age 19], and sitting by myself and playing on it and experimenting with different pedals.

On being influenced by American hip-hop, ’90s guitar rock, experimental post-punk and world music:

When I started playing the guitar I mainly listened to hip-hop. It was very much Wu-Tang and that whole crowd, the kind of slightly darker, a little bit psychedelic hip-hop, as well as the popular stuff like Dr. Dre. I was really into the beats. Guitar music was always around as well. It was the ’90s, and there was a lot of great stuff going on like Nirvana, Sonic Youth and the whole New York thing. And after a little while I started discovering stuff like This Heat and Sun City Girls and world music, and it all came in bits and pieces.

On being attracted to lo-fi music:

For a long, long time, even as a young teenager, I was always drawn to the stuff that wasn’t perfect, that was slightly off or a bit dark, something slightly weird and lurking around. I find the less perfect things are, the more beautiful and effective they are. Sun City Girls, especially, a lot of their stuff is so terribly bad that it’s admirable that they just went for it and put it out there anyway. I always like something that’s on the edge rather than something that’s perfect and produced too well.

On leaving modeling and becoming a full-time musician three years ago:

I decided to become a musician, to take that step, because I felt like there was something that might be worth trying for. Before that, I wasn’t sure whether it was good enough yet to risk leaving a well-paid job for, because it’s kind of crazy. But at the same time, I was very tired of that whole job. It was a decent work life for a while, and it was interesting for a couple of years. But I didn’t feel like I was learning anything new anymore, and I didn’t feel like I was providing anything that mattered or of substance. You’re meant to be silent all the time, and I was tired of it.

On being introduced to Emil Nikolaisen:

I showed a couple of my songs to a really good friend of mine, and she was like, “That’s cool. I’m doing an art exhibition, and you should play.” And I thought, “Oh, Jesus. How scary.” So I had to throw myself out onto it. Her show was in Norway. I played and a friend of a friend of mine saw it, and he’s in music. He thought there was something there. So we started talking, and I sent him a few more tracks, and he was like, “You have to meet Emil.” I was like, “Who’s Emil?”

So he talked to Emil Nikolaisen, who is basically the mastermind behind Serena-Maneesh, and Emil listened to the tracks and was like, “This is actually quite good.” In the beginning, he was a bit skeptical — as I would be as well if I was told what I did. A month after we met for the first time, we started recording. I was really lucky to work with him, because he is incredibly passionate and goes into the project like there’s no tomorrow.

On recording with Nikolaisen in a decommissioned nuclear bunker:

I was in a weird place in my life, so it was almost like a live-or-die situation emotionally. Emil’s very intense, and I think I’m pretty damn intense, so the combination of the two of us…A couple of sessions went from 10 in the morning to 5 or 6 the next morning, and we went all night. The other thing was that we were recording in this old bomb shelter in Oslo, and we didn’t see the sun, so we forgot what time it was quite often. It was a great experience, actually, the whole thing. And I guess there’s definitely a feeling of entering a slightly different world in quite a lot of [the music].

On the inspiration for the album title Sleeper:

Lyrically, the album’s about detachment and this need to sleep and escape everyday life, because I just felt very detached for a long time. So “sleeper” is a small joke toward my family and friends, but also it just felt like the right title for the theme of the album.

I was just mentally not in the right place in life, and I didn’t feel like I was doing anything particularly of substance. I felt a bit detached, and there was always a sense of not belonging somewhere.

On choosing the name “Carmen Villain” for her musical project:

I felt like I needed a sense of detachment from my previous name, because there’s a lot of judgment based on what I’ve done before. I felt like I needed a bit of distance from it. There wasn’t that much thought that went into it; I [just] wanted something different from what my name might represent to some people. I just like the word [villain]. It’s a word that I’ve always loved since I was a tiny kid. It looks great, and it feels good. It’s just a vibe, I guess.

File under: English Krautrock. Psychedelic church pop. Train-announcer techno. Trans-euphoric expression.

From: Bournemouth, now East London

Personae: William Doyle (all instruments, vocals)

There aren’t many artists who can claim to have inspired the creation of a record label, but East India Youth is one of them. The Hostel EP by bedroom producer William Doyle so impressed the editors of the independent music website The Quietus that they decided to set up a label just to release it: the Quietus Phonographic Corporation.

The website’s founder John Doran, who previously said he’d rather “cut off my own head with nail clippers” than start a label, met Doyle at a Factory Floor gig in London in 2012. Doyle gave him a CD of his album Total Strife Forever, which made it into the Quietus’s best of the year list. Doran and his team then decided to splash out on a proper release — without a pair of bloodied clippers in sight.

East India Youth’s sound is crisp and considered, inspired by the singular vision(s) of its creator. Rooted in software synths and computer sequencing, it’s an impossible-to-pigeonhole mix of pop, techno, Krautrock, electro and churchy crescendos, layered with melodic guitars and distinctive heartfelt vocals.

Doyle is a proper fan of German Kosmische muzik, as well as Berlin-period Bowie, Brian Eno, Shostakovich, Fuck Buttons and Tim Hecker. He has previous form as the frontman of Southampton-based Doyle & The Fourfathers, although he ditched his band to develop the solo opuses he’d been making on the side, in his bedroom in London’s East India Docks area (hence the name).

Stuart Turnbull caught up with Doyle to talk about why he’d rather be a “curator of sounds” than a celebrity.

On the desire to make music:

I feel that this in the only thing that I’m capable of doing really well. And I’m very obsessive about it. The urgency was always there, and it’s self-perpetuating. I get up at 8 a.m. and have breakfast, then I usually go for a walk. I get back and start making music until 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., or whenever things dry up. I think having a work ethic is a good way to breed productivity. I don’t find myself that productive at night. I’m much more creative in the daytime.

On recording in his bedroom:

Everything on the Hostel EP and my demo album was done in my bedroom. I’m in an old block of flats, so I can really blast it out. Concrete floors. Great.

When I recorded in professional recording studios in the past I never enjoyed the process. It felt clinical and didn’t help with creativity. The arbitrary order of recording bass first, then drums etc — there’s no room for abstraction. It’s more about getting the cleanest sound than making interesting music.

I’ve got a really basic set-up mainly because I haven’t been able to afford any really cool gear. But I don’t romanticise knobs and faders. I’m more about trying to make the sound with whatever you’ve got.

On listening to music:

I like to sit down and make a big deal about listening to a record. I used to buy an obscene amount of vinyl but I haven’t bought a record this year, because financially I haven’t been able to go on a spree. I’m getting withdrawal symptoms.

My mum used to play classical music around the house when I was younger. Then I studied music at college. Shostakovich really struck a chord with me, and more experimental composers like Arnold Schoenberg and the German expressionists. I love minimalists like Phillip Glass and Steve Reich.

I’m also really interested in ’70s Krautrock bands like Neu!, and the way the political and social atmosphere of the time affected their artistic output.

On hearing problems:

My hearing is quite poor for my age, because of years of playing in bands. I also had a lot of ear infections as a child and suffer from constant tinnitus. It gets worse after I’ve been to a loud gig — or if I’ve played one. But it’s very high pitched, so most of the time you can tune it out or fill your ears with other aural distractions. The problem comes when I want to give my ears a rest, because I can’t sit in a room in total silence. It’s annoying and frightening at the same time.

On making long songs:

“Coastal Reflexions” on the Hostel EP is more than nine minutes long. My girlfriend did the train-announcer vocals on it; she’s not that well-spoken normally. A couple of new tracks I’m working on last a good 17 minutes. I’m a bit worried I’m developing these nasty prog-rock tendencies.

People assign “self-indulgent” and “pretentious” to anything that’s long. But that’s not necessarily true. There are plenty of great 10-minute tracks that are about repetition rather than constant key changes. Some dance tunes go on for ages and no one says they’re self-indulgent.

On being compared to others:

Pet Shop Boys seems to come up a lot. That’s a bizarre one. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Pet Shop Boys but I don’t hear any of it in what I do. Although it’s not a bad thing, I suppose.

On going solo:

I got bored of being in a guitar band. Going up and down the country, we must have played with 600 bands. All that Gallagher-esque swagger on stage and being mouthy, it was depressing really. I didn’t want to hang out with those people.

With electronic music there’s less of an emphasis on the personalities behind the music. It’s more about the audience’s interaction with the sound that’s being made. The person creating it is less of a celebrity or icon, and more so a curator of sounds. That’s liberating idea.

On getting your ideas down:

I get thousands of ideas a day, but you can get too hung up on recording every little thing. It would seriously affect the rest of your life if you felt pressured to write everything down. Your brain acts as a sieve or filter and the good stuff will remain in your head. I’ll write it down when it’s been there a while. I don’t chuck anything out. Stuff I’m working on at the moment, the melody might be four years old. If it’s remained intact for that long I think it must be worth using.

File under: Dizzy psych-pop stiffened by a sturdy post-punk backbone

From: Auckland, New Zealand

Personae: Joel Flyger (vocals, guitar), Adam Page (bass) and David Larson (drums)

Formed in 2009, Popstrangers started off as a low-profile local Auckland band fueled by a dislike for their day jobs and a passion for playing music. Very quickly, however, the noisy psych-pop trio found its footing: A nationwide band competition landed them a coveted slot at Auckland’s 2010 Big Day Out fest, and they released two EPs by the end of 2010.

Still, this forward momentum wasn’t without its setbacks. A record deal with legendary label Flying Nun only yielded one single, and Popstrangers cycled through a long line of drummers before settling on David Larson in 2011. The band’s debut full-length, Antipodes, reflects this restlessness. The New Zealand band rarely settles on one style; stormy jangle, gloomy post-punk and grungy riffs contrast with vocalist Joel Flyger’s sleepy-eyed croon and moments of brittle guitar-pop are balanced by languid shoegaze.

A few weeks before Antipodes was officially released, Flyger answered some questions via email about his ultimate goal as a band — “To play lots of shows, release lots of records and never have to work a proper job again” — and about Popstrangers’ place in music.

On recording Antipodes in the basement of a 1930s-era dancehall:

It was dark. There was a lot of concrete. But the studio itself was great. [There were] lots of rugs on the ground, and equipment everywhere. We were able to feel at home there and come and go at any time of the day or night. It’s very large, as well, with other people coming and going. There was always something happening. Mostly, people hanging around trying to find acid.

On how restlessness and dissatisfaction inspired his lyrics:

A lot of my lyrics for Antipodes came from just wanting something different and more than what was on offer at the time. I wasn’t very happy with what I was doing, the room I was living in, or what I was doing for a job. And at the time, I couldn’t really see anything changing. Most of the themes on the album are about unrest, or lust or certain people in my life during that period.

On how Antipodes emerged so cohesive:

It’s a document of what we were doing about midway through last year. The songs came out fairly quickly in the recording studio, and we knew what we wanted. We had recorded more, but the 10 songs on the album were the cohesive ones and fit together best. It’s taken longer to release the album, but we are very happy with that, too. We recorded it over two or three weeks, with a little more time spent on guitars.

On being influenced by the Cure:

I’m a big fan of the Cure, especially the melodies. Three Imaginary Boys is one of my favorites.

On the current New Zealand music scene:

There are a lot of great bands coming out of Christchurch at the moment, which suffered due to an earthquake a few years ago. It’s good to see the music scene there going well again. I think the NZ music scene is diverse, genre-wise, and there are not prevailing trends as such — but [there are] lots of shows that need more attention by the general public here outside of the music community.

On other New Zealand bands they admire:

I admire the Clean and Bailterspace, as they started something different and developed a “sound.” Also, Bic Runga is a talented vocalist who still makes great music.

Deer Park, Rackets, The Transistors, Salad Boys and Males are the bands we are playing with during our New Zealand album release tour. They are all great people and play a good mix of music.

On how New Zealand has had an impact on its music:

I guess, of course, the surroundings of where you make music has a direct impact on things, but it’s not something I think about or take into account. Perhaps the isolation plays a part in the themes and energy in the music.

On his unexpected musical influences:

I think perhaps ’80s and ’90s mainstream pop music has an influence, as I lived with my mother and sister growing up and they listened to a lot of pop music. A lot of that has stuck with me. Also, opera music and its different movements and journeys are personal influences.

File under: Ethereal folk/pop interwoven with haunting vocal harmonies

For fans of: Sigur Ros, Sin Fang, Fleet Foxes, Psapp

From: Reykjavik, Iceland

Personae: Twin sisters Jófríður and Ásthildur

When they were 14, Jófríður and Ásthildur started a band for no other reason than it seemed like fun. However, the twin sisters never anticipated Pascal Pinon would be anything more than an enjoyable after-school activity.

“We’re so super shy,” says, Jófríður laughing while recounting the horror of their first concert. “We couldn’t stand, we had to sit down. My feet were shaking tremendously! I could barely speak between songs.”

Now 18 and on the cusp of graduation, the girls’ hobby has taken them further than they could have anticipated. On the strength of their childlike self-titled debut they signed to Morr Music (home to likeminded acts such as Sin Fang, Mum, and Amiina), and caught the attention of Sigur Rós producer, Alex Somers. Pascal Pinon’s second album Twosomeness (produced by Somers) is full-spectrum expansion on their delicate blend of porcelain Icelandic/English vocal harmonies, ghostly found sounds and familial intimacy. There’s still a hint of childlike wonderment, but maturation — as it turns out — can be pretty magical as well.

Before Jófríður left to watch a symphony performance, she told eMusic’s Laura Studarus about Pascal Pinon’s fragile beginnings, surviving the teenage years, and how working with producer made them more themselves.

On their humble beginnings:

When we started, we were 14 years old. We both felt that we didn’t fit with our classmates. We were kind of outsiders. They were just kids who lived in our neighborhood who we had nothing in common with. For that reason, when we started, I thought that they would hate it, that they wouldn’t like it at all. I was very shy. I didn’t want them to see it or hear it at all. But then, we got such positive response from people I had never talked to at all! I felt like people actually respected that we were doing something. Nobody laughed at us, which I thought initially they would do. It was very encouraging. We were so young and everything was so fragile at the time.

On common talking points:

People try to create an image for you because they want to market you. It’s a thing that comes with doing pop music. It’s not necessarily a good thing, but it holds hands. You create something that you are, and is easy for people to recognize. I feel like sometimes it’s necessary for me as well. When I’m listening to a new artist, I see a name and I want to know the backstory. The easiest thing and the most eye-catching thing for us is that we’re twins and we started young. Both of those things are actually true. So I’m not going to be fighting against it. I don’t feel like it’s negative, it’s just facts. It’s okay for me. As long as it’s not fake or pretentious. I feel like you shouldn’t fight against something so normal and natural.

On growing up with your best friend:

We fought all the time! We were like cats and dogs. We disagreed on things; we used to fight physically and with words. At the same time, we were really close. When we were not fighting, we were really happy. Now we’re really tight, actually. It’s really good. I’m really, really happy that I have her. It’s like having your best friend all the time. You don’t have to worry about ever losing them. They’re just going to be there. Sometimes that makes you feel like you can mess around with them too much. But if you don’t do that and have respect for your twin, it can be amazing.

On experiencing their teen dream:

I remember I vowed to myself that I would never have “teenage sickness” where you become very moody and make drama out of everything. I said, “I’m never going to have that thing!” But of course I do, like everyone.

I often would think, “In the future I want to do this and I want to do that.” Now when I think back, I think I’m exactly where I wanted to be. I’m doing all these things I find are incredibly interesting, especially when you’re meeting people that you always thought were so far away. But suddenly they’re close and so normal. Like meeting your idols and realizing that they’re just normal people. It’s something that’s weird to think. Because we’re working with Alex [Somers], we met Jónsi. It was strange. I had listened to Sigur Rós for a long time. I got their CD when I was 12. That’s something that I never would have thought of when I was a kid. But when I look back, it’s something that I always wanted. I’m glad now.

On finding inspiration in the absurd:

If there’s something on my mind, it’s very easy to deal with it by writing about it. I don’t know why I do that, but I feel like a lot of people do. It’s a way to clear it up. If there’s something that’s very complicated to you, just some emotions and stuff, it can be easy to get rid of it or make sense of it by creating. It definitely has helped me, and it has given depth in some of the lyrics. I try to be as honest as possible. Even if I don’t tell all the story — that would be boring — I take the feeling of them and make something around it. Or I exaggerate what is good and interesting. Life is an inspiration — normal things, things that are on your mind, and things that aren’t normal at all. All kinds of stuff.

Sometimes I feel so empty if there’s no drama going on in my life. It’s definitely sadness that makes the best songs, for some reason. It’s interesting, because you don’t want to be sad, but it can help you when you’re trying to be creative. A lot of the songs have some kind of sadness in them. But I also try to blend it with some kind of hope. I try to tweak it and make it a good song.

On working with producer Alex Somers (Sigur Rós, Sin Fang):

Alex has a way of exaggerating all the things about us that are weird. It was so good to work with a producer who doesn’t do all the creative work for you. He has his knowledge on how to do things. He talks to us and makes us create something, and then we get ideas, and he’s good at making them happen. That’s how we worked together. It was brilliant. At first I was so scared of doing it with a producer because we thought we’d lose all our characteristics. But it was totally opposite. He made it much more like us, and put all our characteristics in there.

On maintaining perspective:

I’m not sure if being a pop musician is something that I want to do for the rest of my life. It’s something that is interesting while it’s going on. I know this isn’t going to last forever. I want to get an education and go to University and stuff like that. I have to figure out what’s the best thing. You see these things happen and people are very successful, but after being on tour for 10 years, you come back and there’s no special position you can work at. You’re not building up something if you just want to quit. You have to decide if you want to study something and then go back and create a home and work somewhere, or if you want to build a band and make a lot of money from it. It’s like some kind of business. I don’t know if I’m too interested in that. I have to figure it out. Right now it’s something that’s fun, and we’re really enjoying it. It’s not much pressure at all. As soon as it’s very hectic and something that’s not enjoyable, we’re going to find something different. I don’t know if that’s a weird approach to it or if I should be more dedicated, but we’re really enjoying it. That’s a good thing.

File under: Spellbinding breakup rock

For fans of: Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Kills, The Cure, Lightning Dust

From: Chicago

Personae: Gretta Rochelle and Jack Armondo

At this point, the breakup album has been bent into countless shapes. So rather than try to re-shape it, on their debut album My Gold Mask’s Gretta Rochelle and Jack Armondo simply amplified its effects. They didn’t skimp on dramatics, with Rochelle’s pleading vocals, Armondo’s spiraling guitar riffs and lyrics that grapple with psychosis and reference Gothic literature and Italo horror flicks. The result achieves a spellbinding emotional intensity that’s easy to inhabit.

eMusic’s Marissa G. Muller chatted with the duo about their Jane Eyre-meets-surf-rock aesthetic, dealing with panic attacks through song, and maintaining a sense of humor throughout their theatrics.

On being influenced by Chicago:

Gretta Rochelle: We do a lot of our writing during the winter. It gets really frigid here, which lends a hand to our writing. We bury down in our studio, which is this warehouse that doesn’t have heat.

Jack Armondo: Chicago influences our music environmentally, but not as much musically. Stylistically, there are a lot of great Chicago bands, but there aren’t a lot that we fit in with.

On the origins of My Gold Mask’s aesthetic:

Armondo: I was always in more hard rock and pop-punk bands, which is very different from what we do now.

Rochelle: I had played in high school riot grrrl bands — I love me some Bikini Kill — and a rock-pop band before this. When we first started, we experimented with different sounds and tones and vocal approaches.

Armondo: We’ve said from the beginning that there aren’t any rules for what My Gold Mask can be. Our first nine songs were really different. There are clues in all the early EPs that have kind of led to our heavy vibe now. The album is a natural extension. We wanted to hone in more on specific feelings: lost love, longing and conflict of emotion — wanting something even if it’s not good for you and pursuing it anyway.

On taking inspiration from Italo horror films:

Armondo: When we were writing Leave Me Midnight, we were on this Giallo kick — old Italian murder-mystery, horror films from the ’70s. There’s usually a lot of psychosis involved, visceral moments. It can be kind of hokey, but that mood, tension and dramatic feel is something that we try to do with our music. We try to create tension and a cinematic [feel].

Rochelle: Suspiria is one of the most gorgeously-shot horror films from that time and has so much beauty and darkness. It inspired me to play around with layering vocals and try to capture that same dark beauty.

Armondo: The album art was our tribute to [Suspiria director] Dario Argento, but we didn’t want it to look exactly like it was lifted from the movie. We wanted it to look like something from the past that could also be from the future. We wanted something that was pretty, but also foreboding and a little mysterious.

Rochelle: The album deals with duality, which we tried to capture in the artwork and the title: Leave Me Midnight, can be either inviting [midnight] or warding it off.

On writing about panic attacks first-hand:

Rochelle: A lot of times, I write from personal experience. I feel like I have to have experienced something to be able to convey it accurately. I suffer from panic attacks, and “Lost In My Head” is very true to that. It’s a very personal song to me.

Armondo: That song was something Gretta really wanted to talk about. Because she deals with panic attacks, the way she talks about it in the song is very accurate to the way it feels.

Rochelle: People are always talking about stress or anxiety, but when you live with panic attacks, that feeling that lasts about 20 seconds feels like death for an entire day. So I thought it was important to flush that out for myself.

On the album’s Gothic moments:

Armondo: “Wound,” to me, sounds like someone that’s trapped in this big old Victorian house in this relationship with someone who is completely neglectful. This person is left alone in the house and is sort of numb to the whole situation. A lot of the album has to do with relationships that didn’t turn out the way you imagined when you started. Love and loss and conflict of emotion – wanting something even if it’s not good for you and pursuing it anyway — are all themes on the album.

Rochelle: It’s a lot about the bittersweet moments that may not be so healthy for us, but we crave those things regardless.

On Gretta’s zig-zagging vocals:

Rochelle: My vocals emulate a drugged-out state on “In Our Babylon.” It’s one of those party songs about a party you shouldn’t have gone to.

Armondo: It’s about the downside of partying like staying too long and thinking, “Oh God, I should go home, but I can’t.”

Rochelle: I want the listener to get dropped into the song and kind of swim around with us. I think after a couple listens the lyrics will pop out.

Armondo: We like having a little bit of murkiness in our lyrics. When I listen to music where you can’t hear the lyrics too well, I almost listen closer, because I’m trying to hear and understand. That can draw you into songs, and that’s why things aren’t ultra-clear. I think our songs grow with a few listens. That can be a dangerous game in today’s world, when people can listen things only once and move on, but we still like music that reveals more the more you listen.

On balancing the darkness with a sense of humor:

Armondo: We’re lighthearted people — we’re not sitting in a cave wearing monk outfits. We take our art seriously, but we think it’s important to have a sense of humor in our personal lives. We weren’t trying to be campy on the album, but at the same time there is almost a melodrama to it, and we’re aware of that. Like, “Burn Like the Sun” has a lot of post-apocalyptic imagery — “letting it all burn like the sun” and the idea of watching things melt. It sounds like a natural disaster, but that’s because some relationships are like natural disasters!

File under: Deconstructed R&B with art-pop sensibilities

For fans of: How To Dress Well, Jamie Lidell, Miguel, Terence Trent D'arby

From: New Orleans

Personae: Arthur Ashin

Call it a case of either good timing or musical clairvoyance, but Autre Ne Veut’s Arthur Ashin beat many of his indie peers to the punch when it comes to re-framing R&B. The Connecticut-born musician premiered his falsetto’d, synth-laden take on the genre in 2010, and has fine-tuned it with each new release. Anxiety, his sophomore album, is his most wrenching to date, pushing his unhinged vocals and diary-like lyrics about a failed relationship to the forefront. He’s still finding ways to outstrip his contemporaries too, either with gospel-nodding harmonies — contributed by the Zambri sisters, Cristi Jo and Jessica — or with the unparalleled earnestness in his vocal delivery.

eMusic’s Marissa G. Muller spoke with Ashin about his love for soul and R&B, his willingness to write about the failure of a relationship while that relationship was still in progress, and how his study of psychology informed his music.

On the roots of his moniker, Autre Ne Veut:

Years ago, I was up at the Cloisters, a metropolitan museum on the Upper West Side with a lot of Medieval artifacts, and there was a gold and amethyst hat ornament and on the back was inscribed “Autre Ne Veut.” I can’t verify this at all — in fact, I’ve even called one of the historians there who says that there’s no evidence of this being true — but I have this memory of someone telling me that it was a gift from a French duke to his mistress. I can’t speak a lick of French but it translates to “I want no other.” I thought the tension of the space between what one has and what one wants was kind of poetic. I chose it then and I’m stuck with it now.

On his musical beginnings in college:

I had a rock band for a while and [then gradually] started making Brian Eno-rip off music for cinema. My band was ’90s-nodding alt rock and had a Pavement, Yo La Tengo vibe. I screamed on top a lot. I’ve always been into songwriting and, except for a stint trying to make ambient electronic music, it’s always been something that I’ve thought a ton about. To me, songwriting is the crux of everything I do.

On his move from away from rock:

I’m a big folk music fan still; I love Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classic female folk songwriters. I love, love, love Van Morrison: Astral Weeks is one of my favorite records, ever. But rock isn’t my thing now. I feel like rock is a technology that’s really reached its limit. I like music that sounds like it’s pushing some sort of boundary and, to me, that’s what’s exciting about hip-hop and R&B. It’s still an evolving form and people are constantly looking for new sounds, and even the highest level of popularity. There’s still new things happening and new approaches, and I don’t think that’s really happening in rock. I’m trying to work against what’s there while still maintaining a healthy level of respect for what’s come before me. My approach is a little bit different than other peoples’, in terms of production in particular.

On re-imagining R&B without nostalgia:

I have problems not being nostalgic enough in my life. Even my first record — which, incidentally had a lot of similarities to [other music that was nakedly nostalgic] — I was not going for that. Any similarities [to earlier music] came from being an amateur with synthesizers, which a lot of people were in the ’80s, because they were just getting their hands on them. I’m against nostalgia as a creative practice. I listen to a lot of old stuff, but it’s not because of nostalgia.

I listen to lots of R&B, and have all of my life, so I don’t mind being classified as R&B. [Anxiety] is definitely a pop record. I’m working against it as much as I’m working with it, but I’m definitely working within those modes on the record. The musical references on my previous recordings were more classic soul, and I think that the Stax Records paradigm for songwriting is at the heart of everything I’ve ever done. I was definitely looking to make something more contemporary on this record, so a lot of the melodic decisions were more related to R&B rather than soul or reggae — which my older stuff nodded more heavily to.

On his tribute to Whitney Houston, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”:

I’m pretty unsentimental, but Whitney Houston was unbelievable in the way that she walked that line between making soul, gospel, R&B and pop. The restraint that she had — and everything about her — freaks me out. I was pretty bummed out when she died and wanted to make a little homage, so I titled my song after one of hers.

On keeping his identity under wraps for so long:

Music has been my fantasy — and the fact that anyone cares at all is amazing — but my big Plan B was to be a clinical psychologist. My music started happening and I wanted to preserve a clean Google search. Clinical psychology is super conservative as a field and it’s also really rigorous and competitive and it’s one of those things where it’s supposed be your priority 100 percent. With jobs and fellowships, I don’t want the first thing that comes up in a search to be a video of me jerking off on stage.

On bonding with How to Dress Well’s Tom Krell over their chosen genre and student status:

He did an interview for Village Voice a few years ago and the way that he wrote felt so private to me in an exciting way, so I hit him up while he was still doing his mixtapes and we’ve been in touch since then. I don’t know how he multi-tasks — all I’ve done is complain to him about it.

On his diary-like lyrics:

I do stream-of-consciousness singing — I mostly sing on the spot. Most of the ideas are really personal and are about relationships I’ve had with different people and complicated moments that I don’t really know how to deal with, so I put them into songs. “Play By Play” is a song about jealousy and paranoia. “World War” is a portrait of my relationship with an ex and some of the difficulties with that. Those two are the most powerful to me and were the hardest to deal with.

The record was written over the past three years. I was in grad school and intense psychoanalysis, and the record is about this period of my life where I felt particularly overwhelmed and anxious about a lot of things. It was interesting: I was in a relationship at the time and the songs are not all positive, and her response was complicated. But, at the end of the day, the difficulties are what make music feel important.

On championing his earnestness:

I’m a super sensitive dude, really fragile, but I also function in the world. So I have to take myself with a grain of salt. On one level, I’m being completely earnest and on another level I’m aware of the fact that it’s kind of corny to be as earnest as I am. I spent my whole life hiding from my earnestness so there is a wink in there, a little bit. But I get more out of people taking it seriously, even if I can’t.

On putting his vocals at the forefront of the record:

I think it’s something you have to do at some point: strip away the veils and try not to hide. I felt ready. The recording space is a safe space for me. I loved being in the studio and working with Dan [Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never]. He’s been my music consultant since I started demoing out this project in 2005 — he was the first person to hear it. I’ve been a singer for a long part of my life and I’ve been a vocalist in live projects before, and I think I was trying to make things more complex than I needed to in my earlier releases. I decided this time I’m going to really sing and see what happens.

File under: No Rave. Ethereal chant-pop. Surreal dance music for lucid dreamers, industrial and pretty.

From: Oakland, California

Personae: Kelsey, Natalee and Joey

Oakland’s Uncanny Valley occupy a corner of the electronic underground that takes place in illegal venues under low-budget conditions, yet their aesthetic is hardly makeshift. Their recording is skillfully well-produced and their minimal compositions are fully realized, while the live show borders on performance art — exploring the line between self and other, body and mind, being and nothingness.

When I saw them live they looked like Victorian ghosts. Dressed in long, flowing gowns and loose-fitting, sheer material, they wrapped themselves up in a massive piece of fabric that acted both as a veil and a net, inviting the crowd into the giant, fort-like cocoon and obliterating the line between performer and audience. It challenged the notion of an atomized, individual comfort zone, creating the possibility for communion. The kids went crazy — as kids tend to do when they are at the dawn of a new counter-cultural moment. It stimulated my curiosity in this scene I knew little about.

I talked with Uncanny Valley via email about Speaking in Prosthetic Tongues, their debut release on Night People, and about the ideas and motivations behind the “No Rave” aesthetic.

On the origins of Uncanny Valley:

Kelsey: I grew up in an idyllic small town on the central coast of California, an only child who spent most of my youth out in the nearby state park, catching frogs and picking fleas off cats while my hippie parents and their friends gutted freshly caught fish and made crass jokes while naked in the hot tub. I made up stories to entertain myself and personified the inanimate objects around me. My father built harps for a living, and my mother was always singing songs while cavorting around in our weird fairytale life. I was infatuated with the relationship between that which is light, and that which is inevitably dark — music and songwriting was my way to exorcise my feelings about these integral parts. I mainly made bedroom music until I started collaborating with Joey and Natalee.

Natalee: When I was about 16, I started going to underground experimental/noise shows in Chicago. I started doing performance art, making psychedelic plays and puppet shows. I wanted to make music but I didn’t even know how to begin. There was a strong male presence in the music scene. Joey and I moved to California around the same time. We became good friends and had messed around with music a bit, and then Kelsey and I became friends and started talking about the minimal wave music. Right before my 21st birthday I bought my first synth, and the three of us started experimenting together, not really certain what the outcome would be.

Joey: I have performed solo for a long time as Joey Casio, making politically-leaning punk house where I sing and rant and bash at electronic hardware. Uncanny Valley is the first time I have collaborated with other people in such an ambitious context. Natalee and Kelsey approached me with an idea, to start a new band that was a bit darker, but still fully synthetic sounding. What came about when we combined our aesthetics and ideas surprised me in a really beautiful way, and really seemed to connect with the people around us.

On how the creative process combines disparate influences into a new sounds:

Natalee: Joey has a lot of experience and knowledge of the technical side of music production. A lot of bands we like from the ’80s were produced by men with female vocals. I refuse to fit that mold, and have demanded that each of us play a balanced and integral role in the writing process. Kelsey may be the primary vocalist, but she also contributes to production and aesthetic decisions.

Joey: Natalee grew up in the Chicago noise scene and believes in the importance of bringing experimental sounds to people’s ears to push boundaries. I’ve been pretty deep in dance music theory for the last few years, examining how certain sounds and rhythms resonate with the human mind. Kelsey is more free-form in her creative process; a lot of lyrics start with her basically speaking in tongues until the words becomes poems.

Kelsey: The creative process with Joey and Natalee is often sporadic and spontaneous. Sometimes we craft enough material for a new tape in one sitting, other times we spend several days working on the skeleton of a song. No one has just one set role — we swim together through the collective conscious.

Joey: When we practice often we’re just putting seeds into the machines; when we play live, something else really special happens. There is a fair amount of improvisation that is difficult to capture. Playing live is an ongoing conversation with an audience.

On creating an oppositional youth culture in 2013:

Joey: Young people today experience music in a much different way than in the past. The internet has allowed memes to emerge divorced from localized subcultures, and this often creates flash-in-the-pan trends that don’t resonate with the same timeless effect that previous sounds had. The way fake genres like “witch house” and “seapunk” get turned into jokes is quick and cruel. “No Rave” can avoid this by being explicitly opposed to the hegemony at large, and by being self-referential and critical to the systems which propagate its existence.

On the emergent No Rave scene:

Joey: No Rave stands in opposition to the anonymous, apathetic, apolitical stance that electronic music so often takes. In the last couple of years, people who were previously involved with punk and noise scenes started making electronic dance music. Not surprisingly, a lot of times it turns out quite weird. I would say groups like Extreme Animals and Eats Tapes are the precursors to this scene. In Oakland, TECHNOC, YRUD and Body Glove have been making sounds I’d call No Rave. A lot of other folks have started to make new music that leans that direction — like Black Jeans and REDREDRED. In other cities, I’d include Ginseng from Iowa City, Sewn Leather, Chrome Windows from Olympia, Diamond Catalog from Portland, Container and Unicorn Hardon from Nashville.

Uncanny Valley went through a big shift toward No Rave on tour. Playing live every night, our set got more free-form and dance music-oriented but also more experimental — leaning toward the weird end of acid house, but adding a personal element with the vocal elements that was always lacking from so much of that music.

Natalee: I am trying to create an electronic music scene that is not male-dominated, trying to encourage and assist women making electronic music. I want to present electronic music in all-ages, all-welcome underground venues and avoid bars/clubs as much as possible. I never have fun in bars.

On a New Age trip to the desert:

Joey: I jokingly referred to Uncanny Valley’s “genre” as “new age body music” for a while. There is a heavy influence of early industrial dance music such as DAF, Front 242 — what’s often called “electronic body music.” But that kind of music is often very tough and hyper-masculine while Uncanny Valley has this other much more dreamy aspect to it. Are we New Age? Perhaps. We listened to a lot of Enya on tour. There have definitely been Tarot readings at band practice.

We have played and met up numerous times with friends out in the desert, and there have been some very amazing experiences. It’s mostly just weirdos meeting up at an abandoned farm with a giant PA and lot of ideas and music making machines. We make up bands for the night and use it as a chance to explore new ideas.

Natalee: Getting out into the elements with a bunch of friends, hiking up a mountain with birds soaring below and then staying up as long as possible, listening to the weirdest sounds resonating in the weirdest ways in the desert air is invigorating. It’s probably not what you think — no one is doing Reiki — but we do like to find obsidian flakes and talk about crystals and stare at the endless stars.

On living in the realm of the unreal:

Kelsey: I’m heavily influenced by the surreal, and the ability to transcend my body through performance. Some of my favorite Uncanny Valley shows have been the ones where I have covered myself entirely in white paint. I then feel like I don’t have to be confined by my humanness. I can make up words and move in a way that takes me elsewhere and away. As someone who doesn’t identify as a person of faith, performance functions as my ritual. Ceremony is of utmost importance to me. I want to honor that. Through performing, I feel that energy is put forth. I’ve been reading and researching female artists and performers extensively the last few years, and I find that their work also helps aid in inspiration — Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Judy Chicago, and Marina Abramovic are among my personal favorites. They make me study the connection between mind and body, and what it means to choose to live in the realms of the unreal; balancing reality and fantasy.

Natalee: One of the most exciting things about playing music is this experience I have of phantom voices singing in between frequencies. We’ll be generating a sound, and I’ll think Kelsey is singing, but I look over and she isn’t even in the same room. I’ve started to hear these voices singing in all kinds of music and sounds. I like to think of them as some kind of ghost voice trying to speak to me or of my own unconscious singing a song to me.

Joey: This is fantasy music. We get lost in it. We make a space and jump though, hopefully taking anyone within earshot with us. I want to make music that makes people have a transcendent experience, to be taken outside the self, to get lost in a crowd and feel good about it — to look to my collaborators and build a ship in the ocean of collective consciousness and invite the water in. The music is already there. When we get lucky, we can tune in.

File under: Ornate, psychedelic baroque pop

For fans of: Tame Impala, Foxygen, The Left Banke

From: Netherlands

When asked about his hobbies outside of music, 24-year-old Jacco Gardner didn’t list a bunch of extracurricular activities — because really, he doesn’t have any. His full-time job for the past two years has been working on his album Cabinet of Curiosities. In his free time, he hangs out with his musician friends, goes to their concerts, and works on their albums. “It’s all about music all the time,” he said. And his dedication to his craft paid off with Cabinet: The album is filled with lush arrangements that jump out of the fantastical worlds of yesteryear— from the jaunty whimsy of Lewis Carroll to Brian Wilson’s “Heroes and Villains” keyboards.

The result makes sense, given that Gardner has cited 1960s psych-pop studio geniuses like Wilson, Syd Barrett and Curt Boettcher as influences on his process. Gardner’s studio sanctuary is also his home; the Shadow Shoppe Studio in the town of Zwaag is nestled in a North Holland industrial area, surrounded by places where you can essentially buy entire rooms for your house — entire kitchens, bathrooms, whatever you need. Aside from the occasional friend stopping by, the studio is mainly just Gardner’s playground. “So I’m not sure when you would call it a studio or just the place where I live,” he says. “It’s actually illegal to live here, but I don’t care.”

In that illegal abode, he composed his debut, playing every instrument on the album except for the drums. “I had these songs in my head and worked them up with sample drums first, and then the parts that I thought up were too difficult for me to play on drums,” he said. “I really needed a good drummer for that.” eMusic’s Evan Minsker talked with Gardner via Skype while he was hanging out in his home/studio. One room over, his bandmates were audibly working to condense the album’s lead single “Clear the Air” into a one-minute rendition to play on Dutch national TV.

On being raised in a musical family:

My parents were not necessarily very musical, but I’m the youngest of four children, and my two brothers and one sister were all into music before I was. So it seemed logical that I should do it, too. I think my oldest brother wanted to learn an instrument and kind of pushed my parents to get him some lessons, and that worked out really nice. My parents were like, “Oh, we should do that for all the children.” Instead of teaching us sports or whatever, they were like, “Maybe music is the best thing.”

My sister actually studied music therapy and she teaches basic music school. One of my brothers does a lot with radio and the computer nerd side of music — like programming and making APIs and stuff with musical purposes. My oldest brother is actually an architect, so for him [music is] more of a hobby.

His history as a multi-instrumentalist:

When I was eight, when you had to choose an instrument [in school], I learned the recorder just to be able to play songs and learn sheet music. After that, I switched to clarinet for four years and I played in an orchestra for a while. Then I was done with that, because I had to play along with a CD or to sheet music and that wasn’t really my thing at all.

So I started singing in a band, and they needed a bass player, so I learned to play bass. And then I learned the guitar to be able to write songs better, because it’s pretty hard to do that on bass. And then they needed a keyboard player as well, and yeah. From there on, any instrument with keys or strings wasn’t too hard to learn.

On his studio:

I always had a home studio. The first time I started recording, I set up a computer and a mixer and a microphone, and that was the first time I had a miniature studio. I discovered the possibilities of recording. Then I went on to study composition and music production for four years, and then the studio grew bigger and bigger. I’m an instrument collector, as well, so after a while, it didn’t fit in my room anymore, so I really needed to make it a studio.

After I finished graduating, I moved into this office building that my parents already had. My dad likes to build things, and he actually got it as well for the children, so when they graduated, they had a space to start a company or anything. Nobody really used it, so I was like, “That’s perfect for using it as a studio.”

On his father, the innovator:

When people ask me what he does, it’s always very hard to say, because he does so many things. He’s the owner of a lot of companies. He’s like an inventor, but more in a conceptual way. He does inventions which he turns into companies. He’s really busy with the world and the energy problems and everything. He’s been at that for as long as I’ve known — for 20 years or something. Before people were talking about things like durable energy at all, he was into that. He started as an electrician, basically, but he sort of grew and got some more degrees. He’s always busy creating concepts and ideas for durable energy. Like an inventor, but more than that.

He’s very independent. When we wanted to study music, he wasn’t like, “Can you earn money with it?” He’s like, “If that’s your thing and that’s where your heart is, you should just do it and be really good at it.”

On his inspirations as a lyricist:

I do get inspired by lyrics that are very symbolic. Like Nick Drake lyrics, for example — he sings about very symbolic things, but they create an image which is very inspiring. It creates another world, but the essence of these images is much more realistic. I’m not sure where I got that from, but Nick Drake does that. I think Syd Barrett does that, as well.

On transferring his songs to a live setting:

I’m still working on that. It’s very difficult. The basics are easy — the drums, bass, guitar, get the right sounds, get the right harmonies. But it’s so much layering that has to be simplified. I have to get the right sounds, and I want to do it all [with live instruments] but that’s impossible, because I’m using too many different sounds, so I have to do it digitally. I don’t want to work with computers, but I have to. Things like that. It’s very difficult, but I think I’ll get there eventually.

Right now, I still prefer the studio. Performing live is new to me. I’m better at [the studio]. But making a moment [with the audience] is really special. I really want to keep doing that. I don’t want to be in the studio all the time.

File under: Noisy '90s daydreams

For fans of: Lush, Dinosaur Jr., Yuck, Drop Nineteens

From: London

Personae: Stephanie Min (vocals and guitar), Jerome Watson (guitar), Aslam Ghauri (guitar), Kelly Owens (bass and vocals) and James Thomas (drums)

Two years ago, Stephanie Min and Jerome Watson formed The History of Apple Pie as a modest bedroom project. Little did they know how fast things would move: A warm reception to a few songs they posted online caused them to cobble together a live band; in the months that followed, the pair used the classified ads to connect with James Thomas, met Aslam Ghauri through Thomas and found Kelly Owens through their pals the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and the Depreciation Guild.

Their first full-length, Out Of View is sure to please fans of much-missed Britpop/shoegaze act Lush — Owens and Min’s burnt-sugar vocal harmonies echo the late group — but its saw-toothed guitar drone, cheerful feedback buzz and lilting melodies transcend any one influence. The record’s melancholic sheen gives it lovely sentimental weight.

Just after Christmas, Min answered some email questions from eMusic’s Annie Zaleski about the band’s origins, inspirations and unique alchemy.

On what brought the band together:

I think it was boredom, mainly. We didn’t really have anything else to do apart from our jobs and were just sitting around.

On their songwriting process:

Jerome and I write all of the music, but in the live environment the band all like to experiment and contribute. In terms of the actual songwriting process, a lot of the early demos began with Jerome writing the instrumental and me writing the lyrics and vocal melody. As time has gone on, we have both involved ourselves in each other’s duties. The one thing that held me back the most from contributing instrumentally was the fact I couldn’t really play any instruments and hadn’t got any grasp of programming. In the last year, I got more to grips with it all, and even started to learn guitar, so it’s become a lot easier for me to lay down song ideas that I have. It beats having to hum guitar and weird noise parts into my phone!

On how fiction inspires Min’s lyrics:

I’ve been inspired by past friendships, situations I’ve been in, but the majority of experiences that I write about aren’t experiences that I’ve had at all. Some of my favorite songs have come from imagining myself in hypothetical, sugar-coated situations, the kind you only see in the movies. The lyrics have always come naturally, after I get a feeling for the instrumental. If it makes me feel like running away with a loved one, I write about that. If the song makes me feel like I’ve just been fucked over and seek revenge, I write about that. I like making the listener feel something, but am especially interested in hearing people’s own scenarios having listened to our songs.

On getting it right…the second time:

We actually recorded [Out Of View] twice in total. The first time around was a disaster, but a good learning curve. The band was pretty much thrown in the deep end and expected to record, produce and mix the record entirely on our own. We had some experience of producing and mixing, but not to the scale of how we wanted our full-length LP to sound. We were never happy with the first output, so we turned to some of our friends for help. [The Horrors'] Joshua [Hayward] became a huge help to us from an engineering perspective, and our old friend Charles “Chicky” Reeves stepped in to handle mixing duties. Without them, we wouldn’t have a record so we’re extremely grateful.

The biggest challenge Jerome and I had the first time around was getting the right balance between lo-fi (which we were firmly against) and highly-produced (which didn’t necessarily suit our style of music). We just didn’t know how or what we wanted the record to sound like. Nothing seemed to be working. Then, like magic, the second time around it all just came together. Charles had experience of mixing lots of pop acts, and he somehow managed to keep the energy and rawness flowing throughout the record, whilst still giving it a polished sound.

On how contrasts inform the band:

Singles are great, but an album gives us the opportunity to tell our listeners a story. It’ll demonstrate stuff like Jerome’s love for strange sounds and guitars, my love for harmonies and appreciation of female pop groups, and the band’s love for feel-good, noisy music as a whole.

The songwriting is all very natural. Jerome tends to come in from more of a noisy guitar angle, whereas I come in from a sweet, melodic angle. That’s pretty much how our songs are made.

On their worst gig ever:

Every band has that “one show” that they “dare not speak about ever again.” For us, it was our second show at the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town, London. Our previous managers had taken us to a curry house an hour before the show. Just before we were due on stage, I was pretty much throwing up just behind the stage, and I think the rest of the band felt pretty rough, too. Fortunately, the next time we played Kentish Town was a year later supporting one of our guitar heroes Graham Coxon [Blur], and we had an absolute blast.

On Lush and other Britpop bands:

Lush are great. I’m obsessed with their song “Nothing Natural” at the moment. There’s a bit in the video that just reminds me of Kelly and I — you know, where Miki [Berenyi] and Emma [Anderson] are sitting close to each other and the strobe lights are all going off?

Jerome grew up listening to bands like Blur, Pulp, Oasis. His dad used to work at a record shop in Soho, so he introduced Jerome to a lot of cool stuff. He was also in this amazing stoner rock band called Terminal Cheesecake!

On Min’s formative influences:

I fell into music very suddenly and only thought about pursuing it when I started writing songs with Jerome for this band. Before then, though, while growing up, I was excited by girl groups like TLC and Salt-n-Pepa. I wanted to be in a hip-hop group! I was later introduced to bands like Placebo, Smashing Pumpkins and Pulp by my sister indirectly — mainly by sneaking into her room and rummaging through her tape and CD collections. I soon fell in love with the song “Nancy Boy” by Placebo and that’s when I realized guitars were fucking cool.

On being misunderstood:

Any tags that we’ve had have always been misleading and based on hearing one single or song. That’s why the album will be a nice way to confirm our sound once and for all. Whilst we do like a lot of ’90s bands, I think people fail to understand that the songwriting process for us personally is a lot more complex than just replicating what those bands do.

On not being slacker-rock:

There’s nothing really slackerish about the album at all. It’s pretty polished and well-thought about. We’d know, considering we went through hell and back to record it!

On unexpected influences:

We are quite into a lot of electronic music, actually — stuff like Add N to X, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Portishead. We love the strange noises and arrangements created by these artists and bands; it inspires us to go and create our own bunch of Frankenstein sounds. Listening to the album, there is a definite nod to this genre of music.

On the biggest misconception about them:

Weirdly enough, one of the biggest has been that we’re signed to Rough Trade! We aren’t really signed as such. We are just doing our part for the indie community by releasing our album through one of our good friend’s labels, Marshall Teller. We’re glad that we’ve been able to help increase the status of this particular independent label and encourage people to give it the recognition it deserves. They’ve been so good to us. It’s nice to not be treated like a product, but treated like musicians.

File under: Buoyant Broadway-style tunes, sung by a guy in a wig and a dress

For fans of: The Magnetic Fields, Jens Lekman, Burt Bacharach

From: San Francisco

Personae: Randy Walker

You could write off Carletta Sue Kay — aka San Francisco singer-songwriter Randy Walker — as a novelty act, but you’d be so wrong. Sure, he’s a big, middle-aged gay guy in hideous drag. But as CSK’s 2012 debut Incongruent proves, he’s also got an incredible vocal delivery, and his writing talent is guaranteed to slay you. He writes shrewdly and wittily about what it means to be a woman the way your favorite male novelist writes about femininity; he just does it in a cheap wig.

eMusic’s Barry Walters caught up with the singer in a Castro desert shop. Walker was — as he always is when not performing — dressed as a man, talking a mile a minute, alternately very vulnerable and very loud. Here’s a fraction of what he said about himself.

On the birth of Carletta:

My former band was Mon Cousin Belge, which is French for My Belgian Cousin, and the character I did, Emil, which was a fake cousin of mine, spoke no English and was addicted to plastic surgery. So when that band disbanded, I had all these songs I’d written over the years that I thought should be sung by a girl and I wanted to keep with the theme. I have an actual, very crazy cousin, whose name is Carletta Sue Kay, so I just took her name. She’s a drug addict and I was a drug addict at one point; she and I used to do crazy cross-country trips. She was involved in some pretty bad legal situations a few years back and was in prison. I think about her a lot. You know what it is? It’s her death wish, her don’t-give-a-fuck-about-herself, self-hating attitude. Which I, as an adult, am trying desperately to get better about. But to add to all the sadness, she’s super-funny. She found out about my band on MySpace, and wrote me, like, “What the fuck is this shit?” I’ve been begging her to come to a show to introduce me. [Practically yelling] She’s never seen Carletta!

On the overlap between Randy Walker and Carletta Sue Kay:

I call it a persona, but when I get on stage it’s just me with a bad wig and an ugly dress. The voice of Carletta is not my authentic singing voice. I’m affecting a “female” voice, but some of the some of the more soulful songs don’t play out like that. They’re all written in higher keys and I have a naturally high register. I’ve been doing Carletta for five years, so her character definitely comes into the songwriting now. I don’t know if its gender-based ideology that I have in my head, but the songs tend to be written from a female perspective. I hide behind Carletta — the anonymity is awesome. It’s in and out, though; I guess the character inhabits the songs, and the songs are what tell the story of Carletta. They tend to be sad and poppy; it’s my new genre: I call it soppy.

On theatricality:

I went to the University of Redlands and my first major was theatre. I put myself through college doing professional light opera company, musicals with tons of ’60s and ’70s has-been TV and movie stars, and lots of original Broadway cast people — Jo Anne Worley, Ruth Buzzi, Donald O’Connor, Bebe Neuwirth. I’m always referred to as theatrical, no matter what I do. I don’t really see myself that way, but I guess when I get on stage I tend to get vocally a little dramatic. I’m not gonna get up there and just sing a song. I’m gonna do my best to do with my songs the things with which they’re intended. I want them to mean something to people. Not all are sad; some are a little sassy and bitchy.

On performing for audiences who’ve never heard Carletta before:

That’s the best. First they’re like, “Oh, God, a drag queen.” Then I watch them turn. I get off on that. My favorite was when we opened for [satirical country songwriter] Kinky Friedman a couple years ago; it was a really conservative Jewish audience. And this lady after the show, she had to be 90 if she was a day, she comes up to me, grabs my arm, and says [in a voice reminiscent of Kyle's mom on South Park], “I hope you’re happy with yourself.” I was like, “What?” [More Kyle's mom voice:] “You made me cry the entire time. You are fabulous. I know because I’m a singer myself.”

On Carletta’s transgender quality:

I have transgender friends who haven’t commented on it. I think if they listen to my music and watch my performance, they’d know that I’m not taking the piss. I have an actual trans-identified person in my band: The bass player, piano player, and singer is a guy named Sonny, an FTM, female-to-male. Everyone loves Sonny, and Sonny totally digs it; he’s a super-charming and fantastic person. I’ve worn everything from high-end couture to thrift shop finds to making my own outfits. I have a friend who works for Vogue Italia and gets me really good clothes from Milan. I’ve gotten to this point that I have more Carletta clothes than my own clothes. I think I’m becoming a tranny. I kinda like it! It’s comfortable and fun. [As a man] I wear boring clothes. Some of my dresses tend to be short shirts, but I always wear stockings. I don’t wanna show my hairy-assed legs onstage.

On Walker’s musical influences:

Lots of country and folk — Tom T. Hall, Hank Williams, Conway Twitty, George Jones, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn. I have a song called “My Mother Thinks She’s Loretta Lynn.” She had the big, black hair that she dyed like Loretta Lynn; she dressed like Loretta Lynn. I was raised in a Pentecostal church, so there was lots of gospel music. Tim Hardin, Townes Van Zandt, Merle Haggard. I’m a big Antony Hegarty fan. Iris Dement, I love her. She’s from my mother’s hometown in Arkansas.

On the very recent death of his mom:

Last week, my sister and I drove from San Luis Obispo to where she lives, on the outskirts of Arizona and California. My mom was in abject pain. She’s rambling incoherently, completely out of it, but randomly, out of nowhere she starts singing “Coat of Many Colors,” the Dolly Parton song. She knows all the lyrics; she sings it in tune. She was doing that for me — that’s been my song forever. It was miraculous, and then she went right back out of it. She had come home to die. That was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever gone through — still going through. My mother was a good, beautiful, sweet, loving, kind woman. Everyone loved my mother. What the fuck did she do to deserve such a horror?

On working with Magnetic Fields leader Stephin Merritt:

Oh, her? No, I’m kidding, he’s awesome. He’s super-droll, but if you don’t appreciate that, you’re gonna think he’s a dick. If you do get that, he’s super-fun. He’s just always on. A year or two ago, I was at the Eagle [an SF leather bar] and there he was. He writes in gay bars, and prefers a goofy, dumb disco beat in the background. I don’t know how he does that, but he’s so brilliant with melody. Anyway, I gave him my demos for [Incongruent] and a couple months later, I did a show at the Parkside; it’s a dump, I was so depressed. I took the bus home and checked my emails. I’ve memorized what he wrote: “Hi, this is Stephin Merritt from the Magnetic Fields. I enjoy your singing very much. Would you be interested in recording with the Magnetic Fields?” What? Who is fucking with me? I didn’t respond to it for two days. Claudia, the pianist in the band and also his manager, she contacted me, and a month later I was at Tiny Telephone, John Vanderslice’s studio. We recorded background vocals for seven songs. Daniel Handler, the Lemony Snicket writer, was there. He and Stephin, they’re constantly back and forth, really funny. Now I’m on a Magnetic Fields record [2012's Love at the Bottom of the Sea], which is so cool.

On the next album and other side projects:

We’re working on a brand-new record tentatively called Monsters. It’s about ghosts and séances and dead people, some of it actual evil people, some of it a spin on B-movie characters — a lady falls in love with the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I sing sometimes with my friend Wymond [Miles], he’s the guitarist of the Fresh & Onlys. I’m trying to get his fingers in [the album] because he’s got a real sense of the dark. We call him The Count. I also did a song with Sonny Smith [of Sonny and the Sunsets]. It’s about fucking space aliens.

File under: Loud, fast, dumb, proud party music

For fans of: Circle Jerks, Dwarves, Andrew W.K., Agent Orange, Spinout

From: Los Angeles

Personae: Zac Carper (vocals and guitar), Elvis Kuehn (singing and guitar), Max Kuehn (drums), Brandon Schwartzel (bass)

The name FIDLAR is an acronym for a truism West Coast skate-punks quote immediately before executing some astonishingly dumbass feat of derring-do: “fuck it, dog, life’s a risk.” The L.A. quartet are literally second-generation punk rockers — brothers Elvis and Max Kuehn’s father is T.S.O.L. keyboardist Greg Kuehn. And for a band that makes a big deal of being hedonistic slackers (song titles: “Cheap Beer,” “Wake Bake Skate”), they’re amazingly productive. Over the past three years or so, they’ve been responsible for a steady stream of two-minute pop-punk blowouts in the forms of YouTube videos, EPs and live shows. They played more than 100 gigs last year alone, and they’re gearing up to spend most of 2013 on the road.

Shortly before the release of FIDLAR’s self-titled debut album, eMusic’s Douglas Wolk talked to bassist Brandon Schwartzel about the perils of playing more than a dozen songs in a single show, the state of the L.A. punk scene, their audience’s dangerous stunts, and their surprising connection to nu-metal band Trapt.

On the house and studio Schwartzel shares with singer/guitarist Zac Carper:

Me and Zac were both living in our cars, and we were trying to find a place where we could have a studio or make noise. Then we found this place on Craigslist that doubled as an apartment and a studio, so it worked out perfectly. We found out later that Trapt actually built the studio. They had left some gear here, like this big 412 guitar cabinet that had a giant T on it — some of the guys from Trapt actually came by and picked up their stuff.

On a live FIDLAR show’s typical audience:

We try to get the crowd into it as much as possible — loud, energetic, probably pretty drunk. There was this one house party where we were playing in the back yard, and all of a sudden we hear everyone go “whooooaaaa” — and this guy had jumped off the roof of the house we were playing into the crowd. He stagedived off the roof. There’s actually an awesome picture of this guy flying in the air. The crowd totally caught him, it’s all good…We love that shit.

On the band’s infamous “found footage” music videos:

Those we just do on iMovie — we get stoned and make a video. That’s something we’ve done since we started the band: record a song, post it online, make a video for it. The good-looking ones, like “Cheap Beer” and “No Wave,” are by our friend Ryan, who’s actually Zac’s brother-in-law. He’s kind of like our fifth member — he’s been very involved from the beginning. The CCR thing [the video for "Gimme Something," which is synched up with old performance footage of Creedence Clearwater Revival] — that was Ryan. He just did that for fun, too. It’s amazing.

On what it means to be an L.A. band:

One of the reasons we started is that there was such an indie take-themselves-too-seriously scene in Silverlake, where Zac and I were living at the time. We said, “There’s no fucking rock bands any more that just play and have fun.” And then we started finding bands in L.A. that were similar, and now there’s a cool, garage-y, DIY scene — all the Burger Records bands, there’s this band called the Shrine that we play with a bunch, this band Pangaea… The older L.A. bands we feel connected to are the ’70s and ’80s punk bands: Fear, Black Flag, Circle Jerks. X is a band we all love a lot.

On the making of the album:

We did it all at our house. It was set up as a studio, but there wasn’t any gear. So we found some shitty stuff, and borrowed some stuff — a lot of the production was us trying to make the most interesting thing possible with what we had. We’re all super into recording — Zac and Elvis met at a studio where they were both working. The album sounds pretty straightforward, but if you really listen to it, there’s a lot of weird shit and background textures. I really like the sound of “Gimmie Something” — we had all of our friends do group vocals and yell. Elvis played the guitar solo slightly out of tune, but I think it turned out really cool.

On the biggest risk FIDLAR have ever taken as a band:

I think, for us, it was just signing to a label. That was a pretty long process. We started the band as completely DIY, and we never thought about making a record — we just thought, “Let’s make songs and put ‘em out and give everything away for free.” When the idea of signing with [Mom + Pop Music] came up, we thought: Is it going to change anything? That was definitely something that we discussed quite a bit. But they gave us 100 percent creative control — we can do whatever we want and they will put it out.

On getting used to playing headlining shows:

Physically, with how we play, we could probably play for, like, an hour before we all passed out. We kind of give it our all when we play. It gets pretty exhausting. It’s tough now, because we’re used to playing 12 songs, which is half an hour for us, and now we’re playing like 17 songs. We gotta start jamming more. Or have 10 minutes of feedback.

File under: '60s psych-pop, minus the naiveté

For fans of: Shuggie Otis, The Kinks, Silver Apples

From: Los Angeles

Personae: Sam France (vocals) and Jonathan Rado (guitars, keyboards)

One minute their tunes are as delicate as a drawing by Matisse, the next as nightmarish as something by Munch. They feature a singer with a lovely, clear tenor, and their songs reference Ray Davies, Brian Wilson and hallucinogens with equal fervor. They’re Foxygen and they’ve just made one of the most melodic and uncategorizable records of the year. We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace And Magic is a half-hour acid trip that sports sumptuous tunes, profound ideas and images that might just change your life. Happily, it induces neither flashbacks nor chromosome damage. In one song, vocalist Sam France brays like Bob Dylan backed by The Hawks. In another, the duo channels the aural beauty of the Beach Boys. The album’s closer proves them capable of being brilliantly Beatlesque.

eMusic’s Peter Gerstenzang spoke with these two affable music geeks on the eve of their upcoming tour about the sort of music they grew up loving, drugs they may (or may not) have taken and how they tried to assemble an album that takes you from the unsettling to the hopeful-in just a little more than 30 minutes.

On how to bring about their stated goal of world peace:

Sam France: I think if one country would fucking stop killing — if they just made one “no killing” rule…It may sound crazy, but if we could do something like that, if people just started thinking differently, basically, about killing…That needs to stop before anything else. Secondly, maybe we should stop killing animals, not kill the earth. But also, like, more abstract things. Which is kind of what our album is about. Abstract images that maybe you could contemplate. People need to use their imagination.

Jonathan Rado: Sensory overload is a problem. Then again, lots of people talk about our band as being sensory overload, so I don’t know. But maybe we could get rid of iPhones. I mean, I really do love my iPhone, but I think the world would be more peaceful if everyone weren’t completely glued to them. Short of that, they should buy our album. And all of (producer/mentor) Richard Swift’s albums. People need to listen to Foxygen. But Swift first.

On the fact that the album was given to them by “cosmic beings”:

France: Rado and I live together. I had all these conspiracy theories in my head, and I was telling him about them all the time. I would be just freaking out. But then I thought of this album title and these song ideas just came to us suddenly — like, cosmic beings gave them to us, and we wrote everything quickly. That’s also because we were excited to record with Swift. It all just came out of excitement, so we didn’t really think about this album much. It was very intuitive, very cosmic. Everything was just spur-of-the moment.

On the virtues of speedy recording:

Rado: We did it in nine days! We did it so fast because Sam and I have worked together for so long. Our instinct is to put a million things, a million overdubs on everything, but we’ve worked together for so long we can do that fast. Not over-thinking things is a plus — a lot of the stuff was first takes. There’s a part on “San Francisco,” where the guitar screws up and it keeps going and it fixes itself. You want to talk about how to fix the world? People need to go back to not overthinking.

On Bob Dylan’s influence on “No Destruction”:

Rado: We love Blonde On Blonde. Al Kooper on organ! The most amazing non-organist organist ever. That’s what makes those mid-’60s Dylan records: those ignorant, ignorant choices, played by people who were not playing their [usual] instruments. Kooper was a really good guitarist who was playing organ.

On Shuggie Otis:

France: Rado turned me onto [Shuggie Otis]. We were listening to him when we were writing this stuff. We had some hooks that sounded like him. We thought [the tune] was just a demo and that we’d change the title, but it sounded like Shuggie, so we just kept it.

Rado: I just hope he hears the record!

On the apocalyptic “Oh No”:

France: Yeah, it’s this sort of John Lennon-y thing we wrote. I think we liked the idea of having it as the last song on the album. It’s like this weirdly negative end to this mostly positive album. It’s like, “What the fuck is going on?”

Rado: I think though, that’s why we tagged on that choirboy ending.

France: I picture it as taking place on a Middle School stage — a boys’ choir, a Christmas tree, a piano.

On whether or not they’re “21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace and Magic”:

France: The title really means, “We all are.” It’s not necessarily The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. But, we are. You are.

Rado: I agree with Sam. It’s an optimistic title. It’s an optimistic record. There are, maybe, dark and scary moments. But overall? It’s optimistic.

File under: Psychedelic harp, bardic pop, cosmic folk

For fans of: Cate Le Bon, Robert Wyatt, Young Marble Giants, The Incredible String Band

From: Peckham, South London

“Seeing the word ‘kooky’ in relation to my stuff is sickening,” shudders Serafina Steer, all too aware of the pre- and misconceptions that come swarming the minute a harp enters the picture. Her horror is utterly justified: the classically-trained Steer’s third album, The Moths Are Real, is a transfixing collection of songs that trip between the lyrical and the conversational, the physical and the ethereal. Robust folklore rubs up against Greek mythology; oracular meditations on fate and fortune are spiked by wistfully sensuous love songs and some thoroughly modern one-liners. Musically, too, it trembles between high and low, old and new, with synth-pop, prog and psychedelia snapping at the harp’s lovely heels.

In keeping with her musical shape shifting, Steer has worked with diverse roster of artists, including Bat For Lashes, Chrome Hoof, Patrick Wolf and John Foxx. Three years after her debut Cheap Demo Bad Science, her second album, Change Is Good Change Is Good, was picked by Jarvis Cocker as one of his favorite albums of 2010. It obviously wasn’t just end-of-year punditry: He produced The Moths Are Real, joining Steer on the eerie Scott Walker glow of “The Removal Man.” Even in starry company, though, Steer burns brightly all by herself.

On playing the harp:

The harp comes with a lot of baggage, physically and literally. On The Moths Are Real, I tried to use the harp more as other people might expect to hear it. I wasn’t trying to be willfully oblivious to the fact that it is quite swoony — I wanted to use the glissando and the cosmic potential of it, all the effects to make a whole world. I think before I thought it was more subversive to ignore that and just treat it as a guitar.

On working with Jarvis Cocker:

I often work with people in a semi-producer-like way, but I’d always end up slightly overruling them. Feeling a bit more confident about the songs this time, I did feel that I’d be ready to work with someone and let them have that role. I sent Jarvis a couple of emails — we’d met a couple of times — and he said he wasn’t a producer but to send some tracks anyway. Then we did two days in Shoreditch Church (in East London), where he suggested working on two of the demos I sent him, “The Removal Man” and “Skinny Dipping,” to see whether we could collaborate together and whether he liked being a producer. I think what was good — apart from that he’s terribly nice — is that I don’t know him so well, so it was good to have that respect. It wasn’t like I was going to start having…well, I might have had one tantrum!

On sea shanties:

The song “Night Before Mutiny” is a response to a traditional sea shanty about a whore called Serafina — it’s not too bawdy, but it’s not very nice about her. Everything rhymes with Serafina — the sea shanty even calls her a “dirty she-hyena.” I suppose because it’s an unusual name, I felt a kind of a kinship with the character. There’s this funny lack of concern for her in the song. I guess as a feminist, those whore or tart-with-a-heart archetypes, they get to me.

On lyrical labyrinths:

I think the record is a bit of a labyrinth, but I don’t want to sound like a twat, or have anyone examine it as a concept album and therefore find it lacking. In the imagery of the lyrics, there are quite a lot of cracks or lights, leading to, or in between, cosmic changes of forms — drowning, lying, sex, sleeping and waking. So to me, it’s sort of labyrinthine in a multi-dimensional, Borges-inspired sense.

On prog-rock:

What interests me about prog, and the children of prog, is that the music offers an artist the freedom to explore form and rhythm and esoteric lyrical ideas as part of a complex tradition that seems to have grown organically. And it comes without the leaden dogma or lineage of being an aspiring contemporary classical composer. Though it’s probably as riven with prejudice and dogma as anything. I was talking to a friend about whether I could honestly claim a prog influence, and they spoke about prog’s lack of attitude and preoccupation with a kind of perfect musicianship, as opposed to other influences like Mark E. Smith or Young Marble Giants. I thought, “Oh God, that’s me.”

File under: Windblown, way-out-west R&B that builds a driftwood bridge between country and soul

For fans of: The Band, Bill Withers, Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Bobby Charles

From: Virginia Beach, Virginia

Sometimes breakthrough albums capture attention because they are sonically arresting — big, blaring albums with huge crescendos and canyon-sized choruses. Big Inner, the debut from Matthew E. White, went in exactly the opposite direction. Its title is an indication of its content: exploring the vast reaches of a small, interior space. There are nods to Randy Newman, Bill Withers, the Band and Jorge Ben, but the result is distinctly White’s. His tender croon nestles deep into sumptuous string and brass arrangements, and the entire record feels like a musical update on Song of Solomon: deeply sensual lyrics that have an undeniably spiritual dimension. (A healthy helping of the album’s lyrics are reconfigured Bible verses).

It’s no surprise to learn that he is a devoted, meticulous student of popular music. He sought out Sex Mob trumpet player Steven Bernstein simply because he was a fan of his music, and the two met regularly to talk about the craft of album making, and to dive deep into the history of rock music. “I just thought that having as deep an understanding as a 30-year-old guy who grew up in Virginia Beach can have about popular music was important,” White explains. His close attention is immediately evident in each of Big Inner‘s carefully-placed notes.

eMusic’s Editor-in-Chief J. Edward Keyes talked with White about Jesus, Randy Newman and the ghost of slavery in the South.

On stalking Randy Newman:

When I was on tour with my old band [The Great White Jenkins] we had a day off in LA. I’d found Randy Newman’s address on this weird Star Search-type website. It was so old, like a Geocities website or something, so we didn’t even know if it was still his address. But we drive around the corner, and there’s the exact view that’s on the cover of The Randy Newman Songbook, and I was like “Holy shit! This is it!” I’m so not brave, so I’d never really done anything like that before. But I was there, and I had two of my CDs, so I wrote him a note like, “Hey man, you really meant a lot to me. Here’s my contact info.” And I went to his door — he didn’t answer, but his housekeeper answered. I was like, “Is this Mr. Newman’s house?” She just laughed out loud. She was probably thinking, “Who comes to find Randy Newman in L.A.? That’s ridiculous. You’re a 25-year-old man and you’re trucking around L.A. trying to find Randy Newman? What are you doing with your life?” So I was like “I love his music, he’s meant a lot to me, I just wanted to give him these CDs.” I never heard from him or anything. But that started a pattern of me just reaching out to artists that I wanted to learn from. I’ve just always believed in trying to get to the source of something. There was a time when I would send Ken Vandermark like three emails i week. I was just like, “Tell me this, tell me this, tell me this.” I was on his shit.

On treating record-making like an artisan craft:

There’s only been like four generations of people who have made records. I mean, there are hundreds of years of making music, but not that many generations of making records. But even still, a lot has been learned. There’s a whole 100-year history of how to do this — things that work, things that don’t work. There’s a lot to learn, you know? A lot of times people are like, “I’m just gonna go in and make my record,” without any sort of awareness of how you might do things better. It’s a deep, deep craft, and I care a lot about making it as good as I can. When I was studying with [Sex Mob saxophonist] Steven Bernstein, most of our time was spent listening to music and listening to him point out, “Did you notice this? Did you notice this?” Sometimes it’s technique thing — “Did you notice the trumpet is in this register?” — and sometimes it’s history things. He talked a lot about Sly Stone, he talked a lot about the Band, he talked a lot about Jack Nitzsche and Phil Spector. He taught me a lot about American music, and how jazz and blues and rock are all kind of one thing. They are related in a special way.

On growing up a missionary kid:

My dad still runs a mission, and my parents are born-again Christians. And that was very important to me at one time. Which is not to say that it’s not important to me now, though I’m a little bit more removed from it. My brother-in-law is a pastor, and my brother’s a Christian author — he wrote a book called Postmodernism 101: A First Course for the Curious Christian. So it’s a heavy family in that sense. And I wanted to put some stuff on the record that represented that part of my path. I think [Christianity] is something songwriters tend to shy away from. I don’t know if that’s unconsciously, or just the way the culture is now, but I wanted to be up front about the fact that, one, this is something that’s a part of my past, two, this is something that I think about, and three, this is something that I don’t know the answers to.

I get so many of these questions. There’s a huge population of kind of “ex-evangelical” or “ex-born-again Christian kids” [in the indie subculture]. I think it’s the kids of, like, the rise of Christian culture in the ’70s and ’80s. And I don’t mean to overly politicize it, but with the rise of that, there’s gonna be a backlash to that. So there’s just a shit-ton of kids our age who were raised in that culture and who are either in the game, way out of the game or somewhere in the middle. And I am one of those people.

On spending his childhood in Manila:

I was young, I wasn’t there that long, but that’s where all my first memories are from. I just remember the community being great. I remember we were there during the coup in the ’80s, and I remember tanks turning around in our driveway. It wasn’t scary — as a kid, it was like “Let’s go play on the tank.” I mean, you don’t know that that doesn’t happen everywhere else. So you’re like, “Oh, there’s tanks. That’s cool.” My dad’s like an adventurer to the max, so we basically went to every Southeast Asian country during that time. We spent a lot of time in Thailand and Singapore and Hong Kong. He took us around all kinds of places, and we went on all kinds of adventures. I want to make a record over there — I kind of want it to sound like Theres a Riot Goin’ On, real minimal. I think it would be fun to get in touch with that side of my world.

On Big Inner‘s enormous minimalism:

I just wanted to see if it could work. Could we make a record like this, that was big in scope, that leaned on people’s skill sets, but in a new way? Can we pull this off? So we put a date on the calendar, and I was like “OK, now I gotta write some songs.” I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people write about the record and say, “It’s big, but it’s not cluttered.” And it’s not cluttered because there’s not a lot of things happening. We worked for a long time to make sure there was space in the songs for all of the arrangements. I do that in advance — that’s not happening the night before. It’s just worked out and worked out again and thought about and tweaked. We recorded the record in seven days. When you make a record, there’s a certain amount of things you have to accomplish — you have to get lead vocals, you have to get the bass, you have to get the drums. So it’s like, “If we can make the decisions [about those elements] beforehand, we can get all that done in the first three days, and then we have four days to just do whatever the fuck we want to.’”

On “Brazos” and the lasting impact of slavery:

Basically, it’s about an escaping slave couple. And the man is talking to the woman and trying to comfort her, as well as talking to himself about how shitty his situation is. He’s being introspective. I’ve tried to be as knowledgeable as I can about the civil rights movement — I think being from Virginia, you’re a little more aware of race relations to some degree. It’s just so easy to forget. We think of slavery as 300, 400 years ago, but Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, and that was not that long ago. All kinds of viciously racist behavior has happened and still happens. The tentacles are way longer than we think. As a kid who grew up in a white suburban family, I look back on pictures of, like, the food counter sit-ins, and white people are pouring ketchup and stuff on the protesters — just horrible, horrible shit. I just wanted an opportunity to be like, “Hey, if we can be more aware of this, maybe that will help a little bit.”

There’s a spiritual part of the narrative, too. The “Jesus Christ, he is our friend” part is from a Jorge Ben song. I heard it and thought, “That’s cool — I like that melody.” And then I thought, “You know, that adds a kind of third dimension to the song.” And it’s also to me invoking a very specific religious figure that is part of my life. When I talk about religion, it’s not a faith or mysticism or a vague religious thing, it’s Jesus Christ. So it forces you to ask, “What’s going on in the narrative of these people as they’re escaping? What just happened? Did they die? Is this a prayer? Is this an ironic — like, white culture is telling them “Jesus Christ is your friend,” but they’re still slaves?” There’s all of that in there. It just felt like it was a really interesting way to end it.

File under: Music of the Deep South — blues and field recordings

For fans of: Mirel Wagner, Florence + The Machine, Adele, Odetta, Mahalia Jackson

From: London, U.K., via Canada

Personae: Al Spx (vocals, guitar), Tom Havelock (cello), Thomas Greene (piano), Chris Cundy (baritone sax/tenor sax/bass clarinet), Terry Edwards (trumpet/fugal horn/baritone sax/ tenor sax), Rob Ellis (drums)

[Of all of the records that came out this year, none captured our hearts as much as I Predict a Graceful Expulsion, the stirring, evocative debut from Al Spx, who records as Cold Specks. From the moment we heard it, we knew it was something truly special. Spx mastered the art of "sense language," writing words with no clear literal meaning, but with whole volumes of conveyed feeling. It is a poem of hope for the lost and endurance for the broken. eMusic's Elisa Bray talked with Spx about the album in June. You can read their conversation below.]

“It’s a pseudonym,” says Cold Specks musician Al Spx of her adopted name. “I just don’t feel comfortable having my real name out there.” The 24-year-old Canadian always thought she’d be a lawyer or a teacher — anything but a musician. At least that’s what her parents wanted. Growing up in a large, devout family, the fifth of seven siblings, in Etobicoke, a suburb of Toronto, being a musician wasn’t really an option. But hidden away in the basement and in the bedroom — “wherever I could find some space” — Spx started honing a voice that recalls Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson, and began writing evocative blues songs steeped in the musical traditions of the American Deep South.

Fortuitously, her demos landed in the hands of producer Jim Anderson, who persuaded the young musician to make a record, and she moved to London, U.K., in 2010, taking her band name from a line in James Joyce’s Ulysses: “Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights shining in the darkness.”

On her teenage love of indie-rock bands and starting to write:

When I was 15 I started writing songs. My mum bought me a guitar. I wanted to be a guitarist in a rock band like the Strokes. I was really into the Strokes and Interpol when I was about 14. I played in my bedroom, the basement, wherever I could find some space. I didn’t want anyone to hear because I guess I was a little bit shy. But I realized I couldn’t play guitar very well — I ended up realizing I could sing, so I stuck with that. I picked up the guitar again and I’ve been playing it since.

On writing her first song, “Lay Me Down”:

I was a morbid teenager and it was a result of that. Like any other teenager I’d go through ridiculous periods. It was a product of boredom; I was moving round from town to town and I didn’t know too many people. I had this old keyboard and wrote some songs.

On making the transition from solo artist to having a band:

It was very difficult at first. I was used to being in complete control. I didn’t understand musical structures. I had never played with a drummer before. It was all very new and overwhelming. But as with anything, it just took time. Now, I only play solo if I really have to.

I was completely self-taught, so my tuning was not a conventional tuning and the rhythms were all off-kilter, because I didn’t know what I was doing essentially. But I had all of these ideas and incomplete songs and had to, without any musical knowledge, find a way to translate those ideas to the band members and I think that’s why it took so long, and that’s why we spent two years on the record, because I needed that time to grow and learn and figure out how to translate all of my mad ideas.

On her musical transformation during the making of the album:

The songs changed completely. They started as acoustic songs on an acoustic guitar and my voice then we added band members and horns and cello, loads of instrumentation. I think I grew as a songwriter and a singer — I wasn’t very focused before I came to Britain and during that time, recording the album, I grew a lot.

On giving her music the term “doom soul”:

It started out as a joke! Last June, I created a Facebook page for the band. As a joke, I listed “doom soul” as our genre and it has just stuck. It is obviously a ridiculous description, but it seems to make sense to people. There are dark elements to the songs as well as soulful ones.

On writing blues songs:

I didn’t intend to. I have a husky voice. The songs are miserable and I was very limited with regards to instrumentation. I was also listening to a handful of American blues singers when I first began writing songs. I suppose all of those things helped to create a bluesy sound.

Someone sent me a collection called Southern Journey, and it really struck me. People in their own homes singing for the love of it, not ever thinking they’d make a career out of it, and you can just hear the love in their voices, a love for singing in their voices, and I was really attracted to that. When I first started recording it was always on my own. Because I was writing songs in my bedroom and basement I didn’t think anyone would ever hear it, so [they were] brutally honest songs. The songs on the album are quite personal. I think a lot of that was influenced by the Lomax stuff.

On spirituality playing a role in her music:

I think the songs started out as me questioning faith and trying to come to terms with some kind of form of spirituality. The songs are a result of that.

On Tom Waits, her greatest influence:

He’s a great songwriter, and he’s got one of the best voices I’ve ever heard. There’s a song on Orphans called “Home I’ll Never Be”; it’s a cover of a Jack Kerouac poem/song. There are two Waits versions and the one that I love is a poorly recorded version with Tom on the piano. I believe it was recorded at Allen Ginsberg’s memorial. It’s one of the most powerful recordings I have ever come across. I find his music to be completely consuming. [My biggest ambition is] a duet with Tom Waits!

On James Carr:

I love him! That voice stops me every time. As far as I’m concerned, he was the best of that era. Better than Sam Cooke. Better than Otis. It’s a shame he didn’t get as much recognition. He was it.

On inspiring literature:

I have been reading the selected letters, memoirs and essays of some of my favorite writers recently — Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce’s erotic letters, and Arthur Rimbaud’s selected letters. I guess I am currently obsessed with the memories of other people.

File under: Electronic, tribal, cosmo-apocalyptic pagan faux pop

For fans of: The Animal Collective, Tangerine Dream, Gang Gang Dance, Amon Duul

From: Brooklyn

Personae: Sisters Nimai and Taraka Larson

The Larson sisters met third Prince Rama co-founder Michael Collins while living in the world’s large largest Hare Krishna community and attending high school in Alachua, Florida. The trio’s self-described “Blink 182 rip-off band” evolved into something much more ambitiously eccentric once Taraka Larson moved to Boston in 2005 to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Prince Rama of Ayodhya (named after the seventh avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu and later shortened) went public in 2007 and released its largely acoustic and rather freak-folky debut, Threshold Dances, in 2008. From there, Rama went on to blend the ecstatic Hare Krishna chants — or bhajans — the trio grew up chanting and dancing to with driving electroclash keyboards and tribal percussion.

Collins left the band in 2011, and the Larsons released Trust Now, their fifth album and first for Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label, as a duo. Sometimes misperceived as a parody band — thanks in part to performances involving group exorcisms masquerading as VHS workouts, apocalyptic karaoke sessions and lectures inspired by the mystical art and writings of Paul Laffoley — the constantly shape-shifting Prince Rama turned the insult on its head with Top 10 Hits of the End of the World. Here, the Larsons impersonate 10 different groups — from Middle East rockers Guns of Dubai to lounge act Motel Memory — with as many different sounds, while still retaining Prince Rama’s distinctively witchy brew of cheese and chakras.

eMusic’s international columnist Richard Gehr conversed telepathically with Taraka Larson as Prince Rama toured Europe, opening for Animal Collective, in fall 2012.

On the inspiration for Top 10 Hits of the End of the World:

I became really obsessed with looking up what the No. 1 hit single was on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on various dates the world’s been predicted to end. I don’t know why, exactly. It was like a game to decode. Soon, I started seeing eerie correlations between some of the apocalypses and their corresponding No. 1 hits. For instance, on Harold Camping’s Rapture on May 21, 2011, the hit song was “Til the World Ends” by Britney Spears. I’m really fascinated by how pop music becomes this vehicle for mass consciousness to encode messages of mass destruction. It’s the perfect disguise. So I thought, “Wow, if the world ended this year, what would the No. 1 hit singles be? What would the post-apocalypse Now That’s What I Call Music! compilation sound like?” I wanted to make that album.

On the best apocalypse song ever:

I’m pretty into “Staying Alive.” That was No. 1 on the Billboard charts when the Jonestown Massacre went down. It’s like a disco survival guide.

On favorite bhajans and turning them into weird electropop:

There are so many…I really love “Om Mani Padme Hum” and “Raghupati” a lot. It’s all about finding ones that speak to you, then the mantras themselves tell you how to do the rest.

On how the sisters became a trio again:

Our good friend Chris Burke just started playing bass with us. He’s amazing. We used to play with his old bands Beach Fossils and Kegs of Acid back in the day, and we all get along really well so it just made sense.

On their most memorably horrible gig:

That’s funny because we were just talking about this today in the van. There was this show on our first tour abroad that scarred us for life. We were supposed to play the Green Man Festival in Wales, which at the time would have been our first major show. I mean, we had only been a band for a few measly months and suddenly we were shoved up in front of 4,000 people crowded together under a cold, wet, muddy tent while a storm assailed outside. We were scared to death. We had a 30-minute slot, but we had so many technical difficulties that we ended up only being able to play one song. Our keyboardist at the time wasn’t even turned on, so he got up on the mic and started cursing out the sound dude, who started cursing back. Everyone in the audience just stared at us in baffled horror. A group if 14-year-old British boys started booing. It was the worst vibes ever.

On the most spiritual pop music:

It’s all spiritual pop music. You just have to listen to it through spiritual speakers.

File under: Taut, zippy, witty old-school punk rock

For fans of: Wire, The Strokes, Modern Lovers, Ramones

From: Brooklyn

Personae: Andrew Savage (voice, guitar), Austin Brown (voice, guitar), Max Savage (drums), Sean Yeaton (bass)

One of the most thrilling debuts of the year, Parquet Courts’ Light Up Gold goes back to the first principles of punk that get forgotten every so often: speed, precision, brains and attitude. The group is a very simple quartet — two guitars, bass, drums, and a pair of yelpers who take turns one-upping each other — and they knocked out the album in a three-day weekend (after a year of woodshedding and live shows). But it’s as bracing and funny as NYC rock gets, packed end-to-end with crisp little hooks, and populated by songs that get straight to the point and get out. (Seven out of 15 are less than two minutes long; the only one that sticks around for more than five minutes is the two-chord wonder “Stoned and Starving.”)

The group’s de facto frontman Andrew Savage — who’s also played in Fergus & Geronimo and Teenage Cool Kids, among other bands — met his fellow singer/guitarist Austin Brown in college in Texas. Along with Savage’s brother Max and former Bostonian bassist Sean Yeaton, they moved to New York City and started Parquet Courts, armed with some very strong opinions about what punk culture needs to do.

As the band set up for one of their many gigs, eMusic’s Douglas Wolk talked with them about their place in the New York scene, the inspirations behind their sound and graphics, and their feelings about what’s missing in music right now.

On how Parquet Courts developed their sound:

Andrew Savage: It was fairly premeditated. One of the first things we did was release a mix tape of influences for the band — we had an idea of what we wanted to do. We all, for the most part, like a lot of the same music. And we all really like writing; everyone’s a writer, in the band, in some capacity. That’s one common ground that we all have.

Austin Brown: We were writing together and playing together for over a year before we recorded Light Up Gold.

Sean Yeaton: A lot of the songs are riffs that we really had fun playing. Most of the songs only have one or two parts — we decided we didn’t really need anything else, because we were fine with what we had.

On the difference between being a Texas band and being a New York band:

Savage: The scene we came out of, those of us who are from Texas, is, I think, a little more sincere than a lot of stuff that’s been coming out of New York for the last decade. It comes from a more punk background. There are a lot of bands that have been coming out of where I’m from, Denton, doing interesting stuff. There’s always music going on in New York, but as far as the kind of music we do, the scene we exist in is kind of going through a change right now. There’s a shift in underground guitar-based music — things are going away from the indie-rock side, and swinging back over to the punk side. Or so I would like to think.

On the distinction between “indie rock” and “punk”:

Savage: Words like “indie” and “counter-culture” and “alternative” have become meaningless terms, but you gotta remember that when those terms came about, some things were counter to the main culture. A lot of indie rock is just a scaled-down version of pop culture. But there are still people like us who want to present an aesthetic alternative: something that’s different from pop music. We’re not the only ones doing it; there are bands like the Men and PC Worship that are coming out of New York. What it comes down to is an attitude and sincerity. One thing that lacks in the stuff they call indie rock is emotional honesty.

On Light Up Gold‘s snarling opener, “Master of My Craft”:

Brown: “Master of My Craft” is a third-person perspective from someone who…possibly would be like an established person from the New York scene, telling another person that they kind of know everything. It’s more of a dialogue than a story.

On the album’s impassioned closer, “Picture of Health”:

Savage: It’s a song about someone I know — something I wanted to say to someone who, at the time, I couldn’t necessarily say it to. I really thought about cutting that song from Light Up Gold, and still, when I listen to the record myself, that song I don’t listen to. It’s just different; it comes out with a Guided By Voices kind of sound, which I would say otherwise isn’t really on the record.

On the visual presentation of Parquet Courts:

Savage: I do most of the art. The style that I’ve been working on for a while has became associated with Dull Tools, the label that me and my friend Chris Pickering do. When you see a Black Flag record and see the Raymond Pettibon art, you think “man, that’s gotta be pretty cool” — and then you hear the band and it kind of all makes sense. There aren’t too many bands who care about that any more, which is maybe another distinguishing factor between really good music and stuff that’s really blasé.

File under: A warped crossbreed of glam rock and riot grrrl striped with piano jangle and melodic hooks

For fans of: T.Rex, Bikini Kill, Ronnie Spector, Patti Smith, Bat For Lashes

From: Toronto via Chicago

Personae: Meghan Remy

That Meghan Remy’s retro solo project is called U.S. Girls is perhaps the first indication of the duality lurking in her music. “I knew I was going to be only one person making music, but I thought the plural was funny,” she explains over the phone from her Toronto home. Her playfulness might seem unexpected given the gravity of topics she writes about – abortion, depression, suicide, lost love and loneliness – but there’s a tug-of-war that takes place throughout her four-year career. That especially comes across on her most recent full-length, GEM. On it, Remy graphically catalogues a variety of women’s issues while remaining squarely within the realm of pop, pairing devastating lyrics with light-hearted melodies.

eMusic’s Marissa G. Muller spoke with Remy about marrying feminism with pop, her riot grrrl beginnings, and working with her husband and co-producer Slim Twig.

On starting a riot grrrl club in Joliet, Illinois:

My first ever boyfriend, in junior high, was really into punk and hardcore music so he gave me Bikini Kill’s Pussy Whipped and I got into that scene. I tried to start a riot grrrl chapter in my town and put up flyers for the first meeting but only one person came, and she became my friend. As I entered high school, I met a few more people through shows, but I didn’t have many friends who shared my interest. When you’re forced to be alone, you get really good at entertaining yourself. Music was my outlet throughout school and got me excited about life.

On making pop music from a distinctly female perspective:

Everyone’s experiences are unique, but I would like to live in a place where, if I had to be a teenager again, I could read and listen to things that somewhat prepared me for the future – like women openly speaking about their bodies and periods and not attempting to present a facade that’s so put together and beautiful all of the time. It’s not my goal to be a spokesperson or anything like that – I’m making music for myself – but I’m hoping to reach other women in an attempt to get them to express themselves as well or to let them know that they’re not alone in their feelings.

I’m attempting to meld together emotional realism with pop music – which are two things that I really love – but pop can be so plastic and uniform, so it’s a tough thing to blend. It can be hard when someone is talking about something real and it can kind of make you cringe, but it takes more work than putting together some words that rhyme well. “Slim Baby” was such an over-the-top pop song that I was nervous about doing it, because I had never done something so poppy. I felt very exposed, so I needed to double-track my vocals.

The informative works of literature that she encountered early on:

I read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was in school and remember reading about when she got her period and her inner thoughts about being a girl. She was talking about real stuff and what she knows while being in a really stressful situation. That had a big influence on me. Then, when I got older, I started looking to ‘zines and riot grrrl literature and Lisa Carver’s writings.

On her sonic influences:

Patti Smith was a huge influence on me. I saw a movie with the song “Horses” in it when I was in high school and I went to buy the album at Reckless in Chicago. I got into her the moment I heard her voice. What I always missed from Bob Dylan – and I love Bob Dylan – is that I wished he was a woman. That’s what you get with Patti Smith.

On working with Slim Twig, aka Max Turnbull:

I write a lot about love and being in a partnership and the ups and downs of that, and deciding to meld your life into someone else’s and get through it together. I think because what I’m talking about a lot of the time is so personal, it’s good to bring other people into it and help the idea grow. Max and I wanted to make the best record that we could and that meant bouncing ideas off him and seeing how he interpreted topics and melodies. It forced me to learn how to take criticism and not give up. I learned so much and I don’t know if I’ll go back to working alone anytime soon.

On sharing a house with Slim’s family:

We live in an artist space that’s rent-geared-to-income which is really nice because Toronto is expensive. It saved my life. We all collaborate. Max’s parents are filmmakers and his sister lives here as well and she’s an artist and actress. They help out with the videos I make and the cover of GEM is a picture I took of Max’s sister Lulu. It’s difficult in terms of space – sometimes you need your own space and there’s not very much— but we all have a goal in life which is to be creative people and good human beings. It’s a nice setup.

File under: Apocalyptic folk colored with hollow acoustic strumming, low, echoing vocals and embellished at times with mildly distorted guitar, ominous beats and sound effects

For fans of: Death In June, Current 93, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave

From: Seattle

Personae: TJ Cowgill (vocals/guitar), Emily Denton (back-up vocals)

Once the frontman for hardcore and black metal bands Teen Cthulhu and Book of Black Earth, TJ Cowgill started writing raw, stripped-down folk songs under the name King Dude (borrowed from metal hero King Diamond) in 2005. The project started just for kicks one drunken night. Even his stage name came on a whim. “My roommate and I were bored, so I picked up an acoustic guitar and started writing these songs as a joke, and he recorded them on his computer,” Cowgill recalls. “At the end of the night he had to name it something just so he could find it later on his computer, and I said, ‘Call it King Dude.’”

The next day, Cowgill listened back to what they had recorded, expecting a good laugh from some awful music. Instead, he heard a batch of dark, brooding demos that cross-pollinated the earthiness of his favorite country artists with the spine-tingling acoustics of martial folk.

“I realized this has potential and I started taking it more seriously,” Cowgill says. In my metal bands I was used to growling, and when I listened back to one of my takes I went, ‘Holy shit, that’s my real voice.’”

Six years later, King Dude has released three full-length acoustic-based neo-folk albums, including 2011′s critically acclaimed Love, a record of slow, simple jangly acoustic songs. This year sees the release of King Dude’s most expansive release, Burning Daylight, which combines Cowgill’s love for Johnny Cash and Death in June with elements of rockabilly, goth, folk, and even doo-wop.

“It’s a lot darker than Love was, Cowgill says.” I wanted to write a record about murder and desperation at a time in early American history.”

On a rainy Seattle afternoon, Cowgill took some time away from designing shirts for his clothing company Actual Pain, and talked about his new album, his upbringing, Satanism and the current neo-folk scene.

On how Burning Daylight seeped into his life:

A lot of the characters in the songs have a death wish, and when I was getting in those head spaces I started taking some of that home with me. I was getting in trouble with cops and getting in random fistfights – stuff that’s not in my nature at all. But the weight of the songs sent me to a place that’s much darker.

On his ugliest confrontations with an audience:

The last time I played Portland, I said to a bunch of drunken assholes, “Hey, can you please be quiet.” They were like, “Fuck you.” So I put down my guitar and threatened to beat the shit out of them. They all took off before I could get to them, but it ruined the whole show. Then in New York, there was a noisy crowd again, so I waited until the show was over and then I hit one guy and choked his buddy. Clearly, there’s something about this music that was making me really angry, but I feel better now that I’m done with the record.

On his bizarre religious upbringing:

My dad was Christian, and my mom was a Pagan-style witch. They were divorced, and when I was at my dad’s house in a small town in Eastern Oregon I’d have to go to this born-again-Christian church three times a week where everybody spoke in tongues. That’s pretty freaky for a seven-year-old. My mom was really into power crystals and meditation and my dad and stepmom tried to convince me that my mother was practicing Satanism. The people at their church tried really hard to get me to say Jesus was my savior and his blood washed over me, but I just couldn’t do that. It just felt wrong. I felt more at home with my mom.

On Satanism:

I used to consider myself a philosophical Satanist. I believed in survival of the strong. I didn’t literally practice magic, but the law of nature was very intriguing. But it carries such a stigma. The thing is, Western religions believe you’re born with original sin and you’re attempting to cleanse yourself of it by abstaining from everything in the physical world. And Eastern philosophy requires you to meditate on all the darkness to understand it. Either way, it’s an understanding of sin and corruption and evil. I think you can understand it without abstaining or diving too deeply into it. There’s gotta be a middle road. That’s something I practice, and if it’s considered sinful to the church or not Satanic enough by Satanists, I don’t really care either way.

On confronting death in King Dude:

It’s important for people to think about death all the time, and come to terms with it like they do in Eastern cultures. We’re all going to die. You can choose to ignore that and wait for it to happen, but if you do that, when it does come, you’re not mentally or physically prepared for it. If you can condition yourself to get ready to die, that leads to living a more fulfilling life. It’s not like I walk around with a death wish, but if you’re not as afraid of dying, it makes you not afraid to live – to quit that job you hate, ask a girl out or tell your parents to fuck off – whatever it is you have to do. Fear of death and fear of authority are the two greatest threats to our wellbeing.

On his cult hit “Lucifer is the Light of the World”:

Lucifer has traditional been hailed as a villain by Catholics and Christians, but that wasn’t until Dante’s Inferno was written. The word Lucifer itself means “the light bringer” or “bearer of wisdom” and that’s been corrupted by Western religion. “Lucifer is the Light of the World” is a response to the Son House song “John The Revelator,” and it’s written in the same style. But “John the Revelator” comes from a very Christian point of view and “Lucifer is the Light of the World” is inspired by the French Cathars’ version of the story. They practiced a type of Christianity known as Medieval Dualism, in which they believed in a good God and an evil God. The evil God created man and woman and everything in the world. The good God created the evil God and gave us the Garden of Eden, but denied us wisdom and knowledge. So Lucifer, the true God of light took up the body of a serpent to sneak into our world to tell us to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. So it completely flips the Biblical story on its head. The good god is jealous and petty, and doesn’t want man to be knowledgeable. And the serpent isn’t evil. It’s a prettier way to look at the story, I think.

On apocalyptic folk:

I don’t love a lot of new stuff. Owen are really good and I like Cult of Youth. But I still like the older stuff better, like Death in June, Current 93 and Of the Wand & the Moon. Some of those bands have used controversial imagery and lyrics, but the sketchiness of it is part of the appeal. It’s in my personality to be obsessed with gloomy and dark music. It doesn’t make me depressed at all, it cheers me up. But to me, King Dude is all about love and light so we have less in common [with other neo-folk artists] than it seems.

On his Actual Pain clothing Line:

I did T-shirt designs for bands and for myself in 2006. I was doing some freelance work for this other small streetwear company. I didn’t even know you could sell shirts that weren’t band shirts for money. Once I realized I could, and my designs started doing pretty well I started my own company. I’ve been doing it for a couple years now with my wife and it keeps us from having to have regular jobs and allows me to play music, which often isn’t very profitable.

File under: Sweeping dream-rock with diaphanous guitar riffs and New Romantic lyrics

For fans of: Cocteau Twins, The Cure, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

From: California

Personae: Tamaryn and Rex John Shelverton

The contrast between the cover art for Tamaryn’s Tender New Signs and their 2010 debut The Waves is telling: A lush array of fuschia petals signifying new life, growth and resilience have replaced the barren, vast red-rock landscape, and singer Tamaryn’s distant figure is gone altogether. That may be because Tamaryn retreated from public life while writing the follow-up, so much so that she and guitarist Rex John Shelverton worked mostly long-distance, exchanging ideas and notes via email and phone. “The title of the record is an impressionistic idea of little glimpses of hope and little openings of life when you feel shut off and hopeless,” she explains during a rehearsal for the group’s upcoming tour. Even though Tamaryn closed herself off from the world while writing the album, Tender New Signs is lyrically their brightest collection of songs to date, lined with slivers of optimism like “Found a way to feel again/ We don’t have to see half blind.”

eMusic’s Marissa G. Muller talked with her about their fresh approach, bending gender roles in rock and creating her own universe through music.

On her move to L.A.:

L.A. is pretty magical. [Like NYC], it feels like anything could happen at any moment. You can also have a lot of privacy. I sort of went into retreat and hid in my apartment and didn’t really talk to people this year. I spent a lot of time writing lyrics, holed up in Silver Lake and not seeing people at all. It’s not like New York, where you have to be surrounded by thousands of people at all times.

On the artwork for the album:

Only two [other] people had any influence on the record: Rex and Shaun Durkan (of the Weekend), who did the artwork and individual covers for every song on the album. I want to be subtle about it, but the artwork is flower petals and [Durkan's] cum. I was thinking, “Nothing says more about life than that.” It’s romantic and emotional. I wasn’t sure if I was going to tell anyone, but it’s beautiful. I wanted something surreal yet hyperreal. Those petals are real – vivid and detailed – and the paint and other stuff make it fluid, ethereal.

On working long-distance with Rex John Shelverton:

My writing process was different this time around – we wrote long-distance. Rex came up with little ditties on guitar and then I would come up with arrangements, melodies and lyrics. We’d pass songs back and forth and then fully flesh it out, and [ultimately] recorded the album in San Francisco. The distance works well, because if we’re in the same space we distract each other. It’s better to be alone.

How the distance informed their sound:

The album is all about duality – feeling isolated, but at the same time, connected. A lot of my lyrics are about feeling alone and disconnected. But at the same time, there’s this optimism throughout the record, a really romantic view. After a lifetime of disappointment, never extinguishing hope. It’s not “We Are the World”; it’s a subtle, personal outlook.

On maintaining optimism through her art:

The only thing I really believe in is creativity, and I feel like being alive can be tragic without it. There’s a lot of pain and suffering, but all human beings are connected – whether or not you sit on your computer all day. You can access all of these emotions and can’t totally desensitize yourself to them. My connection to spirituality is through art.

On the romanticism in “Afterlight”:

Lyrically, it ties everything together; simple, romantic lyrics with dissent. There are a lot of lyrics on the album about love – real, universal love versus romantic love, and the personal wisdom you gain between the two. I’m interested in taking classic themes and connecting to them so that they feel important to me – and hopefully to others.

On hoping listeners will project their own experiences onto the songs:

Great art, which I would hope to one day make, leaves things open-ended enough where the artist is connected to it, but it feels spacious enough for anybody to step in and connect to it. That’s why great films have these endings that leave you talking about them for days.

Music is so emotional, and we approach it emotionally. Everyone wants to say our guitar sound is “huge,” and I’m fine with that, but the reason we do it is because it has this vast sonic thing happening where you can hear the melody but the reverb gives it this magical quality that you can hear your own things inside. It’s interactive. On the other hand, it’s so simple and has bass tracks, drums and vocals – not much there, but all of this space between these huge modulating sounds creates a confounding symphony.

On challenging notions of gender in rock:

There are some songs I’m writing through a male perspective – in “The Garden” I switch between [genders] in the verses. When I think of shoegaze – a label we often get – like early Verve, Stone Roses, Ride, I see these boys’ club bands getting sweaty and making epic pop songs. I thought it would be interesting to do that but have [a] feminine perspective as the voice. I took influences from Kate Bush and singer-songwriter stuff I grew up listening to and applied it to [shoegaze].

I’m interested in the archetype and ideas of androgyny. My mother and godmother were Jungian and that stuff had been in my brain forever. That’s what most rock songs are about, anyway: relationships. In so many songs, guys are talking about women and you don’t hear them talking about themselves all that much. It’s all about the muse. I like coming from the perspective of a muse, the feminine energy on the other end of it – being desired, but also feeling alienated. As a woman, you want this other fulfillment that often times a masculine persona isn’t able to give. All of these different ideas are cool to use in a song, but it’s not an essay. It’s just a line in the song.

On making music her career:

Being in a band is strange, because you’re creating a universe to escape the one you live in, but then you have to invite other people. You’re trying to create a space for yourself but then you open it up to everyone. It’s a total ego trip for everyone in a band.

Music is not rewarding in the physical sense. You don’t get a lot of money – or any most of the time. But it fuses with your emotions. It can be transcendent. We’re not the biggest band in the world and we’re not rich, but we have affected people in the way that some of my favorite music has affected me.

File under: Noise-scrawled indie rock with twee-pop vulnerability and beery propulsion

For fans of: Japandroids, Yuck, Youth Lagoon, Wavves, Los Campesinos!, Built To Spill, Dinosaur Jr.

From: Glasgow, Scotland

Personae: Phillip Taylor (vocals/guitar), Josh Swinney (drums), Matthew Scott (bass)

PAWS released an EP early last year that was mastered by Shellac’s Bob Weston, and their scrappily melodic, garage-rock approach wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a vintage episode of MTV’s 120 Minutes. But drummer Josh Swinney quickly rejects the idea the Scottish trio is part of any kind of ’90s revival. “It’s just music that young people are making that’s evolving,” he says. When you consider that similar comparisons have been leveled at some of the acts PAWS have opened for – No Age, Wavves and other bands who’ve been playing since the ’00s – it’s hard not to be receptive to Swinney’s position.

It doesn’t hurt that PAWS’ debut album, Cokefloat!, happens to be an expertly-crafted contribution to Glasgow’s rich indie-rock lineage. Detuned guitars and lacerating feedback might be decades old, but PAWS – like recent European tourmates Japandroids – express their present-day angst with such specific passion that will make even crankiest ’90s-indie-rock curmudgeon feel the urge to pump a PBR-clutching fist.

Before sitting down to a dinner of Thai green curry while on tour in the Netherlands, Swinney talked over the phone with eMusic’s Marc Hogan about unexpected meetings, rock-band skateboarding tricks and the band’s perhaps-surprisingly tangential relationship to ice-cream beverages.

On touring with the Japandroids:

It’s been brilliant. The first gig we played with them was in Switzerland, and it was an absolutely amazing place. And yeah, from then on it’s been really fun. We’ve done two other gigs without them in Europe so far, as well. One in Ghent, in Belgium at the start. And we did one in a gallery in Amsterdam on Saturday night, which was absolutely crazy. It was really good. Everyone was just like moshing – it was mental. It was chaos.

On the other bands they’ve opened for, and fortuitous body art:

We’ve been really lucky to play with loads of different bands that we really like, but I think that one of my favorite bands that we’ve played with was the Babies. The gig they played where I saw them was just amazing. And it was cool playing with Wavves, because I really, really, really loved them before, and then got to actually play with them. And then I found out that the drummer who played with Wavves when we played with them he used to be the drummer for a band called the Mae Shi, and I’ve got a Mae Shi tattoo on my arm. I was like, “Oh my god, you used to be in the Mae Shi!” So I lifted up my arm and showed him. And I had a [Mae Shi song] “Run to Your Grave” tattoo. And he was like, “Oh my god.” He couldn’t believe it. I got that tattoo when I was like 16.

On making the album in a floating recording studio:

We recorded it on a boat that’s mired on the Thames, called the Lightship95, and it’s a recording studio in London. The novelty of being in a studio and being in a boat combined was pretty fun. We had never recorded anything in a studio before so that was really exciting in itself. And then also being on a boat, it was pretty cool. There were times when I was playing the drums and the tide would come in on the Thames, and the boat would start rocking back and forth, so we would record drums while i was rocking.

On the source of the title Cokefloat!:

It’s basically because our friend Jessica [Penfold] did all the artwork for the album, and the comic strip that she drew [for the artwork] was already called Cokefloat!. It just seemed like quite a cool thing to have both these two aspects: music, and a comic strip to look at as well. It’s a nice, succinct, short name; rolls off the tongue…

On the source of the name PAWS:

What happened, basically, is that we were thinking we wanted our band name to do with some sort of creature of something. We were thinking a big Canadian creature, something scary. But then we just somehow stumbled on PAWS. I don’t know why, but it seems to have worked so far.

On cats, which appear often on the band’s Tumblr and on one of its T-shirts:

Philip really likes cats. And I really like cats. But we’re not weird about it or anything like that. I just think they’re cute.

On skateboarding, another theme of the band Tumblr:

Phillip skateboards, not me – I wish I did! The other day, on the first day of tour, he ollied over Brian [King] of Japandroids, who was lying on the ground. We got a video of that, so it should be pretty funny.

On the stories behind the lyrics, described by Phillip as “pretty much a documentation of the past two years”:

It’s just things that have affected him [Phillip], things that he had fun doing or things that made him sad over the course of a period of time, and he just vocalizes it. It’s a good way of expressing your feelings, I guess.

On PAWS’ other influences:

Lots of different things. Kind of a Death Cab [for Cutie] influence, I’d say. I find them to be quite influential. Nirvana, I like. I take a lot from that drumming style, for me personally, just hitting the drum as hard as you possibly can at all times. We all like loads of different stuff. I like old hardcore and stuff like that, and Matt likes lots of country.