Here are some new DIY singles we think folks will enjoy as much as we have here in the cafe for the past few days. The bands featured in this post include:
The Clox – New York, New York
The Verigolds – San Diego, California
My Empire of Sound – Stockholm, Sweden
Geometrist – Boston, Massachusetts
Clox – “Lullaby”
The New York indie rock trio, Clox, traces back to 2009 when two friends, Denis Orynbekov (guitar, lead vocals) and Ruslan Baimurzin (drums), moved from Kazakhstan to New York in pursuit of a dream. Soon after, they were joined by mutual friend and bassist, Igor Reznik , and thus the trio was complete. Over the past few years, they received praise from Village Voice and Deli Magazine and have had their songs licensed with MTV, Oxygen Channel, PBS, and Lions Gate Films.
They have performed many shows during the past five years, sharing the stage with bands like The Toadies, Clinic, Little Barrie, Band of Heathens, The Gift, Mumiy Trol, Drew Halcomb and The Neighbors, The Technicolors, The Night Snipers, and Lyapis Trubeckoy. The trio’s most influential bands include Radiohead, The Beatles, Beck, and The Mars Volta.
“Lullaby” – Clox from Lullaby 7″ – April 14th
The Verigolds’ “Grunge”
The Verigolds are a four-piece California band from the beaches of San Diego, where the “60’s meet the 21st century in a sonically pleasant parallel universe.” Formed just last year, the DIY band mixes genres like psych, pop, rock and folk into tantalizing tracks like their latest single, “Grunge,” which is not really what the title suggests. The band members include lead vocalist and guitarist Eliot Ross, vocalist and guitarist Jenna Cotton, keyboardist Ben Smedley and drummer Craig Schreiber.
The Verigolds have opened for bands like Magic Giant, Hey Rosetta!, Andrew Belle, and Emily Jane White; their musical influences include Foxygen, La Femme, Cults, Arcade Fire, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, and Wooden Indian. Join The Verigolds on the band’s Facebook page.
Grunge – The Verigolds
My Empire of Sound’s “Scandinavian Summer”
A band we have featured before on IRC, Stockholm Danish/Swedish electro-pop husband and wife duo, My Empire of Sound, just dropped the single, “Scandinavian Summer,” from their forthcoming sophomore album. The song starts out softly, progressing into a Phil Spector-inspired ‘wall of sound’ with a big-sounding chorus, thanks to John Alexander Erison and his bandmate Sidsel Soholm. The duo also released an amazing album in 2014 that is a piece of indie synth pop history, whether more than a few hundred people know or not.
Scandinavian Summer – My Empire of Sound from Scandinavian Summer 7″ – May 18th
My Empire of Sound on Facebook
Geometrist – “Hellos”
Melodic, uptempo and cheerful choruses of “woah oh oohs” – that sound much better than an indie pop song gimmick- are some of the welcoming elements that make up the new single, “Hellos,” from Boston indie project Geometrist. We don’t have much information about them – because they didn’t bother to provide it – but we can say that we like what we hear anyways. The Bean Town band is comprised of five “long-time friends” who got together in 2012 and began writing and recording original songs.
In April, Geometrist dropped their debut album, Ain’t Comin’ Down, DIY-style. Their musical influences include Vundabar, The Shones, and Juston Stens. The band members include Jake Capistran (guitar, vocals); Mike Larsen (guitar); Nick Brozek (drums); Jason Perfetto (keys) and Zack Renschler (bass).
Hellos – Geometrist from Ain’t Comin’ Down – April 28th