Another batch of new DIY indie tracks. Tom Waits fans will likely appreciate the tantalizing music and video from California indie band Hollow Down, plus a new single from New York City’s The Hasbros and a number of other artists and bands listed below:
Hollow Down – Eureka, California
The Hasbros – New York, New York
The New Investors – Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A Fawn At Dawn – Quebec City
Penn Johnson – Austin, Texas
Reptiel – San Francisco, California
Hollow Down – “Silas The Wanderer”
Dark rhythmic rock radiates from the new single, “Silas The Wanderer,” from the Eureka, California band Hollow Down. The track is from the band’s debut album.
If you are a Tom Waits fan, or just familiar with his music, you will swear then that this was one of his tracks. It’s been a while that we’ve heard an artist sound so much like another artist that it is striking in comparison.
The band has been told that they sound “as if Tom Waits took acid and tried to play bluegrass with a punk band” and “good music to drown to.”
Now on a six-month long tour, Hollow Down also shot a music video (featured above) for the track this past summer.
The video, directed and edited by Violet Crabtree, features a combination of crafty stop-motion animation, film footage, stills and a creepy theme of birds and ghosts that is timely with Halloween having just passed. It’s quite an impressive video for a DIY artist.
In addition to the obvious Waits’ influence on their music, the band members say they are most influenced by The Cramps and Ween.
The Hasbros – “Ever After Now”
The latest single from New York City indie rock band The Hasbros just dropped and it’s a beauty. Drowned in melodic electric guitars, a romping percussion, a cross-pollination of folk rock and 90’s rock elements and topped by a catchy chorus.
The song reminds us a little bit of the Gin Blossoms. It’s also a fitting track for a DIY Road Trip playlist.
According to songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Robert J Hanophy, the track “is a modern age love song where the guy is the one that gets hurt the most.
He wants to take the relationship to the next level, but she’s not having it…he’s tired of just being a booty call” leading him to “sarcastically ask; “how’s the ‘ever after, now?'”
Now we know times have changed for sure when the man wants a commitment and the female doesn’t. There are songs all throughout the band’s debut album, Cart Before The Horse, that wrestle with relationships, broken hearts and the perils of modern times.
We’ll be reviewing this exciting album more extensively in our year-end wrap up of 2018 DIY releases.
“Ever After Now” – The Hasbros from Cart Before The Horse
The Hasbros band on Facebook
A Fawn At Dawn – “Between Clocks and Walls”
Following the drop of its enthralling debut EP, Quebec City alt-pop band A Fawn at Dawn received accolades in the local music community and drew comparisons to Animal Collective, Sam Roberts and Broken Social Scene.
Interesting and fairly strong DIY psych-pop track with a heavy underlying percussionist vibe, jangling lo-fi guitars and catchy little alt.-style chorus.
The New Investors – “Utopia”
The Danish indie rock band, The New Investors, which made IRC’s Top Ten Songs playlist for September, is back with this new and inspiring little number, “Utopia,” showcasing the band’s penchant for creating complex songs that sound solid.
The song, in addition to its heady lyrical content, is hard not to play again. This is a talented band and rising. The New Investors has been making headway in both the European and now U.S. markets, so keep an ear out. Solid band.
Penn Johnson – “Burn A Little Sage”
Musician Penn Johnson weaves glimmers of hope and love through his intimate and esoteric musical story-telling on songs like the standout title track of his new debut album, Burn A Little Sage.
His music, he says, is a “genre yet to be defined” by conventional labels and instead is music that he likes to call “modern medicinal folk music” geared to inspire health and healing.
An Austin resident and a Massachusetts native, Johnson traveled the country for several years playing his songs from town to town and building a small following along the way.
His musical influences include Nahko, Trevor Hall, Xavier Rudd, Rising Appalachia, Jack Johnson, Todd Snider. He has opened for Bumpin Uglies, Joey Harkum, Desert Dwellers, Iya Terra, and Sessions Americana.
REPTIEL – “Spirit Usher”
The Bay Area rock band, REPTIEL, has dropped a new lead single, “Spirit Usher,” from the album The Planet of Progkp.
The San Francisco-based band’s album is a “science fiction sequel to the euphonious fantasy precursor, Hobbitozz … A Land That Never Was.”
The drop marks the fourth album by REPTIEL and the second of a multi-part series of “psychedelic sci-fi/fantasy rock albums” the band is producing.
“Employing the soft, theatrical and atmospherics of Hobbitozz,” the band explains, “the Progkp LP focuses on the protagonist of the land that never was ushered through space and time to a world unlike any other, where shadows reign and the sun has set forever.”
Formed in 2009, REPTIEL features members of seminal San Francisco bands like The Cubby Creatures, Thee More Shallows and The Druggles. The REPTIELians practice “ritual musick” to summon stories and sounds, and only rarely perform live due to “the various members’ agoraphobia, superstitiousness [sic], and severe anxiety.”