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Category: The Playlist

  • “Don’t Forget the Songs That Made You Smile”: Liz O.’s Smiths Nite Setlist for Underground, 5/16/25

    Smiths Nite at Club Underground at Grand Star Jazz Club on May 16, 2025
    View from the DJ booth Smiths Nite at Club Underground 5/16/25

    For the record, The Smiths are my favorite band and have been since I was 12. And, yet, I’ve never played an all-Smiths-related set before last night. It was Club Underground’s Smiths Nite and Rose Knows and I DJed in the theme room for the two-room event at the Grand Star. It was hard! Seriously, I *still* have The Smiths catalog committed to memory and this was easily the hardest set I’ve ever played. It’s one of those things where, at 10 p.m., you think there aren’t enough songs to fill a whole night and at 12 p.m., you realize you might get to half of what you wanted to play. 

    “Don’t forget the songs that made you smile/And the songs that made you cry.” (Rubber Ring)

    At least “Rubber Ring” made it into the set. And “What She Said.” 

    Anyhow, thanks to everyone who hit the dance floor last night. You can catch Rose Knows for her Smiths Night at Cha Cha Cha Lounge this Thursday, May 22. Larry G. is at Grand Star Jazz Club for Club Underground every Friday night. IDK when I’m playing next, so just follow me on Instagram or check here on Wednesdays. My set list is below. 

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  • Tropa Magica Cover The Doors “People Are Strange” on New Album

    Tropa Magica Para Bailar y Tripiar album cover

    There is no shortage of “People Are Strange” covers in the world, but “Todos Son Raros,” a Spanish rendition by Tropa Magica, is 100% worth your attention. The L.A.-based band reimagines the Doors classic as a groovy cumbia with some surfy reverb and an expanded guitar solo that ventures into Middle Eastern psychedelia. It’s wild and lives up to the title of Tropa Magica’s latest album, Para Bailar y Tripiar. 

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  • Model/Actriz Brings the Noise Back to Dance Rock on Pirouette

    Cover of Pirouette by Model/Actriz, released on May 2, 2025

    On Pirouette, the latest album from New York-based Model/Actriz, there’s a lineage that runs from the funkier, Gang of Four side of post-punk to the noisy, late 1990s aftermath of hardcore that led to indie dance bands like The Rapture, The Faint and !!! to the L.A. DIY scene of the ‘00s and early ‘10s that spawned bands like Health and clipping. It’s noisy, driven by an urgent energy and will probably scare off those who like nice pop songs. It’s music for people who like to keep things weird, but still need structured songs and a good dance beat. 

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  • New Music From Mareux, Pixel Grip and Sextile + More of What You Heard at Nocturno on May 9, 2025

    Nocturno New wave vs darkwave room at Catch One in Los Angeles May 9, 2025 (photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    View from the DJ booth in the New Wave vs. Darkwave room at Nocturno on May 9, 2025 (Pic: Liz O.)

    There’s a lot of new music that came out in the past few weeks and a three of those songs made it into last night’s set in the new wave vs. darkwave room at Klub Nocturno. “Laugh Now Cry Later” from Mareux, which turned up really early in the set, is the lead single from his sophomore album, Nonstop Romance,  which is out in late June. Pixel Grip also has a new album, Percepticide: The Death of Reality, out in June. “Reason to Stay” is the new single from that album and it popped up  in the set somewhere in the 10 o’clock hour. I’m really into this song and the response was good, so you’ll probably be hearing it more often in my sets. 

    Last night’s big, new hit though was “Women Respond to Bass,” from Sextile, which came into the set shortly after midnight, mixed between Boy Harsher “Come Closer” and Vitalic’s electroclash-era jam “La Rock 01.” It did really well on the dance floor Friday night. Sextile’s latest album, Yes, Please, came out last week and it’s packed with bangers, so you’ll probably be hearing more from it in my sets this summer. 

    Set list is below. My next gig is The Smiths Nite at Club Underground on Friday, May 16, where I’ll be playing alongside Larry G. and Rose Knows. 

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  • Breton Singer and Producer Quinquis Channels Mermaid Lore on eor

    Quinquis eor album cover Mute Records

    Breton singer, musician and producer Quinquis just released her latest album, eor, on Mute Records and it’s exquisite. Inspired by mermaid lore and made with modular synthesizers, eor will have you imagining tales filled with fantastic beings, set against against gray skies and cold, tumultuous seas. This isn’t TikTok-friendly mermaidcore, this is something darker, richer and altogether more interesting. 

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  • Sextile Drops Rave-Punk Bangers on Yes, Please

    Sextile Yes, Please album cover

    Sextile kicks off Yes, Please with one hell of an “Intro.” It’s all alarms, distorted vocals and squelching electronics that make you think the L.A.-based duo have plans to drop you back into a 1992 Prodigy jam. They don’t. Instead, Sextile diverts you to the sweat-drenched warehouse of right now with “Women Respond to Bass,” a banger for the afters where the subs send the low-end pulsing through the soles of your Docs, and the previously released single “Freak Eyes.” 

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  • The DJ Set Where I Didn’t Play New Order

    Excetera La Cuevita flyer April 25, 2025 DJ Malvada, DJ Liz O.

    Even I’m surprised that I got through a two-hour DJ set without playing New Order. I came pretty close to dropping “Bizarre Love Triangle” into the set at La Cuevita on Friday night, but then I thought, “Liz, you’re at a bar, not a dance club, no one has requested ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ and you played a New Order and Depeche Mode night last week. Give yourself a break.” So, I did. Also, I forgot to take photos

    Anyhow, here’s the set. Thanks to Malvada for having me play Ex-Cetera at La Cuevita. 

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  • The Smooth Socialist Soul of the Style Council

    Style Council vinyl including Introducing the Style Council mini LP, My Ever Changing Moods, The Internationalists (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    My tiny collection of Style Council vinyl (Pic: Liz O.)

    I was holed up in a hard-to-find shady corner of Grand Park, watching the crowd and taking nearly illegible notes during the Fighting Oligarchy rally when the familiar opening notes of a song caught my attention. Style Council? It was “Shout to the Top,” I knew that for certain before Paul Weller’s voice came in with the first verse. But, here? At a political rally in the U.S.? 

    That’s weird, I thought, but whoever added the song to the playlist deserves some props. “Shout to the Top” was a good choice, thematically appropriate with the lyrics, “and when you’re down on the bottom/there’s nothing else/but to shout to top.” Still, your average American has little-to-no-idea who Paul Weller is. They might have heard “A Town Called Malice” or “My Ever Changing Moods” somewhere in their lifetime, but they probably do not know that both come from the same guitar hero/fashion icon— the Modfather, as he’s often called—  and that he also has a treasure trove of songs about class politics. 

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  • New Wet Leg and Everything Else You Heard at The Mermaid for Splash on April 20, 2025

    Mermaid skeleton at The Mermaid bar in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    Greetings from The Mermaid (Pic: Liz O.)

    One of the first things I learned as a baby DJ was that genres aren’t all that useful. On a very basic level, they can refer to stylistic conventions (dub) or specific movements (punk) or both (hip-hop), but then the terms get overused (post-punk) and are totally watered down (psychedelic) until they become a meme (goth) and, ultimately, meaningless (indie). 

    Genres define music for marketing or search engine purposes, but they don’t mean much for human ears. Whether or not songs fit together has less to do with metadata and more to do with qualities that are objective, subjective and pretty hard to describe. That’s all just a long way of saying that I really like when there’s no genre tagged to a gig, which is the case for Splash at The Mermaid, where I played last night. Here’s the set list, which includes new music from Wet Leg, Marie Davidson, Model/Actriz and clipping., classics from Max Romeo (RIP), The Smiths and The Delfonics, a holiday tune from I-F and more. 

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  • Depeche Mode, New Order and More of What You Heard at Club Underground on April 18, 2025

    Crowd shot from Depeche Mode x New Order Night at Club Underground at Grand Star Jazz Club in Los Angeles on April 18, 2025 (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    View from the DJ both at Club Underground on Depeche Mode x New Order Night (Pic: Liz O.)

    Depeche Mode x New Order Night at Club Underground was a blast. I played the opening and closing sets last night. Rose Knows and Larry G. played in the middle. The dance floor got going early, like before 10 p.m., and it just seemed to keep going, even after the house lights rose at the end of the night.

    I’ve posted my own set lists below. Underground is every Friday night at the Grand Star in Chinatown with DJ Larry G.. I’ll be playing there again in May, so stay tune for details. My next gig is Sunday, April 20, at The Mermaid in Little Tokyo for Splash. It’s an open format night and I’ll be playing from 8 p.m. until 1 a.m.

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