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Category: The Playlist

  • L.A. Witch Explores Psychedelic Post-Punk on Doggod

    L.A. Witch Doggod album cover

    L.A. Witch is back with their first full-length since the pandemic. For Doggod, released on April 4 via Suicide Squeeze Records, the local three-piece headed to Paris, where they recorded at Motorbass, the studio founded by late producer Philippe Zdar (Cassius) where Phoenix recorded Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. 

    Even though the album was made in a studio with a French indie pop pedigree, the sound of Doggod is very L.A. Specifically, the album makes me think of the city’s 1980s post-punk scenes. At that time, you had deathrock, which became goth, and included bands like Kommunity FK, Christian Death and 45 Grave. There was a scene known as the Paisley Underground, which was ‘80s psyche and spawned bands like The Bangles and Opal, who evolved into Mazzy Star. Then, you had a band like the Gun Club, that was really its own vibe, playing dark Americana. Doggod sounds like the point where those three tangents intersect. My point being, you can take the band out of L.A., but you can’t take L.A. out of the band, especially when the city is in their name. 

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  • Miki Berenyi Trio Makes Dance Floor-Friendly Dreampop on Tripla

    Album cover for Tripla by Miki Berenyi Trio

    Last year, I saw Miki Berenyi Trio live at the Fonda in Hollywood and, since then, have been waiting for the British indie group’s debut full-length. Tripla came out on Friday, April 4, and was well worth the wait. The tl;dr version is it’s fantastic. Get it, but don’t expect a rehash of the 1990s. Keep reading if you want more details. 

    MB3 is named for Miki Berenyi, former guitarist and singer for Lush and author of the must-read memoir Fingers Crossed, but it isn’t a solo project. The trio is rounded out by KJ “Moose” McKillop, and Oliver Cherer. All three musicians share songwriting duties and that’s reflected in the album’s title, which is Hungarian for triple. Still, Berenyi is the most recognizable member of MB3. 

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  • DJ Koze Unleashes Spooky Cover of “Vamos a la Playa” on Music Can Hear Us

    DJ Koze album cover for Music Can Hear Us

    About two-thirds of the way into Music Can Hear Us, DJ Koze drops a secret weapon on listeners in the form of an exceptionally short and spooky cover of “Vamos a la Playa.” With German artist Soap&Skin on vocals, Koze strips away everything that makes the 1983 song from Righeira an Italo disco classic. The beat is gone. The “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh“ is replaced with a faint breath in the background. What remains are the lyrics, a story about going to a radioactive beach. It’s creepy af. I love it. 

    The problem with the 21st century’s persistent ‘80s nostalgia is that most people miss the point of a whole decade’s worth of pop culture. They’re like, “the music was so much better.” But, the music was good because people were making perfect pop songs about nuclear annihilation and the evils of capitalism. It’s protest music for the Reagan-Thatcher era that, tbh, probably went over people’s heads back in the day too. (There’s a similar argument to be made about movies here too, but we’ll save that for another day.) Koze and Soap&Skin bring the point to the forefront of this cover version. 

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  • Night Ritualz Debut, Hiroshi Yoshimura Reissue and More March 2025 Music

    cover of Flora by Hiroshi Yoshimura

    Amongst the new releases for March of 2025 were Night Life, the first new full-length album from The Horrors since 2017, as well as clipping.’s new latest album, Dead Channel Sky, both of which were previously covered here. Plus, earlier this month, Agender dropped Berserk, an album I liked so much that I interviewed singer Romy Hoffman for Beatique.

    Click to read “Agender: ‘Some Songs Need to Be Fast and Furious’”

    But, wait, there’s more. This month also brought new albums from CocoRosie, girlpuppy and Takuro Okada, plus a smashing debut album from Texas’ Night Ritualz, as well as reissues of worthwhile albums from electronic music pioneer Bruce Haack and ambient composer Hiroshi Yoshimura. Check out the reviews below and get yourself some new music. 

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  • The Horrors Bring Melancholy to Night Life

    The Horrors Night Life Album cover

    With a title like Night Life, one might assume that The Horrors would drop listeners into the sweatiest, dingiest, bassiest warehouse after-hours on their latest album. That’s a semi-reasonable assumption if you heard the band’s 2021 EPs, Lout and Against the Blade, but it’s also an incorrect one. On the U.K. band’s six album— their first full-length in seven years— night life is hushed and melancholy. It’s gothic, not goth, i.e. more Brontë sisters than Sisters of Mercy. 

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  • Clipping. Tackles Today’s Dystopia on Dead Channel Sky

    clipping. Dead Channel Sky album cover

    It’s the second track off Dead Channel Sky, the latest album from hip-hop trio clipping., that hooked me into the album. “Dominator” begins with a snippet of Human Resource’s early ‘90s banger of the same name, the line “I’m the one and only” pitched up and stuttering towards a collision with rapper Daveed Diggs, who drops a quote from “Bring the Noise,” the Public Enemy classic, “Once again back it’s the incredible.” The sound is bombastic, in the way that the old rave anthems were, and clipping. keeps up the big, boisterous vibe as “Dominator” slides into “Change the Channel,” which twists towards late ‘90s electronic tastes, think “Firestarter”-era Prodigy-meets-Chemical Brothers. 

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  • Indie, ’80s and a Little Darkwave: Midnight Cities Set List 3/13/25

    Dancing at Catch One in Los Angeles for Midnight Cities March 13, 2025 (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    The view from the DJ booth at Midnight Cities. (Pic: Liz O.)

    This is just a super quick update with last night’s set list from Midnight Cities at Catch One. It was a super fun night and, for everyone who was there, I hope you had a good time on the dance floor.

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  • Agender: “Some Songs Need to Be Fast and Furious”

    Photo of Agender by Lindsey Byrnes
    Agender (Photo: Lindsey Byrnes)

    It was the night before the inauguration and, somewhere in the distance, the Eaton and Palisades fires continued to burn. Needless to say, the mood was grim on the streets of L.A. that Sunday. Inside The Regent, though, at a little after 7:30 p.m., the vibe was dynamic. Agender was in the midst of their opening set for CSS. The floor level of the venue was already packed wall-to-wall. The balcony, where I stood, was quite full as well. Looking down, a mass of people bopped around the floor as the L.A. punk band ripped through one fierce song after the next. 

    “I think it was a moment of the city coming together and it felt special,” says  Romy Hoffman, who is the singer, guitarist and songwriter for Agender. “I know I needed that outlet.” Hoffman, who has known CSS since a previous project of hers toured Australia with them in the mid-‘00s, notes that the Brazilian indie band has a “positive, infectious energy” that lent itself to the “catharsis” inside the venue that night. “It was the perfect band to play at that time just because of their energy,” she says. “We had a great time and the crowd was really responsive. It was wonderful.”

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  • It’s Marie Davidson vs. Big Tech on City of Clowns

    Marie Davidson City of Clowns album cover

    Is there an album title better suited for 2025 than City of Clowns, the latest from Marie Davidson? Just this week, Meta dropped some Instagram users into a new level of doomscroll hell, Jeff Bezos decided that WaPo’s opinion page would push “personal liberties and free markets,” and I can’t even keep up with the New Adventures of Trump and Musk. These dudes are a bunch of fucking clowns with far too much power over our daily lives. 

    But, enough about politics, let’s get the music, right? Sorry, that’s not going to happen with City of Clowns. Influenced by Shoshana Zuboff’s book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the not-so-subtle theme throughout Marie Davidson’s new album is the control that Big Tech wields over us. Take “Demolition” as an example, when Davidson whispers, “I want your data” in a flirtatious voice, like the platform that’s going to seduce you into handing over the details of your life that you don’t even share with your closest confidantes.

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  • New Fontaines D.C. and Everything Else You Heard at Splash! at The Mermaid 2/23/25

    Two skulls in a heart at The Mermaid bar in Little Tokyo Los Angeles (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    Heart and skulls at The Mermaid 2/23/25 (Pic: Liz O.)

    Fontaines D.C. dropped a new track last week, “It’s Amazing to Be Young” and the song was one of two from the Irish band to turn up in my set for Splash! at the Mermaid last night. Another new-ish tune worth mentioning is “The Silence That Remains” by The Horrors, which is from their forthcoming album, Night Life. It’s out on March 21 and I’m really looking forward to it. 

    Recent releases from Optometry, Mogwai, Dustbowl Champion and FKA Twigs also made it into the Splash! set, but since there are no genre limitations for this night, I tend to play whatever is stuck in my head in the days leading up to the gig. Tracey Ullman’s cover of “They Don’t Know” was that song earlier last week until it was dislodged by the most persistent earworm I’ve had in a while. I’ll reveal what that song is tomorrow, but it is somewhere on this five-hour set list, so maybe you’ll figure it out before then.  

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