Back in May of 2016, we were lucky enough to catch Peter Bjorn and John at one of our favorite, more intimate Los Angeles venues, the Echo. Opening up for them was an unknown-to-us solo act, Okay Kaya, AKA Norwegian singer-songwriter, Kaya Wilkins. It was one of those great moments when the opening act proves nearly as powerful and enjoyable as the band you originally came to see. Her set was stripped, emotional, and moving…until some drunk douche in the back heckled her for some reason. Well, if life were an 80s movie and she actually gave a fuck (which I highly doubt she does), said douche would get turned away the door at her coming, I presume to be sold-out shows in support of what could be one of the year’s best albums. We’re kicking this mixtape off with one of two singles from coming full-length, Both (we have a video for the other below because we love it so much).
What other sonic gems are we sharing this month? Glad you asked.
As always, Australia’s exploding music scene has bled into this mix, first with the straight-up pop danceability from Sydney’s Nicole Millar. Then we seem to have inadvertently lauded on-high our old home of Brooklyn with a string of artists who are keeping it legit in the ‘borough of trees’—we’ve got some catchy glitch from solo project A Beacon School and Brooklyn-by-way-of-San-Juan Balun, some excellent, slightly less glitchy female-fronted electronic pop from Half Waif and Mothica; and some solid indie pop from four-piece Plastic Picnic. Then we’re getting back to our current home of Los Angeles with some experimental electronica from French-American artist, Sydney Wayser, better known by her stage name, CLARA-NOVA and taking a trip up to the great white north with Montreal’s Men I Trust, both new favorites in the studio.
Then, don’t shut this down before you give it a try, but we’ve got some witch hop (it’s a thing, I swear) from an artist we kind of inexplicably love, Scranton’s own Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. We’ve also got lovely new singles from the most excellent Londoner Nilüfer Yanya, Gothenburg’s Little Dragon, and one teaming Scottish electronic band CHVRCHES with The National‘s Matt Berninger.
And while we hate to play the comparison game, we’re ending things out with a track from Melbourne’s G Flip that has us wanting to dance around the bedroom like we’ve got old Robyn pumping out of shitty speakers at maximum volume with early aughts pre-caffeine-prohibition Sparks in-hand (our twenties were heady, orange-tinged days with little disposable income) before letting none other than Tracey Thorn drop the mic for us via a new collab with London electronic artist George Fitzgerald that’s co-writen with Oli Bayston, the frontman of one of our favorite bands, Boxed In.
That’s it! Enjoy!
And by way of follow up to the video below, you can donate to Planned Parenthood here.
