Premiere: Woven Bones, “If You’re Gold I’m Gone” MP3

Ever since we asked her take a California road trip for our summer music issue, meeting up with lo-fi kids from San Francisco to San Diego, the mysterious Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls and The Mayfair Set has been steadily revealing herself, both literally and figuratively. She’s played her first shows, signed her first big record deals and now unveils some more of her personal taste with the upcoming single on her Zoo Music label (with Brandon Welchez of Crocodiles), an appropriately scumbaggy little double-sided jam by Austin’s Woven Bones. The single, which you can purchase now right here, features an A and B side that both sound like drinking flat warm beer out of an old carburetor, which is actually not bad if there’s nothing else around. And since we stole a still from it for the image on the homepage, we included Oswald James’ video of Woven Bones playing another recent song, “Your Sorcery,” at Austin’s Psych Fest #2 a couple months ago. The band will be playing a record release party in Austin on October 18th at Beerland, while Dum Dum Girls will be at CMJ at the end of this month. Make sure to check them both out if you’re going to be in either town.



Download: Woven Bones, “If You’re Gold I’m Gone”



Woven Bones, “The Minus Touch”

Stream: Dum Dum Girls, “Over the Phone”

Honestly? Lo-fi music isn’t really reaching any kind of conclusion, it’s just figuring itself out. Rather than postulate about at what point, exactly, we’ve hit saturation, we’ll just decide which bands we like the most and go with it from there. We’ve made it pretty clear that we like Dum Dum Girls, and the new song “Over the Phone” certainly doesn’t change that. Beautifully simple guitar mixed with sugar sweet harmonies is certainly nothing new, but it’s done in such an unabashedly poppy and well-structured way that we’ve already got the melody stuck in our heads. Look out for the Dum Dum Girls LP coming out on Hozac/Sub Pop at some point in the hopefully near future.

Stream: Dum Dum Girls, “Over the Phone” (via No Conclusion)

FEATURE: Dum Dum Girls Hits The Road

  • story Dee Dee
  • photo Justin Maxon

Since petrol prices are back on the rise and driving a car seems less cool than ever, we decided to send one of our favorite new artists and a trusted photographer on a road trip the length of California. Their purpose: to track the genealogy of the recent lo-fi, high melody takeover of the state’s guitar pop tradition. Read More

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FADER TV: A Gang of Videos from the Woodsist/Captured Tracks Festival

New York labels Woodsist and Captured Tracks release so many songs you could listen exclusively to them for a week and A) not repeat any song once and  B) be pretty happy about the whole situation. Variety is the spice of life and all that, but sometimes it’s cool to follow a Woods track with a Ganglians track with a Dum Dum Girls 12-inch with a Mayfair Set 7-inch. Last holiday weekend, this unofficial bond became real as both labels banded together to blow minds in an empty lot underneath the J train—and a whole lot of people showed up.

In between drinking beers, getting dripped on by the subway up above (grossest thing ever) and eating Polish sausage, those people watched almost every band on both labels. A couple highlights: Kurt Vile’s miniature stadium rock punctuated by the tentative pop of the 4th’s first fireworks, and Dee Dee bka Dum Dum Girls appearing live for the first time ever as some sort of gothy dream-like Stevie Nicks, singing beautifully while waving long black fringe. We managed to Flipcam songs from a bunch of the acts, including Vile, Dum Dum Girls, Ganglians, Woods, Fresh and Onlys and Vivian Girls, all of which are below.


Ganglians


Fresh & Onlys


Dum Dum Girls


Woods


Kurt Vile


Vivian Girls

Freeload: Crocodiles, “I Wanna Kill” + “Summer of Hate”

Following on the Fat Possum heels of Wavves and joining Zoo Music with our recent favorite Dum Dum Girls is another new grimy SoCal band named Crocodiles. Judging by the titles, these dudes are not really feeling the good vibrations so much these days, though the actual songs are not nearly as cranky. In fact, “I Wanna Kill,” despite the homicidal chorus, is actually one of the more upbeat nuggets we’ve heard from this new set of bands, and you can probably hear it live when the Crocs play a Repeal Prop 8 benefit at Ruby Room in San Diego on Saturday night. Or if you think Prop 8 is a good idea, check them at some SXSW parties where we will slap you in the face and read you the Constitution until you puke.



Download: Crocodiles, “Summer of Hate”



Download: Crocodiles, “I Wanna Kill”

Freeload: A Gang of Dum Dum Girls

NYC’s Blank Dogs, who we recently featured in the magazine, teamed up with LA’s Dum Dum Girls, who we’ve recently become enamored with, to collaborate as The Mayfair Set. Gorilla Vs. Bear has two songs from an upcoming 7-inch on Captured Tracks, and they’re both packed full of the same ominous fuzz surrounding much of Blank Dogs’ music. The female vocals cut through the admittedly awesome murk though to create cleaner, sunnier surf pop, which, if that’s something you’re into, also comes through on DDG’s own stuff. We’ve got a bunch of songs from both projects below and feel pretty comfortable saying that we highly anticipate anything coming from Captured. Considering all these folks’ prolific track record, there’s a good chance they will have released like five awesome albums by the time we get home tonight.



Download: Dum Dum Girls, “Yours Alone”



Download: Dum Dum Girls, “Catholicked”



Download: The Mayfair Set, “Desert Fun”



Download: The Mayfair Set, “Already Warm”

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