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Mapache x Love Can't Hold Me

Mapache — the LA duo of Sam Blasucci and Clay Finch — share “Love Can’t Hold Me,” the breezily romantic new single from their album Roscoe’s Dream, out June 10 on Innovative Leisure / Calico Discos. With a shuffling trash can drum beat and trebly garage rock guitars that rough up the song’s slick, effortlessly harmonized chorus, “Love Can’t Hold Me” would fit snugly alongside anything from The Velvet Underground’s Loaded. It’s a crystallization of Mapache’s strengths as songwriters, as well as a showcase for a whole new set of tricks that they’ve honed since growing into a full band project.

"Love Can't Hold Me is a way to describe how it feels when you fall in love. Bookstore jazz, freedom, amnesia, among other things."

Lionel Boy x LOVE

Hawaiian-born, Long Beach-based songwriter Lionel Boy is today sharing his new single "LOVE" from forthcoming EP 'Up at 4', due April 29th via Innovative Leisure. This will then be followed by a second EP 'Down at 8', which is due June 27th. 

Speaking about the new single, Lionel Boy said "I demoed this one out one weekend while my girlfriend, Casey, was away. I had a general idea of direction - but thankfully I had Brett Kramer there to really help bring these other ideas to life. The song is short but I think its takes you through a few different levels, a lot like falling in love. It starts off with a slow build then the drums transition it into something more intense and exciting. The siren/alarm that comes in at the middle feels like conflict, which we all experience in relationship. The acoustic guitar portion brings it back to a sobering state and the song ends a bit…up in the air."

Lionel Boy’s sound mixes spacey synthesizers, impromptu breakbeats & bedroom pop. The airy, jazz-cracked, electronic pop of Lionel Boy belies a wistful romanticism, a careful observational streak, and a meditative fixation on life and death. Lionel Boy is soulful and easy-going, both introspective and laissez faire, extremely mellow but never soft-headed. 

'Up at 4' and 'Down at 8' are a collection of songs that started off as demos in Lionel Boy's living room. Following the release of his debut album, Lionel Boy wanted to continue exploring producing and collaborating with friends. 

"I felt like I spent all and none of 2021 working on these songs. Producing these EPs looked like a lot of early mornings and evenings spent at my computer screen. Some days feeling like I made no changes at all. I’m a pretty early riser—waking up at 4 am which are when many of these songs came to mind. I spend most of my time working when the world is quiet which sounds nice but isn’t always the easiest to do when you live in an older apartment with downstairs neighbors. Everything I do to get things moving in the morning is an inconvenience to the people around me—the creaky wood floors, tracking vocals, tapping my drum machine...just one of the many ways I’ve woken up my girlfriend throughout the years. Trying to find a balance between making my music when the creativity strikes while also being a respectful roommate/neighbor is tricky but we make it work.

I’m grateful for the people who have helped me elevate these songs beyond this space. Friends like Brett Kramer, Andrew Pham, Ukiah Bogle, Casey Liu, Nathan Hawelu, Harlem (Dotager) and Jonny Bell were crucial to making these songs what they are now."

Maria Chiara Argirò x Blossom

Maria Chiara Argirò’s hypnotic new single “Blossom” was inspired by the beauty and perfection of nature and questions what it means to grow in this world – as a human or plant. Lyrically the song evolved into a fairytale scene. Maria tells, “A girl wakes up in the night, looks out of the window and sees someone she loves leaving, probably for good. She wants to call out and say ‘don't go’, but the words don't come out. Instead a little flower drops out of her mouth. The flower represents growing and moving on from something, or a deeper understanding of the situation. The flower comes out instead of the words that are holding you back.”

The upcoming LP, Forest City, is due out on May 6, 2022.

“I think she’s gonna blow your mind” BBC’s Maryanne Hobbs

"a clubby departure for Argirò, trading in clever chord changes for a hypnotic beat & swelling synth pads." FADER

“In a month all your cool friends will talk about Maria Chiara Argirò” Rolling Stone (IT)

“...a seemingly effortless blend of electronic elements with dance beats and a chocolate fudge swirl of jazz trumpet, this builder commands center stage. Play it loud for a weekend catharsis” KCRW

"drifts between club culture's left-field aspects and jazz improvisation" CLASH

Tijuana Panthers x Helping Hand
In one form or another, Tijuana Panthers have existed most of its members’ lives. Daniel Michicoff (bass/vocals), Chad Wachtel (guitar/vocals), and Phil Shaheen (drums/vocals) became friends when they were teenagers in Long Beach, California, and started playing music together soon after, eventually becoming one of the shining stars of the twenty-first century garage-rock revival scene—a (relatively) chill surf-rock-inspired complement to the ruckus of acts like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees. But while many of their initial contemporaries have gone through lineup changes or thrown in the towel, the Panthers are hanging tough—and, in a sense, just hitting their stride.
“I feel like this was our most relaxed process yet,” says Michicoff of the band’s sixth LP, Halfway to Eighty, an album whose title serves as a sly embrace of getting older, with a little bit of the Panthers’ trademark sense of humor sprinkled in there for good measure. (On the cover, they gather around their imaginary midlife-crisis Delorean.) It’s a brotherhood that’s only gotten more instinctual over time, and lately that second-nature approach has found each member taking on a more forward role in crafting their own individual songs, which the trio then works out together before hitting the studio. 
On Halfway to Eighty, riff-heavy anthems like “Helping Hand” are courtesy of Wachtel, while art-rock thrashers like “Slacker” are Shaheen’s handiwork, and smirking punk numbers like “False Equivalent” are Michicoff’s. (“What good can it bring now? / We’re barely evolved” sings Michicoff on that last song, a squall of guitars swirling around his trembling tenor.) When you keep an ear out for them, you can hear each distinct personality in the songs, but taken as a whole, it’s yet another primo Panthers set of post-Cramps, post-DEVO outsider rock and roll. 
That’s partially through the help of regular Panthers collaborator Jonny Bell (Crystal Antlers, Chicano Batman, The Gun Club [reissue]), Hanni El Khatib, Lovely Bad Things, Rudy De Anda), who produced the set at his Jazzcats Studio in Long Beach. Bell has proved to have something of a sixth sense in working with the band, so there was no one better to capture the sound they were going after this time, either. For much of the record, the band was working with the mindset of channeling some of the production sound and attitude of local punk legends like Black Flag and Circle Jerks. “What I told Jonny when he was mixing ‘Slacker,’” remembers Shaheen, “was, like, ‘Just keep it South Bay,’ and he already knew what I was saying.”
But as much as the band has matured over the years, they still know how to put together an album efficiently, without messing around. They’re professionals, after all—and there’s bills to pay, too. “We don’t have the luxury to go in the studio for days on end,” laughs Shaheen. “I don’t know how other bands do it.”
Taken at full, Halfway to Eighty is an embrace of much more than just a band. It’s a statement of dedication to the calling of music—to sticking with making art as long as you want to, age be damned. “You know what would make me just go, ‘Oh, let’s just quit,’” says Wachtel, recalling a recent raucous show in Los Angeles, “is if we didn’t have that reception anymore. The fans keep me going.”
“Not to get all spiritual about it,” adds Michicoff, “but when we were younger, we played really hard for nobody, and now the fans do all the work for us. They have the fun and we just kind of rock out, and it’s nice. It’s cool to sit back and play the songs and watch. They’re putting on a show for us.”
Mapache x They Don't Know At The Beach

“This next song’s a special dedication to all of the beach people.” And with that, Mapache — the band led by Los Angeles duo Sam Blasucci and Clay Finch — launch into “They Don’t Know At The Beach,” the latest single from their new album Roscoe’s Dream, out June 10 on Innovative Leisure / Calico Discos. It’s a stoned and conspiratorial love song that unfolds with the sunburnt beauty of a Beach Boys ballad as it weaves a romantic tale of two lovers on the run from the FBI, perfect for soundtracking the most tender moments of a Pynchon novel or a lazy afternoon spent by a pool positing your latest theories on extraterrestrials.