From the hills of Highland Park come the bellowing vocals, bright guitars and industrial synth of post-punkish Cold Showers, fusing decades of pop darkness with L.A.’s lo-fi dreams. They play Sunday at Part Time Punks. This interview by Sarah Bennett.

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Despite giving us a taste of the more-mellow Get Up Kids of-the-future, the band eventually delivered the cream of the nostalgic crop during an encore that included a sing-a-long version of “I’ll Catch You” and a slam-pit inducing “10 Minutes.” Every inch of 15 year-old me was happy.

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I found sadness in the fact that only in Los Angeles could a totally likeable band like Blitzen Trapper be burdened with a crowd so boring that it gets outshone by the prospect of being seen in a YouTube video with Rainn Wilson.

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Scott H. Biram is an American hollerer with a bunch of room to himself between David Allan Coe and Jack Oblivian. He likes Black Flag but sometimes he gets weird like Dock Boggs, and he decides here to probably not take shrooms for a little bit. This interview by Sarah Bennett.

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Andrew W.K. emerged from a black velvet box and stumbled over a nonsensical speech (about how we should make sure to bring extra quarters to the store when we’re buying water to tip the cashier. WTF?) before sitting at the mirrored beast and improvising simplistic songs about food, being a boy and dog ownership. Clearly hanging out in another dimension where he wasn’t expected to play the instrument in front of fans, Andrew (despite being classically trained since age 4) banged out staccato couplets until they bled into a garbled Nordstrom piano-player audition over which he sang, “You gotta eat food/You gotta eat to live.”

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Thao Nguyen is the hetero-indie dudes’ dream girl: an adorable multi-instrumentalist who wears her heart on her sleeve yet is secretly really sad (but not too sad to dance). What makes Nguyen an even better catch is that she flies past the whole Jenny-Lewis-bunny-like-adorableness and straight into Ani DiFranco-intensity, with darker-than-Feist throaty vocals.

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Instead of keeping convention by writing songs in line with her other, louder music projects, Cervenka’s Midwest epiphany helped her do what Lil Wayne could not in The Carter, fearlessly emerge from behind the mask of public expectations and expose your soul to a bunch of drunk Long Beach fans. Somewhere in a pot-and-sizzurp stupor, Young Money is jealous.

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After six weeks on tour, Henry Clay People played a “homecoming show” by dragging their producer and friends onstage to play tambourine and scream along with covers of Operation Ivy “Knowledge” and Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” It was a full-scene affair with members of Happy Hollows, Redd Kross and The Pity Party—all cover alumni—wandering in and out of the 6 hour show. (Chris from HH partied all night!)

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OUR CONTRIBUTORS Sarah Bennett — fakebadtaste.wordpress.com Miles Clements — eatfoodwith.me Daniel Clodfelter — myspace.com/sharktoys Dan Collins — nuclearraysfrommyhalogenhaze.wordpress.com Daiana Feuer — daianafeuer.com Rin Kelly — rinkelly.com shea M gauer — ontheroughseesofmyeyes.blogspot.com Christine Hale (Love, Christine) — lovechristine.com Michael Hsiung — michaelchsiung.com Joe McGarry — popnoir.org Luke McGarry — popnoir.org Nathan Morse — deadsparrow.com Brock Potucek [...]

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AND PUBLISHER — Chris Ziegler — chris@larecord.com MANAGING EDITOR / BOOKS EDITOR — Nikki B. — nikkib@larecord.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR AND SOCIAL MEDIA — Kristina Benson — kristina@larecord.com EXECUTIVE EDITOR — Daiana Feuer — daiana@larecord.com NEW MUSIC EDITOR — Dan Collins — danc@larecord.com ARTS EDITOR — Drew Denny — drew@larecord.com COMICS EDITOR — Tom Child [...]

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