Hanni El Khatib plays bluesy garage rock with a lot of soul and a little folk for Highland Park’s Innovative Leisure label. He destroys live with only an electric guitar and drums played by his best friend from high school. From Café Tropical in Silver Lake, he speaks about preferring amps to humans, a memorable mushroom experience in the snow and his various encounters with strippers. He celebrates the release of his debut LP at the Echo tonight. This interview by Lainna Fader.

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Chad Brown knows more about country music than anyone you’ll ever meet and DJs what he calls “the real American soul music”—music that comes from places where you can’t park. He makes music of his own as CB Brand and served as music supervisor for Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me. He will DJ tonight at Big Freak. This Interpreter curated by Lainna Fader.

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Dale Crover of the mighty Melvins will do a special DJ set at Big Freak tonight, so in honor of this momentous occasion, we are redeploying our gigantic Melvins interview by Chris Ziegler.

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Before they were Luis & the Wildfires they were Lil’ Luis y Los Wild Teens, a band built then as it is now: on rock ‘n’ roll too Wild for American ears. Now, as Luis & the Wildfires, they have more than earned their spot on the wall of Pasadena’s Colorado Bar alongside the Rolling Stones. They will play Saturday with live Mexican wrestling (and you can win tickets here!) so enjoy this reissued interview by Lainna Fader!

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Darker My Love’s Tim Presley delivered one of the most unexpected and impressive LPs of last year with his solo project White Fence’s self-titled debut. At the time, it was one of the best records L.A. RECORD ever randomly received; about a year later, it is still completely fascinating. White Fence plays Friday at Blue Star with Cold Showers, the Urinals and Night Control (win tickets here!) so we are re-printing this interview by Daniel Clodfelter now!

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My Dry Wet Mess makes beats in Barcelona that sound like they come from L.A. and it all started with an Atari and MPC given to him by his father, a bass player in Ennio Morricone’s orchestra. He speaks now from his parents’ house after Christmas about why everything is difficult for him, his inability to get a visa, and his affinity for twisting pop songs and mashing them with noises from unidentifiable sources. This interview by Lainna Fader

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Teebs’ Ardour, out now on Brainfeeder, might be the most beautiful and delicate album released all last year. The tracks replace hard notions of narrative, chorus or verse with soundscapes wherein tones and sounds bloom and fade, smoothly transitioning from one part to the next. He speaks now about anime, time and motion. This interview by Kristina Benson.

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Looking back, you might say that brothers Bobby, Dannis and David Hackney started as a ‘proto-punk’ band, but really this is pure punk rock made years before anyone else even touched the genre. Death seem absolutely sagelike in their prescience. Bobby and Dannis speak now from a snowed-in recording studio in Vermont about Death’s upcoming visit to L.A., David Bowie, and the day disco came to town. This interview by Kristina Benson.

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Best Coast was between tours and between albums, L.A. RECORD was between issues, and I’d be damned if I was going to let a little thing like a power outage or a lightning storm prevent me from leaving without asking a few questions of singer/songwriter Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno, Eagle Rock’s most famous long-haired musical recluse. This interview by Dan Collins.

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I’m wrapped up in the idea of Emily Lacy and her comforting voice, and the strange, beautiful ways she pronounces words. “Take” turns me into little particles, the ghost of reverb following behind her elongated vowels and pinched syllables.

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