Dreams reflect and refract real-life. They are visions that can drive us while we’re wide awake, even when we’re charmed by things—art, environments, people—that we know are impossible fantasies. And when we’re dreaming, those bewildering distortions of time, space and plot can be as attractive as those heart-piercing moments where everything perfectly resolve. Matt Koenig, the songwriter-producer behind the Undercover Dream Lovers, makes these dichotomies into music, and the lustrous get-down grooves and deliberate lyrical ambiguity is exactly what you’d expect from an indie act with such a fantastical name. The Undercover Dream Lovers play Thurs., May 9, at the Regent Theater—get tickets here! This interview by Sydney Sweeney. ►

Bay Area-raised/L.A.-based multi-hyphenate Aaron Valenzuela delivers a 14-track R&B project that toys with the concept of life as a shopping mall: if wealth must be spent consciously, so too one’s time. ►

Paul Hernandez is a lover boy—not an audacious casanova, but a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic who simply falls in love too fast, poeticizing the women who make him stumble headfirst into desire and devotion. From hitting a million streams on Spotify to dropping his debut EP Pastel and playing Tropicalia—the quintessential music festival for LA’s most committed indieheads—Hernandez’s 2018 has been as dreamy as his music itself. At sundown in Exposition Park, the 24-year-old artist ponders his early beginnings, defying expectations, and being a proud cheeseball. He performs his first headlining show at the Echo tonight. This interview by Sydney Sweeney. ►

BOYO, the solo project of singer-songwriter Robert Tilden, sounds like cool—like the kind of music blasting behind the hip older sibling’s bedroom door in a coming-of-age flick, or the soundtrack for weekends of irresponsible spontaneity in real life. With earworm-y chord progressions and deadpan vocals—the core of BOYO’s oeuvre—Tilden’s third and newest full-length Dance Alone glides from fast to slow with effortless agility. ►

At its deepest, romantic love is all-consuming—it’s something universal, and something powerful enough to provoke both fixation on another and contemplation of oneself. And it’s the inspiration for 20-year-old Gardena singer-songwriter Aolani—born Kalyn Aolani Oshiro-Wachi—on her new self-titled EP. She performs at the Echo on Sat., Oct. 20. (She'll also perform at Tropicalia next month in Long Beach.) This interview by Sydney Sweeney. ►