La Sera's great new album, Music for Listening to Music To, was released Friday. To celebrate, we asked guitarist Todd "Totally Tod" Wisenbaker to share some of the inspirations that helped him and Katy Goodman — his bandmate and wife — hone their sound. He returned with a grip of videos that broke down their influences track-by-track.
Musings
Awarding Our Favorite Music Moments in Film
Maxim Ludwig's Lessons in the Highs & Lows of Horse Racing
How Our Favorite Artist Sterling Bartlett Got His Brand New Style
From Lord Huron to Superhumanoids, Director Arms Race's Best Music Videos
For the past six years, our buddy Evan Weinerman aka Arms Race has been one of our favorite music video directors and a standard go-to for us and a number of our best friends in music ranging from Lord Huron to Local Natives to Superhumanoids and more.
Today, we review our favorite of his clips with some commentary on each from the man himself, whose creative vision never fails to take us somewhere interesting.
A Letter From Kisses: The Inspiration Behind 'Rest In Paradise'
It was our great pleasure Friday to release Kisses' new album, Rest in Paradise. As the Los Angeles duo's third LP, we feel it's their strongest work to date, crafted around great songs and moving grooves, performed live to record with New York's mighty disco band Midnight Magic.
We are always eager to know and tell a deeper story — below is a letter from Kisses' Jesse Kivel and Zinzi Edmundson have penned explaining their work, influences and creative processes in the context of their ever evolving life together.
Weird Photos, New Year's Resolutions & More Things I Found in Record Sleeves
Casual Nudity With Danny Lane of Cologne
Meditations in a Groove: Transcendental Reading With Evan Voytas
There's a special quality to Evan Voytas' music that puts his pop songs in cosmic territory. Turns out the guy is well versed and practiced in meditation. That makes him a bit of an exception among most the musicians we know, so we asked him to explain a bit more about some readings that have influenced his transcendental lifestyle.
Exploring the Timeless Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki
Priscilla Ahn was born in Pennsylvania and, like many of us, raised on Disney cartoons. But when she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music, she became engrossed in the works of Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, drawing some of her deepest inspiration from his compelling characters and vivid storytelling.
The unlikely result of this infatuation was Priscilla's musical contribution to When Marnie Was There, the final film by Miyazaki's production studio. How she got there is a fascinating journey fit for a Miyazki film itself.
An Idea Is Art: Forming 'Hypothetical Beats' With Astronauts, etc.
For the last several months, Anthony Ferraro of Astronauts, etc. has been writing code, making algorithms for a new piece of music-generating software he's personally invented called Hypothetical Beats. In this time, the Oakland-based artist traveled the country working on this project with an outlandish crew he often has referred to as "hackers". Now, looking back, the journey he took to create it is just as interesting as the tool he designed.
Bidding Farewell to Art Laboe From The LA Airwaves
When we heard the sad news that LA’s favorite smooth jam radio show, the Art Laboe Connection, was taken off the air just before Valentine’s Day as part of a programming change on Hot 92.3 it was a punch to the gut. We asked our friend Kyle Mooney — who first introduced us to the program to us nearly a decade ago — to weigh in on this crummy news.
Romantic Rhymes or: How I Learned to Stop Hating and Love These Cheesy Songs
Darren Weiss & His Dirty, Sexy, Off-Beat Poetry
It’s a bit ironic that PAPA’s music feels so from-the-gut when the band’s lead songwriter — our friend Darren Weiss — is such a cogitator. In Darren’s poetry, he lets us into his psyche a little more, giving passage to intimate creative moments. It’s how we can know him better, as a friend and artist. The poems are thoughtful, sexy, fun, often just really fucking funny, and worth appreciation.