The Neighbourhood – Sweater Weather

The Neighbourhood is a 5-piece American band from Los Angeles, famously described as “dark pop”. They played at Coachella this year for the first time, just before releasing their debut album titled “I Love You.”

I haven’t heard many recent bands that sound like The Neighborhood – what I like in particular are the dramatic tempo changes, which are often half-time, like 2:25 into Sweater Weather posted above.

The popularization of this kind of rhythmic variation is becoming increasingly common, which has modern roots in electronic music. Sub genres like dubstep and trap (which are offshoots of drum & bass and hip hop, respectively) have especially propagated this rhythmic trend. I’m happy to see it become more common in genres outside of hip hop and electronic.

Classixx – Holding On

I recently discovered an American group from Los Angeles called Classixx, who have become notable remixers working for artists like Lana Del Ray and Madonna among many others. Their sound is mostly French-sounding heavily filtered retro house music, occasionally accompanied by female vocalists. They have a wonderfully warm sound that sounds like it’s from another era, much like the most recent Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. Their debut album, titled Hanging Gardens, was just released this year. It’s very good – I’d say one of the top 20 albums I’ve heard in 2013.

They have an official video for another song of theirs featuring Nancy Whang which is a good video, but not a song that I like as much as Holding On. You can check that out here: Classixx – All You’re Waiting For on Youtube.