Artemis Thomas-Hansard

Mars and the Massacre is one of three finalists in L.A. Weekly's Best Live Band contest. (Profiles of the other two finalists will be coming in the next two weeks, with a winner to be chosen by our panel of experts.) They have also "traveled from Mars to fuck your ear drums,"......

Before Joo-Joo Ashworth (vocals, guitar) and Jeff Fribourg (omnichord) had written a real song, they had a fake band called Froth, and were making a fake record - a blank one that would spin for 20 minutes without making a sound. In 2011, Froth was more of a concept, a......

Did you know that KROQ broke Katy Perry? When the pioneering L.A. rock station first played her in May 2008, Perry was a little-known Santa Barbara performer who previously had sung Christian music and gone by her given name, Katy Hudson. The song, "I Kissed a Girl," about drunken sexual......

When Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker met outside downtown DIY haven The Smell, they were both pissed off.  The girls were both frustrated about the lack of female presence in the music scene; they also felt artistically oppressed and not valued as musicians. "It's like people expect that girls are......

Waiting outside the  Church on York , owner Graeme Flegenheimer is approached by a parent dropping his kids of to see indie dream-pop outfit Tashaki Miyaki at the Highland Park venue. "What's the deal with this place?" he wonders. Considering his offspring are going to a rock concert at a hundred year old church, it's a......

Tashaki Miyaki, Joel Jerome, Cherry Glazerr, L.A. Witch, GlobelampThe Church on York 4-4-2014 Basking in a mellow, rosy glow, the Church on York space brimmed was a hazy dream on Friday night. They might not have sermons there anymore, but it's still a place of reverence. Globelamp, a.k.a Elizabeth Lefey,......

KXLU Fest No Age, The Audacity, So Many Wizards, GRMLN, Monster Rally Loyola Marymount University 3/30/2014 Sunday was the first annual KXLU Fest, held at the station's home base, Loyola Marymount University. Since 1957 the station - located at 88.9 FM - has brought independent radio to Los Angeles; praised......

There's no doubt the meaning of "independent" has transformed since bands like the Velvet Underground began recording demo cassettes in their loft apartment in the 1960s, or when Black Flag built their own label to release music no one else would. Indie rock was an ethos, a movement with roots......

For the last four months, Dani Buncher has been living on Scott Simons' couch in West Hollywood. They live with their dog, Maya, who they love like a child. They also make up the indie-pop duo TeamMate and are fresh off of touring with the likes of OneRepublic and Skylar......

Quick, where's the nexus of the Westside DIY music scene? New Roads High School seniors Jai Chebaia, Ruben Radlauer and Robert Tilden couldn't answer that question either, which is why they started Lost Dog, a label and collective birthed largely out of admiration for the downtown venue The Smell. When they're not in......