Oakland foursome the Splinters were #1 on KSPC for the second week in a row!

1.    The Splinters    Kick    Double Negative
2.    Grasscut    1 Inch/ 1/2 Mile    Ninjatune
3.    Candy Claws    Hidden Lands    twosyllable
4.    Vanish Valley    Vanish Valley    Hard Bark
5.    Frontier Ruckus    Deadmalls and Nightfalls    Ramseur
6.    Cotton Jones    Tall Hours in the Glowstream    Suicide Squeeze
7.    Wavves    King of the Beach    Fat Possum
8.    So Many Wizards    So Many Wizards EP    Self-released
9.    Halloween Swim Team    Antennaaa.i    How To Be a Microwave
10.    Ostrich Eyes    Ostrich Eyes EP    Self-released
11.    Various Artists    Palenque Palenque!     Soundway
12.    Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti    Before Today    4AD
13.    Jaill    That’s How We Burn    Subpop
14.    The Wild Reeds    The Wild Reeds    Self-released
15.    Moonhearts    Moonhearts    Tic Tac Totally
16.    And Vice Versa / Magical Mistakes    Going Nowhere    Something America
17.    Baths    Cerulean    Anticon
18.    Social Studies    Wind Up Wooden Heart    Antenna Farm
19.    Bare Wires    Seeking Love    Castle Face
20.    The Books    The Way Out    Temporary Residence Ltd
21.    Matthew Dear    Black City    Ghostly
22.    Karen Elson    The Ghost Who Walks    XL
23.    Various Artists    Cloud Cuckooland    Finders Keepers / B-Music
24.    Lower Dens    Twin Hand Movements    Gnomonsong
25.    Lille    Tall Shoulders    Whale Heart
26.    Fol Chen    Part 2: The New December    Asthmatic Kitty
27.    Summer Vacation    Angry at the World    Self-released
28.    Health    DISCO2    Lovepump United
29.    School of Seven Bells    Disconnect from Desire    Ghostly International / Vagrant
30.    Vehicle Blues    Vehicle Blues EP    Bridgetown

Baths is the moniker of outer-LA native Will Wiesenfeld. At all of 21 years, Wiesenfeld has made his name as a producer, musician and remix master on the LA scene. That may be over-stating it just a little bit, but what he’s doing is certainly impressive. Even more impressive is Cerulean, his first album under the name Baths out on Anticon Records now.

Cerulean is lush electro-pop, dense or floating in all the right places, sometimes all at once. It is wonderfully conceived and spans several genres and scenes, from the cosmic glitch-hop of Flying Lotus, to the ambient to the  straight-forward electronic pop of Passion Pit’s Chunk of Change. The record flows and is a joy to listen to from beginning to end. I feel like I’m writing his mid-semester high school report or grading a paper, but if Cerulean was a final essay, and I was Wiesenfeld’s teacher, it would be the one I’d keep to show new students how to do it right.

Lower Dens - Twin Hand Movements
Somehow freak folk singer-songwriter Jana Hunter has put out an album with her new band on Gnomonsong, Andy Cabic (of Vetiver) and Devendra Banhart’s new label, and come up with something pretty unexpected: drone pop that combines shoegaze and post-punk. The Baltimore band also eschews the Technicolor, sugar rushed bliss of Wham City contemporaries like Dan Deacon or Ponytail in favor of a more subtle, dreamy kind of pleasure. The nocturnal music of Lower Dens sounds most like Yo La Tengo’s And Then Everything Turns Itself Inside Out or a Joy Division wrapped in a warm blanket.

Jana Hunter’s almost whispered vocals nicely accompany the nocturnal atmosphere of Twin Hand Movements. The album’s strength is in its subtlety – every track builds slowly but never reaches an epic guitar solo or repetitive chorus, and neither do they become a twenty minute post-rock marathon. Despite the music’s slow building, the band wraps most tracks up in just three minutes. Lower Dens’ understated pop leaves the listener just unsatiated enough to listen again.

So when driving on a warm, California summer night, I suggest grooving to the layered guitars of “Tea Lights,” or the tender churn of “I Get Nervous.”