BUZZ BANDS
Another South Bay story
A year ago, dios singer Joel Morales, 28, was in the audience at Coachella, picturing his small-time Hawthorne band playing a minor-league tent somewhere on the festival grounds. This year, he lived his dream, as dios -- it’s spelled without a capital letter -- opened the event with a luminescent set of Beach Boys-influenced folk-pop on the festival’s second-biggest stage. Backstage a few hours after the set, Morales and his guitarist brother Kevin, 20, aren’t fazed by their rapid ascent.
“It’s all still really new to us,” says Kevin, and he’s not kidding. Just two years ago the brothers’ band was playing backyard barbecues and trying out their sentimental retro-pop to unresponsive audiences at punk-rock clubs. But things have changed -- in the last month alone, they’ve opened for Morrissey, toured Europe with the Shins and released their debut album, “dios.”
They might be indebted to the musical legacy of their small town. “We didn’t understand the importance of the Beach Boys and where they were really from until after high school,” Joel says of Hawthorne’s favorite sons. “A band like that can come out of nowhere -- not only nowhere, but the town where we’re from. [They proved] you can do whatever you want.”
L.A. band, Italy muse
Devics plays torch songs with the burners on low. The L.A. trio, anchored by vocalist Sara Lov and multi-instrumentalist Dustin O’Halloran, recorded most of last year’s “The Stars at Saint Andrea” album in the northern Italian village of that name, which they visited while touring Europe. “We thought maybe we were young enough to try living somewhere else,” Lov says. “The idea was just to write there, but everything [recorded in their makeshift studio] ended up sounding really cool.”
Devics’ transfixing yet cathartic pop earned plaudits from various European press and, in Lov’s case, comparisons to Portishead singer Beth Gibbons. The group has a headlining date Saturday at Spaceland -- but still no U.S. release for “Saint Andrea,” which came out on a British independent label. Meanwhile, the album’s charming namesake beckons. “We’re going back in June,” Lov says, “to start writing again.”
Fast forward
Splendid bill tonight at Spaceland: Actionslacks will celebrate the release of its fourth album, the sprawling indie gem “Full Upright Position,” and VAST brings its signature atmospheric rock.... The Real Tuesday Weld -- the nom de pop of Stephen Coates -- plays two shows Tuesday night at the Hotel Cafe.... The Shocker, the new band featuring Jennifer Finch of L7, has a Tuesday residency this month at El Cid in Silver Lake.... And the Rosenbergs, the Big Apple power-poppers who’ve impressed on previous visits to L.A., play a free show Monday at the Knitting Factory in support of their new album “Department Store Girl.”
