Summer Indie Series 2023

Hi Crime is a Seattle-based indie-pop group that began as a recording project between songwriters Brielle Rutledge and Mitch Etter. The duo met in the summer of 2015 and quickly began work on what would become their first release. The Foreign Hours EP was written, recorded, and mixed entirely in the duo's bedrooms over the fall months while Rutledge finished college, commuting back every few weeks to record. The EP earned attention from KEXP, and other NW media outlets, inspiring the duo to expand to a four-piece and begin performing live. The expanded lineup provided a burst of new energy, propelling the band into work for their debut full-length album, The Kids Still Got It, released on June 29, 2018. Since the album release, Hi Crime has been performing new music and growing its audience with regular live shows across the Pacific Northwest, in addition to occasional touring. Three singles have been released since the LP, “Waves” in July 2019, '“World’s Fair” in October 2020, and ‘Rainy Days & Crooked Sheets” in March 2021. The band’s second LP is currently in production and is slated for release in spring 2023.

Brielle Rutledge - Vocals, Guitar, Keys
Mitch Etter - Guitar, Vocals
Cody McCann - Drums
André Zapata - Bass

Sometimes a single punctuation mark can send chills down your spine--the entire tone of a text from a partner riding on a single dot. On her latest album as MAITA, Maria Maita-Keppeler digs into that crippling oxymoron of modernity, the constant bombardment of communication paired with utter disconnection. Due February 18th via venerable indie label Kill Rock Stars, I Just Want To Be Wild For You grasps passionately for a world that too often seems at a gauzy distance.

“There’s frustration and desperation simmering underneath those moments of disconnect,” Maita-Keppeler explains. And from the dreamy opener “Loneliness”, it’s clear that she’s not going to drift into apathy, instead seeking out the ghost-like shadow of loneliness itself. “I missed that rapport that I had with my loneliness, with myself, that intensity that exists when you're alone,” she adds.

Growing up in Oregon splitting time between her mom’s Japanese-speaking home and her father’s English-speaking home, Maita-Keppeler found an expressive avenue out of her shyness through music. “I was getting so much out of songwriters like Elliott Smith, Feist, and Cat Power at a point when I really needed them,” she says. That fiery devotion brought her to perform at open mics in college, to connect with other people through art.

Along with guitarist/producer Matthew Zeltzer, bassist Nevada Sowle, and multi-instrumentalist Cooper Trail, the Portland-based singer-songwriter tapped into that intimate longing, recording I Just Want To Be Wild For You in a recording studio located in the basement of a church. When it came time to record piano, the group set up microphones in the midst of the sanctuary, the sound of the grand piano matched only by the raindrops dotting the 40-foot ceilings.

After the critical success of MAITA’s Kill Rock Stars debut, Best Wishes, Maita-Keppeler, and her bandmates dedicated their time to reinforcing their already heady compositions, adding a deeper echo of the label’s indie rock legacy. From the churning glow of “Pastel Concrete” to the riotous give-and-take of “Honey, Have I Lost It All?”, I Just Want To Be Wild For You frames the complex emotionality of Maita-Keppeler’s lyrics in visceral songs that sink immediately into the heart. By picking apart the smallest moments of confusion, uncertainty, and disconnection, Maita-Keppeler’s songs discover the heights of emotion.

“I write songs by listening and watching, trying to get to the truth of it all,” she says. The catharsis produced in that process comes naturally and conveys to the listener just as easily as it does to Maita-Keppeler. In those moments of disconnect, confusion, of isolation, I Just Want To Be Wild For You thunders ahead, forging unexpected connections along the way.

"From her facial expressions to her movement across the stage, it was like a lightning bolt ran through her. Robins’s vocals had a new hard-hitting bite, reminiscent of Kathleen Hanna, and the band sounded polished"- THE STRANGER

BIO:

Led by singer/bassist Mary Robins, Biblioteka blends grunge, punk, and garage to create hooky punk and upbeat rock. Boisterous shows and high-energy performances have become the band’s trademark.

Band Members

Mary Robins - Vocals, Bass
Hexx - Guitar
Jules - Drums

Datura is a post-punk/goth rock band from Wenatchee, WA.

Jim Basnight started recording solo with the Moberlys in the late 70s and led a pre-grunge original rock and roll scene in his native Seattle, before relocating to NYC in 1980. He’s been working live and releasing records ever since.

Armed in NY with his first album "The Moberlys" (on Seattle's Safety First Label), he received critical acclaim in NY from among others Trouser Press, New York Rocker, and Rolling Stone Record Guide. He reformed the Moberlys and worked with various east coast musicians and producers before returning to Seattle in 1984 where he found a more fertile ground to carve out a rock and roll living.

In 1985 Basnight moved to LA, CA with a third version of the Moberlys on the heels of his second album "Sexteen" on the Lolita label (France). In LA the Moberlys recorded with REM's Peter Buck for EMI-America Records and several other noted producers.

Not securing an album release with EMI, led to the band separating in 1989. Jim took his reels of Moberly's tapes and continued to record in LA, leading to "Pop Top" (on his own Precedent label), his 3rd album release (first on CD) in 1993, after again returning to Seattle in 1992.

There he worked live with the Rockinghams in the NW, as well as solo. Basnight co-composed "Little Rock," a regionally successful musical, with productions in various US markets in 1994-96. Also in '96 Jim released "Sixteen," a CD album with the Bear Family (Germany) Records label of early Moberly's material.

That album was followed by the solo CD album "The Jim Basnight Thing" (1997 on Precedent), a Rockingham CD album "Makin' Bacon" (1999 on Not Lame), "Seattle-NY-LA" (2001) a CD album compilation of latter-day Moberlys tracks on the Pop the Balloon label (France) and the solo "Recovery Room" (2004) on Precedent.

After the Rockinghams split in 1999, Jim turned the Jim Basnight Band into a full-time working pursuit, constantly traveling in the NW region (up to the present at the rate of 200 dates per year in WA, OR, ID, MT, WY, UT, and CA), while issuing CD compilations of past material in Italy (Rave Up Records 2006), Japan (Wizzard-In-Vinyl 2006) and the USA (Disclosed Records 2008).

After working as a sports website journalist with the Seattle Times, Yahoo, and ESPN from 2005-11 to support a new family while still gigging the region, Basnight became a managing partner in a research project on blues icon "Sonny Boy Williamson" (Alex Miller).

Jim released the CD album "Introducing Jim Basnight" in 2012 on Precedent and continued his "Sonny Boy" research and shows. In 2019 Basnight released "Not Changing," which received a strong response from indie radio, specialty shows, and widely heard podcasts, as well as notable reviews from around the globe.

Jim's new release is "Jokers, Idols and Misfits" on Precedent (November 2020 CD) and on Dangerhouse Skylab August 2021 LP) and has expanded on the momentum of "Not Changing." Since the release of “Jokers, Idols, and Misfits,” Basnight has released (for the download and streaming markets) only “Seattle-NY-LA” (April 2021) and “Makin’ Bacon” (August 2021), both brand new to online platforms.

Jim has appeared with acts such as the Ramones, the Police, the Romantics, the Band, and Billy Idol and has shared stages with original members of Blondie, Guns and Roses, Heart, New York Dolls, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Janes Addiction, REM, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam.

In late 2020 Jim placed all 138 of his published compositions and co-written songs with Wixen Music in LA, CA. As of early 2021, Basnight is represented by the European 4W1 Agency. Jim’s biography of Miller is scheduled to be published in early 2022.

Sean Peabody bio:

A veteran of the music industry and always at home on the stage, Sean Peabody (33) is a bassist, drummer, guitarist, and vocalist, who always promises to bring forth a show. Growing up in the American South, he turned his love of American music into a career with the US Marine and Army Bands, session work in Nashville/ Muscle Shoals, constant touring, and residencies in many bands. Having had the professionalism of the military bands along with the experiences of working with Southern Greats such as Travis Posey, Duane Betts, Dave Anderson, Shenandoah, Darryl Worley, Billy Lawson, Michael Curtis, and countless others, Sean makes it a mission to always bring the exact right note at the right time and to make the performance special in the Jim Basnight Band, where he regularly and fluidly switches roles.

Nick Delffs grew up in Mendocino County, a lawless stretch of coastline that’s hard to get to and, for many, hard to escape. Nick did — emerging in the early aughts as the frontman for Portland band The Shaky Hands, whose sharp, jittery rock was anchored by Nick’s quavering vocals and questing lyrics. The Shaky Hands were mainstays of Portland on the verge of a major shift, and they rode that shift a while, signing to Kill Rock Stars and touring internationally with some of the bigger names in indie rock. But a hiatus in 2011 became indefinite and Nick Delffs was once again cast into the world: working as a sideman, releasing solo records, doing manual labor, going deeper into his spiritual practices, and, crucially, becoming a father.

Becoming a parent can affect different artists in different ways. Nick rode that change with surpassing grace and maturity. 2017’s Redesign, his first full-length under his own name, reflected the transition. In “Song for Aja”, Nick touched on other concerns familiar to those who follow his work: love of the natural world; longing for spiritual and physical connection; the desire to suffer with meaning and exult with abandon, to embrace somehow the world in its maddening contradictions and find the unity at the core.

Childhood Pastimes, his second release on Mama Bird Recording Co., is both more focused and, despite being technically an EP, more ambitious. It’s a four-song cycle — one song with many movements or four songs that bleed into one another, depending on how you hear it — that can be viewed either as a personal journey or an archetypal passage of a human being through four discrete stages: roughly, the movement from childhood innocence into adolescent adventure (The Escape); the sudden immersion into a life of discovery and excitement (The Dream); the first experience of romantic love, followed by the onset of heartbreak, dissolution, breakdown of self (The Affair); the emergence into a new way of thinking, a fresh perspective that encompasses all the suffering and joy into a balanced whole (The Outside).

Nick plays nearly all of the instruments here and the result is a unified aesthetic, born ultimately of his deep-seated love of rhythm: the thrum and throb of the acoustic guitars, the percussive melodic bang of the elegantly-crafted piano lines, and always, always the insistent, driving drums, propelling the record, and the listener, on this journey as the four tracks bleed into one another, one body, one blood, one beating heart. The concept of four songs that are really one suite of music requires a sure hand, and Nick’s never shakes: the way the songs blend together while retaining their distinctiveness — from the poppy exaltation of “The Escape” to the cold intensity, almost like an acoustic Kraftwerk, of “The Affair” — shows a songwriter and musician who has fully grown into his powers.

Those who have followed Nick’s career may see this as a culmination of years and years of honing and fine-tuning his bountiful gifts, and wonder with delight what might come next. For those who haven’t listened to Nick before, Childhood Pastimes is the perfect entry point, a distillation of what’s come before and the promise of a new beginning.

Phlox is the nature-inspired imaginings of songwriter Katherine Easterling. Born and raised in the dense and biodiverse forests of North Florida, Katherine has planted new roots in the high desert shrub-steppe of the Pacific Northwest.

Weaving tales of her own life into metaphorical imagery through the lens of observations of the natural world, Phlox sounds like deep, moody swells and fleeting, pounding distortion with feathery, bright melodies on top. Dream pop at its grungiest.

Bella Dagdagan is a Yakima native whose passion for playing music across the PNW for as long as they remember. They've incorporated it into their repertoire with roots in bluegrass fiddling, folk music, or anything with strings.

Recently, Bella has been focusing on writing original music for an EP dropping in the near future. They also opened for Margo Cilker earlier this year. Their music draws from many genres including, Indie, Folk, and Rock. Bella hopes that they can move you in some capacity.

LA FONDA IS AN INDIE ROCK BAND FROM SEATTLE FRONTED BY FILIPINO-AMERICAN SISTERS, VALERIE AND VERONICA TOPACIO.

Centering their songwriting around the themes of sisterhood, navigating the chaos of adulthood, and finding their footing in the world, the Topacio sisters — along with guitarist Jesse Cole, bassist Bryan Dever, and drummer Jacob Whinihan — create sonically atmospheric, indie-inspired tracks falling somewhere between dream pop and alternative rock.

The group released their debut album, “New Self, Old Ways,” in early 2021 and has opened for a myriad of major bands in Seattle such as Snail Mail, Joseph, and Alvvays, along with playing fan-winning performances at festivals such as Capitol Hill Block Party, Fisherman’s Village, and a live DJ set at Day In Day Out.

In 2019, the Topacio sisters founded Belltown Bloom, a femme and LGBTQ+-based music festival in Seattle that has hosted indie favorites like Crumb, Wet, Widowspeak, Penelope Scott, and more.

Over the course of the pandemic, La Fonda spent months in the studio working with producer Mike Davis (Great Grandpa, Pool Kids, Lo Moon), gearing up to release their second studio album, due spring 2023.

Indie musician and singer-songwriter Caitlin Jemma speaks for the multitudes on her celestial new disco-folk album, True Meaning, out September 17th on American Standard Time Records. Conjuring the soulfulness of Norah Jones, the melancholy of Joni Mitchell, and the lyric-bending bewitchment of Bonnie Raitt, Jemma takes listeners on an atmospheric journey from heartbreak to hope throughout the ten dynamic tracks which make up True Meaning—a vulnerable-yet-spirited release exploring the full emotional spectrum of being human, while posing an age-old philosophical question: “What is the true meaning of life?”

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Inspired by long, solitary drives on desert highways and then recorded in Portland, OR, with an all-star band, True Meaning is an album of depth, nuance, catharsis, playfulness, and resilience—all things the world needs now.

Small Paul is a PNW supergroup consisting of members of Moondoggies, Chris King & The Gutterballs, and All Star Opera.

Sunflower South is Duffstuff Records’ premier inspiring female vocal group. Their sound appeals to a wide range of music lovers. The lead singer of the trio; Shanna Wylie; was discovered by Superstar; Whitney Houston at the age of 15; then exclusively signed to Whitney Houston’s Management company (Nippy entertainment).

Since then; she has been given the opportunity to work with great producers as Babyface and L.A. Reid, Michael Narada Walden and more. Her talents landed her a solo record on the “Waiting to exhale”(starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett) multi-platinum major motion picture soundtrack. Now her musical trio; Sunflower South mixes the style of natural acoustic soul with inspiring lyrics and easy listening grooves. Watch for their debut single; “Hold me up”, which will be released in spring of 2023.

Amanda Simmons is a singer and multi-instrumentalist from the Yakima Valley. She plays the guitar, keys, violin, and ukulele., covering a variety of songs from rock to indie, oldies, to radio hits. Amanda was the 2022 Yakima's Got Talent Winner and also won best vocalist at 2022's Apple Jam. Recently she filled in as the frontperson for the Yakima-based band Pastel Motel while opening for Detroit Cobras.