selects! selects! selects!!!

We could not possibly be more excited about our two newest Selects acts! From Brooklyn, NY (by way of Boston, MA), Hooray for Earth and from sunny Los Angeles, Best Coast. Both bands do what we love best: put their own singular spin on irresistible pop hooks, spanning pop history, condensing it, and turning it back out, all inside of 3 minutes.

With their fondness for thrift store synths and low-throated vocals, Hooray for Earth at times recall classic Magnetic Fields. Noel Heroux is a songwriting genius, and their Momo EP moves from one peak to the next. In conversations leading up to the release of the album I was trying to persuade Noel to change the order of the songs. He resisted, insisting that the EP was specifically structured to ‘progress like a movie.’ And, as usual, I was wrong: the album does have a very deliberate flow, gliding from the steady buzz of “Surrounded By Your Friends” to the full-on “Needle in the Camel’s Eye” freakout of “Form.” You can read more about Hooray for Earth in our interview here, or watch the video for “Surrounded By Your Friends” here:

“Surrounded By Your Friends” by Hooray For Earth from Mathematical Park on Vimeo.

Just a note: “Surrounded” is the free track, but my money is on “Get Home,” which is probably going to end up on my top songs of the year list.

And speaking of “top songs of the year”: Best Coast is primarily the project of Bethany Cosentino, formerly of Pocahaunted. And I have to give a special shout-out to flamgirlant here: you were saying how much you loved Blackblack the other day? Flamgirlant, Best Coast is a band for you.

In truth, they’re a band for everyone. Cosentino boils the whole of pop history — Motown, girl group songs, 60s pop, lo-fi and punk rock — down to its barest elements, retaining the choruses but pairing them with fantastically fuzzed-out instrumentation. I have been playing this EP — particularly the dizzying “Over the Ocean,” constantly. To hear the songs a single time is to remember them, so sharp is Cosentino’s ear for melody. You can read more about Best Coast in our Q&A here.

We’ve got a second component to this round of Selects that we’ll be posting here on 17 Dots the week of 12/14. For now, though, meet the two newest members of the Selects family — we think you’ll love them as much as we do.