BrandsForBands

The music of Sean Ou Tim, aka Mr Sakitumi, takes its cue from the likes of Ninja Tune, DJ Krush, Bonobo, RJD2 and DJ Shadow, featuring live sampling, fx, turntable scratching and upright electric bass and bass guitar. Sakitumi's shows are fun and full of passionate performance, making him a great entertainer for audiences., which have included Oprah Winfrey, Nelson Mandela and Miriam Makebe. Other appearances include festivals such as Pukkelpop (Belgium), Lowlands (Netherlands), Face Fest (Finland), Oppikoppi (South Africa), Ramfest (South Africa), Sakifo (Reunion), and Popkomm (Germany), as well as venues like the Havana Club and the Capitol Theatre in Pretoria.

MT WARNING is an alternative rock band from Northern New South Wales, Australia. It is produced by filmmaker Taylor Steele. The name for the band comes via their home town Mount Warning, which is the first place to see the sunrise in Australia.

Music Band seeped out of a broken sewage line in an upstate New York domitory, and somehow it's Nashville's problem now. Brothers-in-dirt Harry Kagan (guitar), Duncan Shea (bass), and Lee Putney (drums) have been both room- and bandmates for over three years, and a single experience of seeing them on stage makes it clear that they just can't get rid of each other. Music Band's demeanor in everything they do shouts their apparent mantra: "Always be nice, always try to look cool in pictures, and and rock and roll forever."

These boys seem to have it all - save, perhaps, access to Heaven - and they want to give it to everyone: yelling, softness, debauchery, tall trees, three-part harmonies, dirt-thunder, trill beats, backbeats, big hearts, nice teeth, thug moves, sensitivity, positivity, gravity, big ole styrofoam cups, boxed wine, shadow-doubles, power crystals, sacred talismans, and straight-up love, to name a few. They are always laughing. Music Band wakes up laughing every day. Has that happened to you? It's the best.

My Double, My Brother is an alternative indie band based out of Long Beach, California. After meeting in college and playing together in their school's music conservatory, the band started rehearsing at an old church in Whittier. They soon moved into a house in Fullerton to record their debut album What We Found Beneath the Ground and self-released the record in March 2011. After a warm reception, many gigs—including an opening slot for mewithoutYou—and a successful Kickstarter campaign, My Double, My Brother released Infinite Line EP and started recording their follow-up LP with producer Jon O’Brien in Orange County at the Music Box.

The band released their sophomore LP Shelves in February 2015.

Hailing from New York and generating buzz worldwide, Najee The 1 holds the ticket to hip hop music and cultural rejuvenation. Recently featured by The New York Times, Najee is thriving in "the golden era of the independent artist." Najee got his start as a spoken word artist on HBO?s Def Poetry Jam. Since his televised debut, Najee is making his mark in the music scene with vivid storytelling, prolific writing, and a unique vocal tambour. Lighting up rooms with charisma and blowing up speakers with lyrical attitude, Najee generates contagious momentum with fans, listeners, and collaborators. Najee has worked with top producers in the game like Ski Beatz, self-released music, and appeared on a number of blogs, media and press outlets. In addition to perfecting his craft, Najee gives back to his community by teaching creative writing classes at an after-school program in New York City.

In 2005 Nate Dias co-wrote a song which was placed in a documentary called ‘Modify’. Soon after, Nate began creating music for some of the leading action sports companies such as Alpinestars, Fox and Reef just to name a few. His music has been featured on world renowned websites such as Surfline.com, Grind TV and Magicseaweed.com. Nate’s music is also highlighted in both surf movies, ‘Innersection’ and ‘Innersection 2’, which were produced by the legendary Taylor Steele. In 2013 and 2014, Hilton Hotels hired him to compose music for their promotional videos for their website. Nate’s ever expanding music collection has formed him into a very unique musician. His broad knowledge of music makes him a versatile composer and producer who is capable of blending several genres together, resulting in a visceral and unique listening experience.

Native America is a rock & roll band from New Orleans, Louisiana. The three-piece, comprised of Ross Farbe (guitar/vocals), Ray Micarelli (drums) and John St. Cyr (bass/vocals), evolved from Farbe’s dorm room recording project to deliver their first studio LP, Grown Up Wrong, via Inflated Records in late 2014. After releasing Dancing About Architecture with Park The Van Records, self-recording last summer’s Bad Weed / But Still Weed EP and touring heavily over the past few years, Grown Up Wrong finds them in peak form. Recorded with engineer Chris George at NOLA’s the Living Room, the album is a triumphant leap forward for Native America, infusing this young band's gift for easygoing songwriting with textured production that provides the record with simplistic nuances and gorgeous tape warmth.

Needle Points is a psych-boogie outfit from Philadelphia formed in 2013.  Their music, largely influenced by sixties and seventies vibes, is what punk music would have been if Keith Richards invented it.

Needle Points’ first release Bom Tugangu (2013), intended as a collection of 4-track basement demos to book shows with, was met with acclaim locally and even internationally.  The album, along with their raucous, face-painted, animal suited, hair-for-days live shows, led them to a record deal with indie label PaperCup Music in 2014.  With the label, they released a 7-inch for “Cripple Street” a song that has since been picked up for use by Converse for showroom play.

            In the fall of 2014, Needle Points worked with Dr. Dog frontman Scott McMicken on their upcoming release Feel Young.  McMicken produced the album and lent his talents as a second guitar player and keyboardist to several tracks.  The band decided to leave PaperCup earlier this year and form their own label NeedLove Records on which they’ll release Feel Young. 

            Needle Points, a band of artists, have also worked hard to develop a marketable aesthetic.  Everything they have done and worn since their formation in 2013 has been meticulously curated.  Their psychedelic taste and party vibe has helped them develop a loyal social media following, notably in their more than 12,000 Instagram followers. The band members have also always designed and created their own merchandise.  Their talents were recently validated when Philadelphia based clothier Free People purchased one of their t-shirt designs.  The company will be releasing their Needle Points shirt in department stores and boutiques nationwide this summer.  Free People also cited Needle Points as their “favorite band” in a 2015 blog post, and used their track “Needlove (City Walls)” in a YouTube commercial featuring model Alena Blohm.  Other brands such as Billabong and Marc Jacobs have also featured Needle Points songs in their work. 

Needle Points have toured the east coast twice, including shows at Delaware’s Firefly Music Festival and Georgia’s Savannah Stopover Festival.  They have supported bands such as Temples, Dead Meadow, Fat White Family, Sun Club, Spank Rock, CRUISR, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and many more.  They will be joining Spaceface, fronted by the guitarist of the Flaming Lips, on a leg of their tour this July and will be joining indie rock favorites mewithoutYou for a month-long, national tour this October to support their upcoming release.

It’s like this: New Beat Fund is more than just a band.

Yeah, the four sun-bleached, good time boys from LA with the colorful hair and the funky clothes play music, travel the country, have a new album called Sponge Fingerz, and are best friends and brothers as well (half of them by blood), but this thing they ride with is way deeper than any of that. It’s who they are, what they think, how they dress; it’s where they come from, and how they live their lives. And, even if you didn’t already know it, New Beat Fund is who you are, and how you live your life, too. But we’ll get to that part.

New Beat Fund birthed when a piggy bank with the words "New Beat Fund" encrypted on it was catapulted into the facade of a corporate building. No joke. Jeff Laliberte, his brother Paul, Shelby and Michael have been at it for a couple years now, releasing an EP Coinz, and touring with the likes of blink-182 and 3OH!3, but they go way deeper than that. They trust each other on a supreme level, and even though their business is that of getting you hyped up, helping you chill, setting the mood to lay back with your girl or guy, or just letting you be you, they take that business seriously. “That’s the whole point and the reason that we’re in this,” says Paul, “to grow with a culture. And to also influence that culture rather than just hit at a surface level.”

“When people meet us, they say, ‘You guys are weird, but it’s fun!’” says Michael. “We want people to be cool with being weird, and thinking about things differently. The name of our record is Sponge Fingerz. What the fuck is that? It’s what we are as a band, there’s no definition—we’re able to be free. We wrote the record in Topanga Canyon—the freest place ever—we live in Southern California…that’s the whole vibe of our band. Just being weird and free.”

That freedom is the first thing you notice when listening to Sponge Fingerz, which was co-produced by Matt Wallace (Faith No More, Maroon 5) at LA’s legendary Sound City Studios and mixed by Tony Hoffer (Foster the People, Beck.) The band finds inspiration across the musical spectrum, shoving it all in a blender to cook up a colorful mash-up they call “G-Punk.” The vibe jumps from track to track—sometimes within the same song, or even the same verse—covering all the band’s favorite bases, like if you drew a huge baseball diamond over SoCal and swung for the fences. First base might be the surf-rock and dub-heavy vibes of the coastline, while rounding second brings up the hip-hop beats of South Central. Sprint over to third and pick up on the arty, indie hip and punk stuff from the city’s downtown heart. Finally, slide headfirst into the garage pop and heartfelt jams of Ventura County and the Valley, the band’s true home.

“It’s not just punk rock, or indie, or weird ass psychedelic art. We were all exposed to different things growing up, so we didn’t choose to only go in one direction,” says Shelby.

“We don’t claim any certain scene,” adds Michael, “and that’s kind of what we represent as a band, especially for kids who are figuring out who they are and where they fit in this weird ass world. We can hang with all of it and show people that’s OK to do. Let’s play how we play as individual musicians, and let’s write about our lives and go in that direction and not think about it too much. And this is what came out.”

The album blasts off with “Any Day,” a funky breakup anthem about finding your footing. The song itself was an early demo that was cast aside, but finally found its own groove at the last minute during pre-production when the band bought some dancehall albums for 50 cents at a nearby head shop. “The dancehall groove just laid the song out in front of us,” says Jeff. “It’s about when you’re right at that post-breakup thick of it, that moment where you look back and you finally see what it is. That switch when you’re done, you’re not lingering.”

In contrast, “It’s Cool” came together quickly. The song’s creation serves as a blueprint for how the band works best. “At the time, we were in a bedroom so we didn’t have the opportunity to jam it out, and we were fucking around with sampling and just had this mood and started writing to it,” says Jeff. “We all usually come together and build tracks like that. We start pretty simple, lyrics or melodies or beat, and we all color in the picture. If you had a sketch or a pencil drawing, we all come in with colors or additives and finish the painting, and then there’s the song.”

“Sikka Taking the Hard Way” shines, too, with its with its funky dub breakdown and noodling electric guitars, and its celebration of overcoming whatever obstacles life can throw at you: “I tell myself that it’s alright/it’s OK/there’s no way/I’m stumbling back now/I’ll figure it out.”

Then there’s “Halloween Birthdaze,” with its Red Hot Chili Peppers-worthy chorus, and the catchy, stoner shrugs of “Friends in High Places,” which showcases the band’s love of hip-hop. “It paints a picture of someone who is less fortunate but has the support system that they can find happiness in,” says Paul, before his brother finishes his thought: “When you got nothing but you have everything.”

Jeff sums it up like this: “We want everyone to be into our music. The word ‘pretentious’ is the worst fucking word I have ever heard. We want people to feel at home when they come to our shows, like they can do whatever they want at a New Beat Fund show. We want to be an unpretentious band that makes people feel honest emotions. Come to our show and join an experience and let you just be you. Have a good time and relate to our music.”

Yeah, it’s like that.

New Candys formed in Venice, Italy in 2008 with Fernando Nuti on vocals, guitar and sitar, Diego Menegaldo on guitar and vocals, Stefano Bidoggia on bass and Dario Lucchesi on drums. The band has been influenced by 60's Psychedelic Rock, especially The Velvet Underground and Syd Barrett, as well as contemporary artists like Brian Jonestown Massacre, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (BRMC), Black Angels, etc. In August 2010 they released their first self-produced/self-titled EP and in 2012 their debut album ‘Stars Reach The Abyss’ on Foolica, a UK tour followed that year. In early 2015 the song “Meltdown Corp.” was featured in ‘The Reverb Conspiracy 3’ compilation that every year brings together the best emerging bands of the underground psych scene from all over Europe, out on Fuzz Club and Reverberation Appreciation Society (Austin Psych Fest/Levitation). In March 2015 they released a second album ‘New Candys As Medicine’ on Picture In My Ear and Fuzz Club. The album was mixed by John Wills, producer and drummer of Loop. The album has received praises from Simone Marie Butler of Primal Scream and Stephen Lawrie of The Telescopes. A European/UK tour followed, including a show at the sold out Secret Garden Party festival in UK together with Temples, Toy, Jungle, etc. They’ve also shared the stage with Crystal Stilts, Slowdive, Dead Skeletons, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The KVB. They will tour Europe/UK again in 2016.