BrandsForBands

After forming Wampire, Rocky Tinder and Eric Phipps steadily began to make a name for themselves in the same Portland, OR, scene that has produced labelmates STRFKR as well as Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

It makes sense, then, that Wampire came to Polyvinyl's attention when the duo opened for STRFKR at a hometown Portland show and that UMO's bassist Jacob Portrait produced Wampire's debut full-length, Curiosity.

The choice of Portrait was a natural one, with both Tinder and Phipps believing he'd be able to contribute almost as much to the record as they would.

And so, in mid-August Tinder and Phipps each brought fragments of song ideas into the studio, before deconstructing, re-arranging, and fitting them back together piece by piece -- at times lyrics and melodies were thrown out, brought back from the dead, or improvised on the spot.

This loosely structured approach made the process truly collaborative, with producer Portrait occasionally chipping in ideas for lyrics, arrangements, and instrumentation. The resulting nine tracks are instantly memorable, while defying easy categorization. Says Phipps, "We realized the record began to stray away from having a 'sound' and gradually became a platter with an assortment of sounds. The record showcases a flavor we haven't quite dug into before."

The album's diverse combination of sounds ultimately helped give birth to its title, Curiosity -- a word that invokes the listener's wonder at what will greet their ears next, while also describing the overall curious tone the record possesses. First single, "The Hearse" serves as the perfect introduction for those unfamiliar with the band -- its opening notes swelling instantly with electronic organs over a driving drum beat. By the time bass and vocals kick in, you're already hooked.

Elsewhere, "Orchards" weaves an infectiously breezy melody on the strength of vocal harmonizing, tuneful whistling, and undulating guitar lines. In some cases, Wampire's unique rhythms are best described by the band members, as with "Trains," a Motown-meets-Strokes track that Tinder perfectly summarizes like so: "It's sexy, sounds huge, and by all means should be blamed for future babies."

The album concludes with the equally sensual "Magic Light," a song centered around a dark seductive bass groove that sets the tone for Phipps' come-hither lyrics. It's the kind of track that draws you ever further into the record's beguiling clutches, leaving a lasting impression that remains well after its final notes have faded out.

We Are The Arsenal is a 4-piece rock band based out of southern California Formed in 2006, the band has self-released 4 EP's and 1 full-length album. Most recently, the group released their most focused and mature album to date. "American Folklore," released on 3/26/13, explodes with seven tracks of guitar-driven, down-home rock & roll. Storytelling lyrics, shredding guitar solos, and powerful hooks collide to shape what has become the definitive We Are The Arsenal record.

Following in the footsteps of so many other iconic Orange County rock acts, WATA continues to carve their own niche in an ever-changing musical landscape. Over the last 7 years, this steadfast group of musicians has taken the state of being an unsigned band and turned it into an art form. Without label backing or funding, We Are The Arsenal has watched dozens of their peers fall by the wayside, while continuing to tour, release new music, and headline southern California's most prestigious venues.

Chief songwriter & vocalist Ryan Terrigno and Kansas City-bred Lead Guitarist Caleb Blacksher round out WATA's string section, while Bassist Alex Seielstad, and heavy-handed drummer Kris Dufour complete the rhythm section.

The now mythic trio, We Are Wolves, presents an honest and uncatchable sound; a bit like celestial lightning hitting a sacred mountaintop. Mainly inspired by visual arts, they paint a post-punk landscape, scattered with analog trees. Their primitive approach remains true to their animal of predilection: untamable. Disciples of rock and electronica - it’s at the junction of those two movements that We Are Wolves made their den.

WELSHLY ARMS combines their love of blues with rhythm and soul & good ol’ rock and roll, to create a fresh throwback sound that represents their Midwestern roots. Comprised of Sam Getz (vocals/guitar), Brett Lindemann (keys/vocals), Jimmy Weaver (bass/vocals), and Mikey Gould (drums), Cleveland-based WELSHLY ARMS pays homage to many of their collective musical influences. Listen to “The Touch” or “Two Seconds Too Late” from their debut E.P. Welcome, and you just might hear a little Jimi Hendrix, The Temptations, Otis Redding, or Howlin Wolf.

Launched in early 2013, the band debuted their video single for “Two Seconds Too Late” and garnered over 25,000 views on its first day of release. With buzz quickly building WELSHLY ARMS rocked their first headline show to a sold-out crowd at the Beachland Tavern, capturing the attention of many Clevelanders including fellow musicians and local press. Throughout the year, WELSHLY ARMS continued to establish a reputation for strong, spontaneous, and explosive live performances, from SXSW 2013 in Austin, TX to Los Angeles’ Hotel Café to House of Blues Cleveland, among many others.

In the fall of 2013, WELSHLY ARMS expanded their reach when three of five tracks from their debut E.P. were placed in promotional spots on television’s CW Network, including “The Touch” on Vampire Diaries and “That Voodoo” on The Originals. Following the success of their first E.P., WELSHLY ARMS recorded a 6-song Covers E.P. that released in late February 2014, giving a fresh spin to songs such as Sam and Dave’s “Hold On I’m Comin” & Roy Orbison’s “You Got It”.

WELSHLY ARMS is currently hunkered down at a house on Lake Erie about an hour outside of Cleveland to write and record their first full-length record, due out later this year. When not consumed by all things Welshly, you can find any of these four Clevelanders at a local dive bar throwing darts, drinking Great Lakes brews, and listening to their favorite tunes.

Band of snowboarders from Salt Lake City. Men of few words.

In forming in late 2011, Wildhoney set out to write pop songs with the energy and malcontent of hardcore punk, but without its entrenched masculinity — drawing influences from ‘60s girl groups, ‘80s post punk, indie pop, and shoegaze. The five-piece has since become one of the loudest — and sweetest — bands in its hometown of Baltimore.

Work Drugs is a sedative-wave / smooth-fi group from an abandoned pier on the banks of the Delaware River in beautiful Philadelphia, PA.

Work Drugs makes music specifically for boating, sexting, dancing, yachting, and living.

Work Drugs is Benjamin Louisiana (more instrumental/less vocal) and Thomas Crystal (more vocal/less instrumental).

Xray Eyeballs is the brainchild of O.J. San Felipe. Originally from San Francisco, O.J. landed in Brooklyn in 2000, but only after numerous cross-country adventures.

Upon settling, O.J. quickly cemented himself in the underground Brooklyn punk, noise, and indie scene playing in numerous bands including Golden Triangle (Mexican Summer, Hardly Art). While Golden Triangle is known as an all around party band that bashes out garage pop tunes that could easily be found on a Nuggets compilation, O.J. had something else in mind for Xray Eyeballs. Starting as a solo project, O.J. aimed to make pop songs that kids could remember after leaving the party. O.J. explains, "I just wanted to make every song sound like a lullaby. To me, lullabies are the most memorable kind of songs; everyone remembers them from when they're babies. They're not all happy lullabies either. I think people like songs they can relate to, with things like love, loss, dark vices, and sex." So while these songs are filled with dreamy pop hooks and melancholic melodies, they are all covered in a spooky haze.

Once O.J. had the framework for the songs, he gathered fellow Golden Triangle band mates Carly Rabalais (Bass, Vocals) and Jay High (Guitar, ex Gogogo Airheart), along with Rop Style (Synth, Theremin, Beats, formerly of the famed band Pee Chees), and Allison Press (Drums). Together, their live show rivals the crowd up into a huge party frenzy, like their fellow garage contemporaries (and buds) King Khan and Black Lips, except it's carried out with a New-Wave Pop twist. Drawing comparisons to the frantic pop of Jay Reatard and the Urinals, and the moodiness of Velvet Underground and Jesus and Mary Chain, Xray Eyeballs twist it all into their own pop concoction. Liz Berg from WFMU described their sound as, "fuzzy, over modulated garage pop at a languid trot." 

To date, Xray Eyeballs has been playing around NY, and if you live here, there is a good chance you've seen Xray Eyeballs 'ghost girl' t-shirt given away to skaters, punks, indie rockers and goths. It's like a badge for a secret society. O.J. says, "I like the shirt because you don't know if it's a band or a skateboard company or what. People always ask for it. Even kids in the projects from Bed Sty ask for them, so I keep making them to giveaway. People that have it almost seem like they belong in a secret cult, which I like. It's like that story of how the Germs had those t-shirts before they even had a band! I like that mentality." 

Unlike the Germs, Xray Eyeballs has had two sold out cassettes on Night People Records and Party Store Music, as well as an upcoming 7" single on Hozac. Their debut album Not Nothing will be released April 19th, 2011 on Kanine Records. For next year, Xray Eyeballs will venture out on the road, in attempt to grow their (not for long) secret cult of followers.

Over the course of the past few years, the London-based YOUNG GUNS have emerged as one of the UK's most electrifying new bands, garnering heavy radio play and UK chart success, while playing to packed-house crowds all across Europe, including a main stage performance at the Reading Festival, where they tore up the stage as part of a lineup that included Arcade Fire, Queens of the Stone Age, Guns N' Roses and Modest Mouse.

New album BONES has already achieved critical acclaim overseas, with Q Magazine and Kerrang! each giving it four stars and the latter writing that the album sees the band "giving themselves the best shot possible of taking on all comers and winning." BONES and its title track were also nominated for "Best Album" and "Best Single" as part of this year's 2012 Kerrang! Awards.

"We've written something that I feel happy describing as 'brave,'" says Young Guns frontman Gustav Wood, "and it will challenge a lot of people's preconceptions about what sort of band we are. It's an ambitious record, and we have the ambition to match the sound." Written over a number of months in places ranging from Thailand to Spain to a shed in the band's hometown of High Wycombe, UK, BONES marks Young Guns' transition from a band packed with potential to bonafide contenders for the title of Britain's best. It's a stirring album full of contradictions – it speaks of strength and vulnerability, friendship and loss, energetic youth and heavy-hearted experience – that proudly displays Wood, John Taylor (guitar), Fraser Taylor (guitar), Simon Mitchell (bass) and Ben Jolliffe (drums)'s skyscraping vision and style. "When you're writing an album you need to believe that what you're doing is the most important thing in the world," continues Gustav.

Having formed from the ashes of a variety of local bands, Young Guns' first release was the striking Mirrors EP in June 2009. But it wasn't until debut album All Our Kings Are Dead, unveiled in July 2010, that they began to really show what they were capable of. Backed by a groundswell of popular support, the band hit magazine covers, headlined the HMV Forum in London, toured Australia and played the Main Stage at Reading and Leeds Festivals; in the backs of their minds, though, they knew they could do better.

And they were right. Taken at face value, BONES feels effortless, but the work that went into it – the long hours, the nudging back of immutable deadlines, the worry, the sheer grind that comes with a genuinely democratic writing process – mirrors the band's career to date. This is a story of victory by inches, not of instant boom (and inevitable, sad bust). Young Guns backed themselves into a corner with their drive to comprehensively outdo All Our Kings Are Dead. After a handful of fruitless writing sessions, Gustav, Fraser and John spent a night in the studio with a couple of bottles of vodka and the desire to write a song their heroes would be proud of; when morning eventually came, they had the skeleton of "Dearly Departed," a song that, once they'd taken it to the rest of the band and let them work their magic, would sit as one of the keystones of BONES. "Once we wrote that song, we knew we could really make a mark with this album," says Wood. The title track itself is another standout moment, a pure rock anthem in the most heroic sense. "When you do something you know is good, that you know stands up... it's bliss. Elation. We worked so hard on this album, and there were times when the stress was horrendous. When I finished tracking the vocals for 'Bones' and we stood back and cranked it on the stereo at 4am, listening to what I knew would be a single that would do big things for us, that was overwhelming." From then on, the songs flowed: the title track, a howl of defiance; stunning opener "I Was Born, I Have Lived, I Will Surely Die," a fearless statement of intent; lead single "Learn My Lesson," a calling-card that's as dynamic as it is catchy. "It feels like I want to just kick people's heads off," smiles Gustav. "It sounds stupid but I just want to get out there and make a mark – it keeps me up at night, thinking about how much I want to do."