Best Coast and Honeyblood are my indie sounds of the summer

Having spent the best part of 1993 crushing on Juliana Hatfield, I am predisposed to like jangly, female-fronted indiepop.

So it is with great delight that I stumbled across two new songs by Honeyblood (pictured above, left) and Best Coast (above right).

Honeyblood's newest song is The Black Cloud - a Record Store Day exclusive that's also the band's first single since drummer Shona McVicar was replaced by Cat Myers.

It finds singer Stina Tweeddale (love that name) eulogising a friend who "fought my corner when I wouldn't open the door." As she emerges from her eponymous Black Cloud, the track opens up into sunny, hazy harmonising.

It's lush.



On first listen, Best Coast's Feeling OK seems similarly optimistic.

"I know it's love that's got me feeling OK," sings Bethany Cosentino. But that "OK" is telling: She's not going full Nina Simone on us... and, true enough, there's a melancholy undercurrent, as she observes: "I get so down, but I'll keep trying to stay this way".

Best Coast - Feeling OK (lyric video)

Feeling OK is taken from Best Coast's third album, California Nights, from which we've already heard the title track and Heaven Sent. Those three songs seem more focused than their earlier work, while retaining the band's wispy charms.

According to the band, the record has been informed by 1990s grungepop (hello again, Juliana!), while trying capture LA's "epic sunsets" in musical form.

"When the sun sets, I feel like there is a large sense of calmness in the air, and I feel like everything that happened to me prior in the day, whether crappy experiences or good ones, at night, it all goes away and I sink deep into this different kind of 'world,'" said Bethany.

California Nights is out in May, pre-ordering fans.

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