The story of Chief is one of two coasts. Though Evan Koga, and brothers Danny and Michael Fujikawa were all born and raised in Los Angeles, they left for New York University, worlds away. It was in New York that they first got to know one another as collaborators, rumbling through a number of semi-serious projects and solo ventures before feeling swept away by a small run of songs Koga had penned and presented to them. He had written them under the name Chief, a moniker the brothers Danny and Michael opted to keep the day they first formed their band. It was on New York stages that they honed their songs and found their sound, a thoughtfully melodic update on summer and road records past. Neil Young. Tom Petty. The Band. Crosby, Stills and Nash. Natural, timeless songwriting for times that change too quickly. LA was never far away.


In fact, in early 2009, they all started to migrate home to the City of Angels for good. "We simply wanted a change of pace," guitarist Koga says. "Our BPM is a little bit slower here." On Modern Rituals, their first full-length and Domino debut, that transcontinental downshift is captured in gorgeous, full-bodied stereo. The foursome took their songbook into the studio with New York-based, Grammy Award-winning producer Emery Dobyns. The goal was to create a rock record free of gimmicks and fences. The end result is just that. "It's a traveler's record. I listen and it immediately feels natural to see myself driving down the Pacific Coast Highway," guitarist Danny Fujikawa explains. "But at the same time, maybe it would feel the same way if I were walking through New York." Modern Rituals was tracked in four different studios, parts of some songs scattered across time in New York, Echo Park, Los Feliz and Venice, California. "You wouldn't know to listen for it, but it's like a math problem," says Michael. "I can hear personal experiences from all those times layered across some of these songs." To his brother, one element unifies the album as a whole. "There is a good bit of ocean in there," Danny says.

"The Reflections began when Darian Zahedi and Jon Safley began collaborating together in early 2012, often sending ideas back and forth while on the road with other projects. They spent the better part of Spring 2012 recording an album's worth of songs at Brightstreet Recorders with producer/engineer, Kenny Woods (Jenny Lewis, Lykke Li, Vampire Weekend). Lauded by the likes of Impose, Spinner, Filter and NME for their hypnotic blend of chugging base lines and cool indie pop, The Reflections are prepping for the release of their debut LP, Limerence later this year."

We mix funk, rock, hip hop and indie to make music you can move to.

Sydney Wayser is a French
-
American, New York
-
bas
ed singer
-
songwriter who
plays guitar, piano and children's toys. Growing up in Los Angeles with summers
spent in Paris, she draws on a wide range of influences and inspirations, from
Edith Piaf, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Jacques Brel, to John Lennon, Jeff
Buckley, and Sigur Ros
.
Her third album, Bell Choir Coast, has been two years in the making; struggling
to express herself creatively in the midst of a miserable New York winter, Wayser
decided that if she couldn’t go elsewhere, she’d bring other lands to
her. “Bell
Choir Coast is about a fictional land that I made up, because I couldn't leave New
York and I had to make my record. So I made up a new world in my head that
was everything I wanted.” The result is the gorgeous and varied Bell Choir Coast.
More
than an record, it is an atlas, a map past difficult years and emotional
terrain, to a place of self
-
understanding and agency. Sydney Wayser set about to
make an album, and in the end she cleared a path to a world, and in the process
she found her tribe an
d her sound.