Dummy (with The Sheaves, Evergreen)

Los Angeles indie-pop band Dummy take their name from the celebrated Portishead album and aren’t afraid to wear such influences on their sleeve, but they’re more than shoegaze revivalists, interpolating psych-rock, glitch music, and vaporwave to create a thoroughly modern pop-rock aesthetic. “Making music shouldn’t be fun” has served as the band’s long-running mantra, and that arch, “I’m-only-serious” aesthetic permeates the band’s approach: serious musicianship suffused with an all-too-contemporary, alternately puckish and world-weary irony.

Phoenix locals The Sheaves are just as open about their influences, but their lodestar is The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, whose sprechgesang delivery is unmistakable in singer(?) Eric Mudd’s laconic vocal delivery. Evergreen adds some heaviness to the mix, with an aesthetic built around distorted guitar chords and monotonic, shouty vocal lines.

Dummy:

The Sheaves:

Evergreen: