Sitting on a light brown couch in a soft blue-lit room, Gilanares begins to sing guided by guitar chords akin to the tune of Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well”. The guitarist faces away from her and she looks longingly away from the camera. Gilanares makes performance videos for many of her songs, a particularly admirable feat in the current music landscape. The performance video for “all my favorite movies have an ending” reflects early 2010’s British rock bands in their stripped acoustic, self-shown sessions. There is something refreshingly honest here.
Gilanares incredible lyricism is evident. Every line, every syllable is calculated. She tells stories beautifully and in a way we recognize and achingly relate to. In one verse she sings “I’ve been looking for someone to come along and fix me. I just want a good time. I just want a good high. I just want somebody for me to romanticize.”
The song slows down to its finish and Gilanares sings “all my favorite movies have an ending so I think it’s condescending to tell me that everything will be okay, when it never stays that way”. Gilanares pulls the mic away from her face and the screen fades to black. Her next video queues up and you’re too entranced to close the browser.
Pink Fruit delivers a perfect pop song beaming in technicolor with “Girl Of Your Dreams”. Featuring futuristic basslines and 70’s synths, the song teleports you right onto the dancefloor. The listener comes alive at the chorus “when the sun is peeking out, heart is racing freaking out, I’m not there anymore. You know that I’m the one for you. I’m done with giving all the clues. Oh you’ll never know.” “Tell me I’m the girl of your dreams”, Pink Fruit beckons, as the drums quicken, matching the rhythm of our feet.
Self-described as “dark pop club sounds like Grimes and Magdalena Bay”, Pink Fruit’s newest song is the moment. In a beautiful ending repeating “baby, maybe” between humming “ooo’s”, Pink Fruit ascends from the cosmic dancefloor and leaves us awestruck.
Destroy Boys take on punk and revolutionizes it. At this point, we expect nothing less than a metaphysical out-of-body experience with each of their songs. The “Te Llevo Conmigo” music video emphasizes the talent with which Destroy Boys comes armed.
The visuals of this music video are saturated, dark, and contrasted with pops of color to the style of VHS tapes. With a rhythmic build, the lyrics come crawling onto the screen “se que no devo de jugar con fuego”.
Its a perfect punk song with a melody that clings like a film to your skin like a My Bloody Valentine song.
The chorus “here lie all those that come before me. Gracias por hacerme saber” details the doubt that people place on your dreams. The singer sings about this doubt and the people who created it “siempre te llevo conmigo” – “I always carry you with me”.
As the song comes down, the visuals get deeper and many images of classic horror picture dimension appear. A knife. People crawling out a window frame. People standing in a forest holding candles. Then swirls of light pulse back and forth onto the screen.
The Destroy Boys music video for “Te Llevo Conmigo” ends as shadows of light envelop the camera and the music comes to a howling and melancholic finish to the cry of strung guitars.
“Popular” featuring Matthew Caws of alt-rock band Nada Surf is Pom Pom Squad’s latest release. The song feels exactly like the song you’d hear in an epic high school movie, where a newly formed pop-punk band practices tirelessly in their garage and goes from underdog to that – popular.
The singer starts by listening off “rules for breaking up” going between speaking cuts and singing along to the track. The speaking, booming over a guitar and drum instrumental is refreshing and made a la pure pop punk.
Pom Pom Squad continues to spin punk to their fingertips with sneaker kicks and fun lyrics in a way that leaves you feeling young again.
“Lie Love Lullaby” begins with a small static humming that sends small needles of electricity in your brain. The singer’s voice comes over the sound singing “knock out my envy, let me go” in a voice stirring and low like the strum of an electric guitar.
“What’s a lie love lullaby when we sing it every night?” the duo, comprised of Avery Tucker and Harmony Tividad, sing. The song speeds up with an instrumental that feels like the pressing of buttons sending you up like an elevator, deeper into the cavity in your brain. The song is a track about a striking and body-captivating love. The person you cannot get rid of, the person that haunts.
“I know how it always goes” are the words of defeat sang over Girlpool’s orchestration of a gritty dark magic sonic plane. What’s a love lie lullaby?
Laila delivers the quintessential California beach song in “The Lagoon Song”. Her vocals swim over the track composed of ukeleles and strumming acoustic guitars. It’s a tug-of-war kind of love song with Laila repeating in the chorus “When will you know how much I love you? When will you know how much I hate you?”.
“The Lagoon Song” is another one of Laila’s highly esteemed indie pop songs embodying the ripples of tension that we go through in relationships. Facing those trials Laila makes clear her devotion despite the challenges singing “you know my heart runs deep, deeper than the lagoon”.
Tell us about you; who you are, how you began making music.
My name is January aka Girl Online and I’m a singer-songwriter, producer, DJ, artist and poet! I’ve been writing all my life but started making music for real in high school. I would make beats in GarageBand for songs I’d written, upload them to SoundCloud and then I would write my SoundCloud link on my teachers’ whiteboards so people would listen to me haha. I was so annoying but it kind of worked! I’ve had a small but dedicated following ever since ❤
How did you come up with the artist name “Girl Online”?
Originally the concept for “girl online” was to be sort of a multidisciplinary art piece that talked about what it’s like growing up online as a young girl to a woman and the way we mask ourselves + have the capacity to be different people online. But then I just started writing a bunch of love songs and the name just stuck!
Tell us about your latest project, Portrait of a Girl Online. What was the inspiration?
I was in LOVEE and I experienced heartbreak </3 but it’s ok because I got a bunch of songs out of it I guess. I also was going through a really disorienting period in my life where I thought that I was a lesbian. While I’ve realized I’m not, I’m glad it happened because I learned to finally not center men in my life. Creating the EP was really a way for me to process all of that while trying to find my sound which I can definitely now describe as the auditory equivalent of taking molly for the first time.
What was the process of making the project? Who were some key collaborators?
It was so insane – I literally produced one of the songs in a psychiatric ward. I was going through it. But it was super fun. I mostly worked on it alone in my bedroom but definitely could not have done it without Stephen Jung, my manager and mixing engineer, and Joy Cheever who did the mastering. Also shoutout to the amazing Ryl0 for hopping on a verse.
We know you’ve done some shows around Los Angeles. What is your favorite part about doing live shows?
I get that when most people see me live they’re being introduced to my music for the first time, so I really just love hearing positive feedback from people who normally wouldn’t listen to femme produced electro pop. It’s cool to be able to expose people to stuff and it always feels really genuine.
What are you currently working on?
A couple of singles! I really want to make another EP but we shall see if my schedule permits that.
Before we go, what’s something on repeat right now?
“There he sits in a dream, planning his earthly schemes”. In a beautiful electric guitar sonnet with tremendous vocals, Olivia Vika shatters time and space. “You’re all that I need, come shake it down on me”. Vika approaches a personal story in an unbearably heart-breaking indie rock track reminiscent of the 1975’s most stripped raw and unforgettable songs like “102”.
“Please don’t ever leave, come shake it down on me”.The guitar echoes and strums like a pulsating heart, and Vika’s voice stops you right where you are.
“You wanna be this queen bee but you can’t be, that’s why you mad at me”. Black Lavendar’s captivating rap flow and chilling vocal capability materialize in her first single “Queen Bee”. In lines like “pharaoh to these hoes, I’m a motherfucking empress” Black Lavendar introduces herself as a force to be reckoned with in the music scene. Her old-school rap flow and smooth style will lock you in immediately. “Queen Bee” has caused a shift.
Velvet Noise 