Name: Warpaint
From: Los Angeles, California
Story: From casting calls to minor chords
Sound: Sweet psychedelic swirls
It should come as no surprise that the suspiciously-photogenic ladies of Los Angeles' Warpaint met at a casting audition, given LA's reputation as land liberally littered with budding actresses. The surprise comes with the kind of music they ended up making; which is as far from an actor's awful vanity vehicle as you could imagine.
Warpaint's ramshackle take on the 'atmospheric' seems like it's hoping to summon the Cocteau Twins' ethereal dream-pop, yet it ends up feeling ragged and earthly; with hints of country and bursts of drum-spattering psychedelia creeping into the mood-music mix.
Mixed by Red Hot Chilli Peppers' renegade guitar-mystic John Frusciante, Warpaint's debut EP, Exquisite Corpse is due out September 22 on Manimal Vinyl (whose budding stable includes the great Rio en Medio and Rainbow Arabia).
The EP's stand-out comes in the form of "Billie Holiday," a sprawling psych-folk cut in which the trio spontaneously riff on Mary Wells' old R&B hit "My Guy," its buoyant declaration of love delivered, here, with a kind of eerie calm. It's an unexpectedly effecting piece of appropriation, there something almost sinister in the way the chant this cheery ode to devotion as a solemn incantation of the inevitable.
- Listen: Warpaint, "Billie Holiday"
- Listen: Warpaint, "Elephants"
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