Yesterday, JD Samson released her band MEN’s debut album, "Talk About Body," and it features the sexiest song about getting knocked up in recent memory.  On, “Credit Card Babie$,” a disco track driven by Moog blasts and little bites of punky guitar, Samson promises, “I’m gonna (sleep with) my friends to get a little tiny baby.”

But the unprintable hook is actually a sad reverse-double-entendre. Turns out the simple wish to have a kid is also probably the most destructive thing one can do ecologically, financially and socially to yourself and everyone around you. It’s a tough decision, but the hooks of “Babie$” give it a hot-and-bothered urgency.

“We had this skeleton of a song idea and I assumed it was going to be super-depressing, because it’s so hard to plan for and support a family,” Samson said. “But then we thought it would be cool to juxtapose it with this fun disco track, to make an anthemic space to relate to it."

That dynamic forms the backbone of MEN, which performs at Amoeba Music in Hollywood at 6 tonight. Samson and bandmates Michael O’Neill and Ginger Brooks Takahashi pair viciously catchy disco-punk with  lyrics that function equally well as floor-filler chants and more difficult reflections on how the wants of the body interact with the political sphere.

Local indie label IAMSOUND has spent much of 2010 re-asserting its dedication to L.A. bands. But its biggest effort this fall involves the impressively gloomy Michigan electronica trio Salem, the bellwethers of the second-most-unfortunate genre name of the year.

Salem trades in ostentatiously evil synthesizers, the chintzy drum machine patter of rap producers like Shawty Redd and pitch-tweaked vocals from singer and bandleader John Holland that evoke both Fever Ray and Bun B simultaneously. Salem's geniusly titled early EP "Yes, I Smoke Crack" cemented their sinister bedroom electro-doom, and Holland's unnerving presence evokes something of a pansexual, rap-addled William-Blake-as-drug-kingpin antihero. He gave an absolutely astounding interview with the Dutch gay men's magazine Butt that documents the real-life source material for all this; unfortunately, we can't link to it, but it is well worth looking up.

Early bits of "King Night" suggest the band only went bigger on its proper debut full-length, but hear for yourself at its official debutant party at Origami Vinyl at 8 p.m. It's free (as are drinks), and it will haunt your dreams.

-- August Brown

  

A consensus seems to be growing that Los Angeles is in the midst of a renaissance for independent music. In a recent Sunday feature, we set out to discover just how it is that while the major labels continue to suffer layoffs and severe sales losses, this city’s scrappy, savvy, taste-driven indie imprints have, in fact, been thriving. As a corollary to that, we’ve spoken to and profiled 12 of L.A.’s most active young labels, from artist-owned black metal powerhouse Southern Lord to chart-climbing indie rock outlet Danger Bird to progressive hip-hop imprint Anticon. Here’s hoping they’ll all end up in a GZA song some day.

Sargent House (Echo Park)
Longtime talent manager Cathy Pellow started Sargent House in 2006 with one artist: Seal Beach prog-punk band Rx Bandits, who were ready to call it quits after selling around 150,000 records through MCA/Geffen and, according to Pellow, "never seeing a penny." Today, her stable comprises "a middle class of awesome musicians," also proggily inclined, able to live off their earnings. She also manages a sister label co-run by the Mars Volta’s Omar Rodriguez Lopez.

So Nite Jewel, Baths, and Memoryhouse are playing the Echoplex tonight. You don't need us to tell you that the bill features wonderful electronic projects worth any and every occasion to plan a night out for.

But you really should rouse yourself from your chillwave evening slumber and get there early, because you'll catch a hint (albeit a DJ set) of Kisses, a new project from Jesse Kivel of indie-poppers Princeton and his girlfriend Zinzi Edmundson.   

Kisses is more sample-heavy than Princeton and rooted in the smeared, tape-decayed disco that you kids all love today. But on their new single "People Can Do the Most Amazing Things," there's both a sad-eyed clarity to the melodies that sets up a great pop tune, and guitar frizz and junky drum samples in the margins that knock it into the experimental ether again. Arthur Russell is a primary influence, and they have clearly absorbed his love of snare reverb and train-tunnel tenor.

You can't quite dance to it, but on a drunk bus ride home I bet it sounds immaculate. IAMSOUND Records, which has been knocking it out of the park with this stuff lately, is putting it on a 7-inch Aug. 3. Is it one of those aforementioned amazing things people do? Maybe. A supremely pleasurable one? Absolutely.

-- August Brown

Photo: Kisses. Credit: Jessica Koslow

Last year, we deemed IAMSOUND Records to be the bee’s knees in local independent labels. Yet strangely, they were best known for releases by British sirens like Little Boots and New York electro acts like Telepathe.

This year, with the inauguration of its "L.A. Collection" series, the label is re-upping its commitment to the Los Angeles fringe, with a limited-run, split 7-inch series featuring A-list L.A. bands such as Local Natives, Fool's Gold, Nosaj Thing and Dead Man’s Bones, alongside rising newcomers such as Rainbow Arabia and Pocahaunted. The first edition, featuring sultry disco purveyors We Are the World, came out on Tuesday.

We talked to the label's manager Paul Tao -- seen above with founder Niki Roberton -- to find out what the series says about our sprawling, ever-shifting music scene.

What were you trying to document in this series, and how did you get the idea for it?

We came up with it last year. We’re an L.A. label, but there seemed to be a lot of confusion about where we were from -- we’d been releasing a lot of U.K. and New York stuff lately. When you think of New York, you think of the Strokes and Interpol, and L.A. doesn’t have a really cohesive scene or sound like that. We wanted to do something to bring all sides of L.A. together and show the full diversity of what the city has to offer. It’s not all just bearded guitar bands or electro or Smell scene kids -- there’s a lot more than people think. 

Is there any overarching theme or shared L.A. value in these songs?