Mark Stewart, founder of the Pop Group, finished work on The Fateful Symmetry before his death in 2023. The album was released earlier this month. (Photo: Chiara Meatelli and Dominic Lee)
Sometimes, it feels like there’s just too much awful news in the world to pay attention to new music. This is one of those times. But, if I’ve learned anything after IDK how many years of music obsession, it’s that turning up the stereo/laptop/earbuds/whatever and tuning into something different can help. Sometimes the songs make you dance, sometimes they make you chuckle, sometimes they even give you some new insight into the news on our screens.
Here’s a small sample of what I’ve been listening to in July of 2025. At the end of the post, you’ll find links to a few other recent releases that I’ve already reviewed.
The only time I’ve seen Fever Ray live was at Coachella in 2010 and, even then, I only caught part of their set sometime on the first night of the festival after I had already decided that I was over Coachella and the only thing that might ever get me back is The Smiths reunion that I estimated would be announced the day after hell freezes over. All that said, I don’t really have a true concert experience to compare to The Year of the Radical Romantics, the new, live-ish album from Fever Ray, but that’s probably for the best.
View from the stage at Gloria Molina Grand Park’s Sunday Sessions on July 20, 2025 (Pic: Liz O.)
Gloria Molina Grand Park’s Sunday Sessions is a highlight of summer in L.A. It’s a series of free, all ages, dance party picnics right in the middle of downtown, inside the park that sits between the Music Center and City Hall. At the event on July 20, my friend, Maurice de la Falaise curated a lineup of DJs to celebrate the roots of house music, and I got to DJ alongside Loopdropkid and Clifton Weaver, with KG Superstar MCing the afternoon. It was a ton of fun.
For my own set, I played mostly disco and Italo, with a lot of edits to kind of stress that connection between disco and house. In the first set, which started at about 3 p.m., I dropped Horse Meat Disco and Phenomenal Handclap Band’s track “Sanctuary,” which you probably heard a lot if you went to my nights back at The Lash right after the pandemic, because the lyrics are relevant to the moment. The second set, which was from 5:15 – 6 p.m., took a house turn towards the end because the crowd seemed up for it, so I dropped in two of my favorite tracks from the past handful of years “Cissy” from Natasha Kitty Katt, which pulls vocals from the Cissy Houston song “Think It Over,” and Kerri Chandler’s remix of Gabriels “Love and Hate in a Different Time.” Set list is below.
Olya Sonica live at Hotel Ziggy on July 17, 2025 (Pic: Liz O.)
Olya Sonica has a new single, “You Only Live Forever (YOLF)” out now and shows in the U.K. next week, so, to celebrate, she put together a special Britpop-themed show last night at Hotel Ziggy. Izzy Outerspace opened. Olya played a full set with her new single and then brought together a group of friends for a set of Britpop covers with various vocalists, including Blur “Song 2,” Pulp “Disco 2000,” The Verve “Bittersweet” and multiple Oasis songs. They finished with a singalong of “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” of course.
Oh, yeah, and I DJed too. Dug through my Britpop stash and managed to pull out some tunes that I haven’t played in a long time. Some I haven’t played in a really long time, like maybe not since the Bang! days. Check out the set list below and maybe I’ll see you tonight at Club Underground’s Pulp Party.
Black and white view from the DJ booth in the new wave vs. darkwave room. (Pic: Liz O.)
It was She Past Away Night in the New Wave vs. Darkwave room at Nocturno last night, so, if you were there, you heard a lot of them throughout the night. But, also, French Police’s new song, “Sugar Killer,” made it into the set early. It did pretty well for 10 p.m., so you’ll probably hear it again. “Nonstop Romance,” the title track from Mareux’s new album, was first played in the new wave vs. darkwave room at the last Nocturno party and, since it did well earlier in the night, I dropped it somewhere around 11:30 p.m. this time around and it did really well. “Reason to Stay” from Pixel Grip is a middle-of-the-night song now, which is good to see. “Wrong Floor” by Ultra Sunn, which someone requested last month, stuck around this month. I like that one a lot. And “Women Respond to Bass” from Sextile is basically this year’s summer song. I think that’s it for the new music from last night.
Overall, it was a fantastic night and the crowd was great, as well. Someone made two requests that were in the BPM ranges I was playing in, which never happens. I asked, “Are you a DJ?” No. “Are you a drummer?” No. Anyhow, it’s an impressive skill and it means that those requests landed in the set immediately instead of whenever I was able to raise the tempo or slow it down enough to fit the song into the set.
Cerrone and Christine and the Queens collaborated on new EP, Catching Feelings (Photo: Thomas Spault)
“Supernature” is the signature Cerrone song. A synth-fueled, sci-fi epic with Lene Lovich-penned lyrics inspired by The Island of Dr. Moreau, it was both of-the-moment and ahead-of-the-curve in 1978, a disco hit that foretold the sound and the vibe of the new wave 1980s. In the decades that followed, it’s become one of those songs that DJs love, right up there with “You Make Me Feel” and “I Feel Love” when it comes to seminal dance club tracks. Now, Cerrone is bringing the banger back, this time with help from Christine and the Queens and Purple Disco Machine, as “Supernature MMXXV.”
Last year, Molly Nilsson released Un-American Activities, which you could say is her L.A. album. The Berlin-based synthpop artist made it as part of a residency at Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades and it’s inspired by a few specific moments where global events and local history come together. Moreover, the album, which is one of my favorites from 2024, really fits the mood in Los Angeles right now. It’s dark and, lyrically, she makes connections between European fascism of the 1930s, the Red Scare in the mid-20th century U.S. and contemporary politics. So, when I was pulling records to play at Bigfoot Lodge on Saturday, I immediately grabbed my copy of Un-American Activities and thought of the song “Jackboots Return.”
For anyone who hasn’t been there before, Bigfoot Lodge is this bar on Los Feliz Blvd. that’s designed to look like a cabin in the woods. There are animatronic critters near the entrance and taxidermy hiding out in the corners. It’s a trippy bar that’s been around for some 25 years. Every once in a while, I pop in to guest DJ on Malvada’s nights there, which is why I packed a bag of vinyl and headed to Bigfoot Lodge last night. I brought some recent releases (Pulp, Optometry, Sextile) and some oldies that I picked up on recent digs (Freda Payne, Heaven 17). There were songs I haven’t played out in public before, but felt needed to be heard (Molly Nilsson “Jackboots Return) and songs that I’ve played many, many times, but should be heard again (The Clash “Police On My Back”), but there wasn’t a real theme or anything. There were three of us DJ last night, so we swapped off throughout the night. My set lists are below.
Spoiler alert: Romance by Fontaines D.C. is the album of the year.
Here’s a quick set list from Underground last night. I played open-to-close and forgot to take pics, so I’m posting the cover of Romance at the top of this post because Fontaines D.C. are the best rock band around right now and it saddens me that people don’t come up to the booth and bug me to play them all night at Underground. So, that’s your reminder. When I’m back at Underground on July 18, come up to me and say, “Liz, please play some Fontaines D.C. for us.”
There is no shortage of killer new music out this month and handful of those have already appeared here on Beatique, but I’m just one person and there aren’t enough hours in the day to listen to everything that’s out now, let alone write about it. I didn’t want to shout out a few more new releases, like Soft New Magic Dream from Black Moth Super Rainbow, plus an impressive goth/industrial club-friendly new album and two lovely full-lengths out now via long-running indie label Slumberland.
Before we get to the reviews, though, I just want to say thank you reading. I started updating Beatique with reviews and original reporting in January because it looked like the situation for music, arts and culture journalism, my day job for well over a decade, in the U.S. would grow even more dismal and it has. But, at the same time, Beatique has had its highest amount of traffic this month and a lot of it is repeat visitors (from outside the U.S. too!) who are checking out multiple stories. Maybe I’m correct in thinking that people actually want to read things written by actual human beings who actually go out into the world and do the reporting themselves. Maybe I’m deluding myself. Either way, thanks for joining me on the ride. There’s more to come, so if you’re interested, check out the ways you can stay up-to-date on Beatique (and my DJ gigs) at the bottom of this post.
