Nocturno is back at Catch One (4067 Pico Blvd. 90019) for five rooms of dancing on Friday, August 8. You’ll find me in the darkwave vs. indie sleaze room, which is also where Vilevo is playing live. On top of that, I’ll be playing an extra dose of She Past Away tunes for you throughout the night. Tickets are available now on Dice for this 18+ night. Check out my set list from last month’s Nocturno and make plans to join us on Friday night.
Here’s what else is happening this weekend and early next week.
As soon as Annie and the Caldwells took to the stage at Zebulon, I felt a sense of levity. It was early June and the mood in Los Angeles was heavy. ICE raids had triggered protests, which led to an overreaction that landed downtown, where I live, under an 8 p.m. curfew. Meanwhile, in nearby neighborhoods, like Frogtown, where Zebulon is located, it was business as usual. At least, that’s how it looked inside the club. The room was full and completely alive. As Deborah Caldwell Moore belted out the heartfelt lyrics of “Wrong,” we caught the groove and kept it going throughout the set. The tempo ebbed and flowed as they played, but the energy remained high. Hands were thrown in the air during “I Made It.” It wasn’t just a good show, but an uplifting one.
There’s one new song that I really wanted to play last night, but couldn’t fit it into the set, so you’ll have to wait a few weeks until I’m back at Underground. Other than that, thanks for dancing and here’s the set list. Anything new-ish is linked to a related post or, if there is no related post, a YouTube clip.
A wee bit of Sean Carnage’s photo collection from Monday Nights: L.A.’s Scene of the Century 2005-2016. Show opens at Leiminspace in Chinatown on Saturday, August 2, 2025 (Photo of installation by Liz O.)
I spent a decent chunk of Tuesday afternoon at Leiminspace with Sean Carnage and Miguel Rodriguez listening to Cold War Kids, CSS and Bloc Party while hanging Monday Nights: L.A.’s Scene of the Century, 2005 -2016. The top photo is actually a before pic from Tuesday. We added a lot more to the wall and there are more walls and more photos and I’m getting pretty excited for people to have the chance to see it. The show opens on Saturday, August 2, with the festivities happening between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Do join us in Chinatown’s Central Plaze at Leiminspace (443 Lei Min Way) for the opening. If you can’t make it, the show is running through August 23 and regular gallery hours are Saturdays from 1 p.m. until 6 p.m. We also made a 120-page mook/exhibition catalog that will be sold at the gallery. Stay tuned for more programming announcements too.
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.
Concert posters on view at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes for exhibition “A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound” (Pic: Liz O.)
The first thing I saw inside La Plaza de Cultura y Artes on Saturday afternoon was Brenton Wood’s zoot suit, a gray number paired with a black-and- white tie and wide-brimmed fedora. The dapper mannequin gave me some kind of sign (sorry, couldn’t resist) of what was to come. Stage outfits like Little Willie G.’s suit from Thee Midniters, flyers for shows like The Brat at The Vex in 1980, t-shirts repping Quetzal and Slowrider and a vinyl wall with everyone from The Premiers to Tierra to Alice Bag to Thee Sinseers. A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound is a multi-media exhibition that pulls together various tangents related to more than half a century of East Los Angeles music. It’s a thorough show that’s absolutely essential to see if you’re interested in L.A. music. The exhibition opened in late June at La Plaza de Cultures y Artes, across from Olvera Street, and is on view until August of 2026.
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.
Swimming Bell live at Oblivion in Highland Park on May 23, 2025 (Pic: Liz O.)
Maybe you recall reading about Swimming Bell here on Beatique back in May. That’s when L.A.-based singer/songwriter Katie Schottland and her band of musicians celebrated the release of the latest Swimming Bell EP, Somnia, with a very intimate show at Oblivion in Highland Park. If you missed the story, go back and read it because Swimming Bell is fantastic and you can catch them on Thursday, July 25, at The Goldfish in Highland Park, where they’ll be playing alongside The GDR and Love Pig for a very low cover. Tickets are available now on Dice for this 21+ show. Check out Swimming Bell’s video for “95 at Night” too.
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.
More. Pulp swag. And it’s a notebook and pen. Things I actually use a lot. (Pic: Liz O.)
Last night was Club Underground’s Pulp Party, but I played in the not-Pulp room, which is why you heard a mix of ‘80s, ‘00s and new indie, darkwave, etc. upstairs at the Grand Star all night. “Women Respond to Bass” by Sextile is this summer’s banger, but I wanted to get “Rearrange,” from the duo’s latest album, into the set as well because it has a very DFA thing going on it. Also, the lyrics are extremely right now. Teddybears (featuring Iggy Pop) made a comeback with “Punkrocker” thanks to the Superman movie that I haven’t seen. There was also new music from Ships in the Night and Mareux in the set. If you want to see what was played, keep scrolling. Oh, and shout out to the small group of Fontaines D.C. fans who happened to be upstairs for both “Here’s the Thing” and “Starburster.”
