NYC Scene Report – Sugar High, High Waisted, & Allegra Krieger

This week’s NYC Scene Report features Sugar High getting “Ugly,” High Waisted taking a “Drive,” and Allegra Krieger feeling “The Push and the Pull.”

* When you combine Brooklyn-based artist Kris Esfandiari and Berlin-based songwriter and producer Darcy Baylis you get something beautifully “Ugly.”

“Ugly” is the second single, and first video from the Esfandiari and Baylis collaborative project Sugar High, which mixes elements of metal and electronica. Sugar High’s debut album, Love Addict, was released yesterday.

Esfandiari says “Ugly” is her “favorite song on the album,” while Baylis adds, “It’s the heaviest song on the record. It’s almost like a metal version of Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful.’”

Click play, and get “Ugly” with Sugar High.


* NYC’s High Waisted are going for a “Drive.” “Drive” being the second single from the duo’s upcoming album, Sick of Saying Sorry, due out May 22nd.

Explaining where her lyrics for songs like “Drive” come from, High Waisted frontwoman and guitarist Jessica Louise Dye said, “It would be too painful to get on the stage night after night and relive each trauma I pulled from for writing inspiration,” noting it’s much more cathartic to “rewrite history and edit out the parts that are too heavy to bear. I get to finally say all the things I wish I had.”

Let Dye take the wheel, and enjoy this “Drive.”


* Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and composer Allegra Krieger is feeling “The Push and the Pull” on her latest single, which is also her first release on her new label home, Northern Spy Records.

Krieger described “The Push and the Pull” in a statement, saying it’s “a reflection on each person’s capacity to experience great emotional heights and depths.”

Here’s hoping there will be more emotional explorations on her upcoming full length debut, which will be released later this year, because “The Push and the Pull” is a winner.


For more of the best of NYC’s indie music scene, come back next Wednesday, and check out the archives for previous columns.