NYC Scene Report – Pearla, We Are Scientists, & White Hills

This week’s NYC Scene Report features Pearla being “About Hunger, About Love,” We Are Scientists experiencing an “Operator Error,” and White Hills riding “Oceans of Sound.”

* Pearla will be releasing her debut album, Oh Glistening Onion, The Nighttime Is Coming, in February of 2023 via Spacebomb Records, and if you’re feeling a rumble in your belly – or more precisely, your emotions – it’s because the latest single is “About Hunger, About Love.”

Discussing the song in a statement, the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter said, “This song is about that kind of insatiable hunger for something that you can’t put your finger on. I was thinking about how all living things have a way of knowing, and moving towards what they need – woodpeckers peck for bugs, sunflowers turn to the sun – and sometimes I just think myself in circles all day.”

She describes this sensation as, “The new kind of lonesome,” adding, “I think it’s a loneliness from yourself, a feeling of distance from your true nature.”

Don’t distance yourself from the music of Pearla. Click play on “About Hunger, About Love,” and feed your emotional needs.

* We Are Scientists vocalist/guitarist Keith Murray (not the rapper of the same name) says he likes to “get extraordinarily overheated about utterly inconsequential things,” and this was the inspiration behind the band’s song “Operator Error.”

“I got into a multi-hour argument over whether Top Gun: Maverick is a halfway decent movie,” he says of his penchant for trivial disputes, adding, “On important matters, I like to keep quiet, to listen to everyone else’s take, and to silently build my own bullet-proof argument, which nobody else will ever hear.”

“Operator Error” is from the band’s upcoming album, Lobes, which is due out in January of 2023. Longtime fans may notice a musical change with Lobes, as Murray notes the album is “more electronic, dancier, more ominous, and way sexier than Huffy,” adding, “‘Operator Error’ kicks the door open into that seamy underworld.”

Click play, and kick in the door with We Are Scientists.

* NYC-based fuzz rock duo White Hills are currently finishing up an EU/UK tour that will keep them overseas through November 15th, but they left U.S. fans with “Oceans of Sound” to enjoy.

“Oceans of Sound” is off White Hill’s recently released full-length album, The Revenge of Heads on Fire, and according to the band’s frontman, Dave W, the song was lyrically inspired by Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and the nightmare of a world void of books, and critical thought.

A truly terrifying notion, Dave W, and bandmate Ego Sensation, have turned it into a psych rock gem. Check it out, and ride White Hills’ “Oceans of Sound.”

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