NYC Scene Report – Laveda, Bird Streets, & bloodsports

This week’s NYC Scene Report features Laveda offering up a “Strawberry,” Bird Streets nearing his escape, and bloodsports getting ready to hammer down.

* NYC-based noise rock/shoegaze band Laveda will be releasing their third album, Love, Darla, this Friday via Bar/None Records, the latest single off of which is “Strawberry.”

Although the song’s name may be sweet, the inspiration for it was a bit sour, as the band’s frontwoman, Ali Genevich, explains, “It’s about trying to escape from your inner demons. It’s incredibly inspiring to create art in NYC, but the noise – literal and figurative – makes it overwhelming.

 She continued, adding, “Social media doesn’t help. People say messed up things in comments. It bums me out. I guess I consider myself to be whatever the opposite of a parasocial is.”

With a hook that feels like a mantra, “Strawberry” is yet another addictive song from Laveda that will get stuck in your head in the best of ways.

* Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Bird Streets has a new album titled The Escape Artist due out October 17th via Plastic Dreams Records, and the latest single is the gorgeous “It’s a Start.”

Bird Streets explained the musical inspiration for “It’s a Start” in a statement, saying, “The music is indebted to later-period Elliott Smith, his more psychedelic work. Figure 8 was a huge influence when I was making my first solo record, and it’s one I come back to a lot because of its range of sounds. My friend Gina Romantini plays violin on this. I love the suspense it creates in the track.”

The wonderfully trippy music video for the song was directed by B.A. Miale, and is worthy of watching in HD on full-screen mode.

Click play on it, and if you’re just discovering the music of Bird Streets … “It’s a Start.”

* I hope everyone is ready to get hammered, because NYC-based rockers bloodsports are readying the release of their debut album, Anything Can Be A Hammer.

Due out October 17th via Good English Records, the latest single off the project is “Calvin.”

The band’s Sam Murphy discussed “Calvin” in a statement, saying, “It’s definitely the most standard ‘rock’ song on the record. It kinda feels like a Pixies song to us.”

He continued, adding, “Lyrically, it takes place during a dream I had, so a lot of the lines are kind of disjointed from one another and ambiguous, which I think reflects a dream state pretty well.”

Hop into Sam’s dream, by clicking play on “Calvin.”

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