I’m back with another episode of Off Air with Arthur, bringing you three fresh new songs deep from the depths of the underground music scene along with a story about my 91-year-old grandfather’s unfortunate encounter with loud music. This week’s featured bands are…

Mild High Club

This is a band heavily rooted in the nostalgic sounds of early 70’s AM radio. The brainchild of lead singer Alex Britton, Mild High Club blends psychedelic rock, jazz, and yacht rock into a delightful sound that you would swear is from a bygone era. While I’m not a fan of their first album, their second album Skiptracing (released by my favorite record label Stones Throw Records) features stronger vocals from Britton and more polished songs, including the standout track “Tesselation.”

You can catch Mild High Club performing a Steely Dan cover set on Halloween night at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco, and then again on the following night at the same place performing their original works.

Drama Duo

I may be going out on a limb here with this one. Drama Duo (formerly known as DRAMA) doesn’t necessarily fit the usual “sound” of this podcast, but I think you’ll dig it nonetheless. Drama Duo is an experimental dance duo (duh) consisting of producer Na’el Shehade and singer Via Rosa. The two have only been working together for a couple of years, but have managed to forge a tight chemistry that is evident in all of their projects to date. Their music is dancey, yet sad, which is an odd juxtaposition I happen to love. Their song Forever’s Gone makes me want to dance all night in a sweaty basement club while tears roll down my cheeks until the line between sweat and tears becomes indecipherable. Maybe that’s just me.

Ducktails

Ducktails is one of those bands that I wanted to like but found their songs never really did anything for me, until now. On paper, I should have always loved this band. Ducktails is fronted by Matt Mondanile, who was the lead guitarist of Real Estate, one of my favorite bands. They are synth-heavy and rely on a lo-fi indie pop sound to shape their music. Judging by those qualities I should have been sold, but every time I would try to give their music another chance I found myself bored. That is until they released their latest effort Jersey Devil. The song “Light a Candle” is by far the best track I have heard from the New Jersey band, with synths so beautiful I want to make out with them. The synths, not the band.