Most high school seniors spend prom night spiking the punch and trying to make nice with their dates. James Pants was too busy convincing Peanut Butter Wolf to come record shopping.

“We met up and I chauffeured him around Austin,” says the DJ-musician, who goes by James Singleton when he’s not spinning vinyl. A few years and a handful of mix CDs later, Peanut Butter Wolf - he head of Stones Throw Records - asked him to a record a cover of goofball ’80s jam “Grandmaster Lover,” and a record deal soon followed. For Singleton, a hip-hop aficionado with jazz roots who plays drums, guitar and keyboards as well as manning the turntables, it was a perfect fit.

“They had elements of weirdness that I really liked. It seemed like the label didn’t take itself too seriously,” he says. Neither does the humble Singleton, whose DJ name stems from his wife dubbing him “fancy pants,” even if his debut album, “Welcome,” is too gritty and offbeat to be runway-ready. It’s also mostly sample-free, with the instrumentation provided by Singleton himself “out of necessity.”

“I live in Spokane, Washington,” he says, “There’s really no scene here.” Equal parts hip-hop, dance and soul grooves, the album’s 16 tracks were hand-picked by Peanut Butter Wolf out of 100 recordings.

“I’m not very good at finishing songs,” Singleton says, “but I’m pretty good at starting them.”

||| Live: James Pants will open for Jamie Lidell at the El Rey on May 29 and 30, with a “Welcome” release party at Turntable Lab that Friday afternoon.

||| Listen: “Ka$h”

-David Greenwald

Photo by Jake Green.

[Buzz Bands blogger Kevin Bronson has the week off.]

Dance party on Sunset Boulevard — alert the authorities.

Brooklyn eight-piece !!! (Chk Chk Chk) will be announced as a Sunday headliner for the Sunset Junction Street Festival, sources say. The two-day, three-stage fair — with carnival rides, food booths and plenty of toasty pavement — goes off Aug. 23-24 in Silver Lake.

Isaac Hayes and Stephanie Mills will join the party too — along with the likes of Langhorne Slim, Menomena and Health. Previously confirmed for the festival were Cold War Kids and Broken Social Scene on Saturday night, and Sister Nancy, Kinky and the Black Keys on Sunday night, as well as a reunion of psych-rockers Beachwood Sparks.

The Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra will be headlining the Sanborn Stage on Saturday night.

The annual steamy shindig always offers a pretty decent barometer of the local scene too, with SoCal bands occupying the afternoon and early-evening slots on the rock-oriented Bates Stage. This year’s no different — besides ascendant noise-rock outfit Health, the Happy Hollows, Radars to the Sky, the Henry Clay People and Gram Rabbit are a handful of the locals said to be playing the festival. Stay tuned for more.

The schedule so far is posted here.

– Kevin Bronson

Photo/collage of !!! courtesy of Warp Records

He’s the kid with the easy smile and the ball cap tugged crooked — the one who sticks out among his hard-partying friends because, as he likes to joke, he’s “the only black kid in Malibu.” But over the last 2 1/2 years, Shwayze learned quickly where the party stops and work begins: in the studio of producer Cisco Adler.

It was with Adler at the controls that the aspiring rapper made “Shwayze,” his debut album (due July 15 on Suretone/Geffen). “Malibu’s a small town, and I knew Cisco was a rock ’n’ roller and I knew he had helped Mickey Avalon” as producer of two of Avalon’s singles, says Shwayze, born Aaron Smith. “I only knew him as a partyer, but he is one hard-working dude. Still, we would not have guessed this two years ago.”

Shwayze’s humorous, easy-going rapping might not venture much further topically than weed and women, but combined with Adler’s sticky musical backdrops, it’s made the 22-year-old a hot commodity. The single “Buzzin’” has hit major radio; Shwayze played the lead-in set to Miley Cyrus at Saturday’s KIIS-FM blowout Wango Tango; and an MTV reality show launches in July.

Most rewarding, Shwayze says, is how the album came together. “We made the record before we were signed,” he says, noting the absence of multiple producers or scads of guests (Dave Navarro appears on one song, “Flashlight”). “We were just doing our own thing.”

Indeed, it’s the handiwork of the 29-year-old Adler — the Whitestarr frontman, son of entertainment impresario Lou Adler and unofficial captain of the Malibu party squad for which Shwayze is now the unofficial spokesman. Says Shwayze: “Cisco is one talented dude.”

||| Live: Shwayze plays Crash Mansion on Friday and is a headliner on this year’s Warped Tour (June 20 in Pomona; June 22 in Ventura).

||| Listen: To Shwayze’s single “Buzzin’.”

–Kevin Bronson

Photo of Shwayze and Cisco Adler courtesy of Big Hassle Media

Beachwood Sparks, the L.A.-based band that breathed some new life into California psychedelia in the early part of this decade, will play the Sunset Junction Street Festival in August as part of a reformation that will see the group begin work on its third full-length album.

“It just feels like everybody involved, including the audience and the fans, are ready for it,” singer-bassist Brent Rademaker says from Tampa, Fla., the hometown to which he returned two years ago. “We started the process a while back, and when Chris [Gunst]  came down for my wedding, we said, ‘You know, we’ve got to get Beachwood Sparks started again.’ ”

According to the festival’s website, Cold War Kids, Broken Social Scene, the Black Keys and Kinky are acts confirmed so far to play Sunset Junction, the annual street fair on Sunset Boulevard in  Silver Lake. This year’s dates are Aug. 23-24.

Beachwood Sparks never actually broke up, but the band has been idle since 2003. It released two albums and an EP on Sub Pop, which announced last spring that the group would reunite to play July 13 in Seattle in honor of the label’s 20th birthday. It turns out — and Rademaker acknowledged the band wasn’t quite certain of this — that Beachwood Sparks is still under contract to Sub Pop for a third album. Now he says the band is aiming to hit the studio this winter — somewhere around an Australian tour, the details of which have not yet been announced.

During Beachwood Sparks’ down time, its members have been involved, variously, with bands such as Mystic Chords of Memory, the Tyde, Frausdots and All Night Radio, among others. The reunion shows will likely go off without key member Farmer Dave Scher, who is working as the touring keyboardist for Interpol. The lineup will look something like this: Rademaker (vocals/bass), Gunst (vocals/guitar), Aaron Sperske (drums), Jen Cohen Gunst (Gunst’s wife and collaborator in Mystic Chords, on keys), Ben Knight (guitar) and Dan Horne (pedal steel).

No word yet on which night Beachwood Sparks will play. Stay tuned for lineup updates.

||| Download: Beachwood Sparks’ “Confusion Is Nothing.”

– Kevin Bronson

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

Rarely has a debut album sounded so fresh and endearing — without your suspecting the writer copped somebody’s songbook — as the Morning Benders’ “Talking Through Tin Cans.”

The Berkeley-based quartet metes out three-minute dollops of youthful pining as if love songs were something they just sprang on the Internet. “We’re just looking to do something that sounds authentic,” says frontman Chris Chu, an unabashed fan of classic pop who, at 21, appears years away from his first encounter with a razor. “Most of the music I look back on [fondly] has an honest emotion.”

The Benders’ formula of scratchy-but-tasteful guitars, agile melodies and wizened-not-whiny sentiment evolved as if by fate. Chu, a Santa Monica native (in fact, three of the four Benders have SoCal roots), “picked up a friend’s guitar when I was home sick from school one day and started playing,” he says.

Off he went to Cal, where he eventually found Joe Ferrell (guitars, keyboards), Julian Harmon (drums) and, now, Tim Or (who has replaced original bassist David Perales). “After I moved up to Berkeley, I just started writing songs — yeah, I had some girl troubles, but I had some good things happen too,” Chu says. “All the songs are kind of a snapshot of what was going on at the time.”

And to gauge from Chu’s enthusiasm, the album, released this week by fledgling label +1 Records, is just the start. “We love playing music, and so far everything about it is exactly how I wanted it to be,” he says. “We want to make another album already.”

||| Live: The Morning Benders play their album-release show Thursday night at the Echo (free to those who buy the album at Virgin Megastore or at the label’s website). (They will also be back in L.A. on May 19, opening for the Kooks at the Wiltern.)

||| Download: “Boarded Doors.”

||| Watch: The Morning Benders’ new video for “Boarded Doors” is the brainchild of Daniel Stessen, creative director of the L.A. art-film-music collective People Food. Given Chu’s boyish looks, it’s, um, a perfect fit.

Upcoming in L.A.
Speaking of Stessen, he and his People Food cohorts (including the Gray Kid) will perform Saturday night at downtown’s Redwood Bar. … Local psych-poppers the Parson Red Heads celebrate the release of their new EP, “Owl & Timber,” with a show Friday at Spaceland. … And Saturday at Spaceland, Sky Parade marks the release of its new EP,  ”High on Desire,” with a show supporting impressive U.K. newcomers Air Traffic. … The Donnas’ 15th anniversary show Friday at the Viper Room is sold out — as is Saturday’s show at the Troubadour featuring the Duke Spirit, whose new album, “Neptune,” measures up as one of the most solid rock records so far this year. … Electro-poppers Casxio just released a free four-song digital EP (go to their website for the goods) and have a show tonight at UC Riverside (and May 15 at the Continental Room in Fullerton). … With its second EP, “Bloomsbury,” just out, Princeton plays a support slot for Le Switch’s residency on Monday at the Echo. … And it’s a big night in store Monday at Indie 103.1’s weekly shindig at the Viper Room — Everest (its debut “Ghost Notes” just out) and Film School are on the bill.

– Kevin Bronson

Morning Benders photo by Timothy Norris

Aaron Kyle sings as if he’s never five minutes from his last whiskey, or five minutes from his next, occasionally lurching into a down-deep growl you wouldn’t think could come from an angular white dude in a collared shirt and old browline spectacles.

But it’s that voice, and the woeful tales it conveys, that have endeared L.A. fans to the distinctly vintage soul-pop of Le Switch. “We’re not the fashion police,” Kyle says. “I think if you write a good song, people are going to respond, no matter whether it’s gonna end up in Vice magazine. Besides, I’d trade soul for cool any day.”

There’s plenty of that on “We Are Le Switch,” the debut album due this month on Autumn Tone Records (a local imprint run by Justin Gage, the man behind the Americana-leaning blog An Aquarium Drunkard).

Le Switch’s sound, which nods to the likes of Leon Russell, Dr. John and Randy Newman, first began to take shape when Kyle fell in with drummer Joe Napolitano in 2005. Maria DeLuca (trumpet, viola, vocals) joined next, and by the time keyboardist Josh Charney and bassist Christopher Harrison had come on board, Kyle was eager to “make the Leon Russell or Harry Nilsson album we wanted to make,” he says. “Everybody in this band listens to a huge assortment of ’60s and ’70s music — there’s not a lot of new music I can drive with.”

||| Live: Le Switch plays every Monday this month at the Echo.

||| Download: “Pristine.”

Photo by Charlie Chu

Five more L.A. residencies you’d do well to see this month

Mezzanine Owls, whose noisy pop suggests the unlikely collision of Jeff Buckley and Ride, play Mondays at Spaceland. Download: “Snow Globe”

Local six-piece Castledoor is honing (and maybe even adding a bit of edge) to its contagious indie pop every Monday at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa.

Party-pop trio Porterville does Mondays at the Silverlake Lounge.

Gran Ronde, the local post-punk quartet whose debut, “Secret Rooms,” came out this spring on Filter, rocks out Tuesdays at Spaceland (and, just to pile up the miles, Thursdays at the Beauty Bar in Las Vegas).

And Camp Freddy — five famous dudes (Billy Morrison, Dave Navarro, Matt Sorum, Donovan Leitch and Chris Chaney) who like to remind you why they’re famous — demonstrate on Thursdays at the Roxy why they might be the best cover band ever. Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath is joining them this month, and last Thursday’s first installment of the residency featured guests such as Lemmy Kilmister, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Poe and Nuno Bettencourt. That’s some guest list.

– Kevin Bronson

It isn’t as if fans at the Silverlake Lounge never heard an epic guitar solo, but some were surprised on a recent weeknight to see Oystein Greni’s — played after he hopped atop the bar at the Eastside club. “We’re from Scandinavia; we’re allowed to be weird,” the singer-guitarist for the Norwegian trio BIGBANG says good-naturedly.

Not that the band’s roots in Oslo — where they were stationed for six albums over the last decade-plus — have given them much else in the way of traction. Greni and bandmates Olaf Olsen and Oyvind Storli Hoel moved to L.A. in September and “got severely punished,” the frontman says from his Echo Park home studio. “It’s like going to a weird school. You’re so naive and blue-eyed. … There have been many people here who talk so much and do so little — it seems you can make a good long career out of eating lunch, drinking coffee and talking to people.”

Still, the trio that played to thousands in their homeland remain undaunted, releasing their “Wild Bird” EP, paying dues in small clubs and readying the September release of their debut U.S. album, which will mix new material with old. Therein lies another hurdle. BIGBANG’s sound could loosely be described as classic rock played with skate-punk ferocity, but comparisons are all over the map: the Allman Brothers, Bad Company, Rush, the Byrds, to name a few.

“Most American bands are very aware of their demographic, and we’ve never worried about playing to a specific genre,” Greni says. “I love all kinds of music … and a good song is a good song.”

||| Live: The trio plays tonight at Crash Mansion, Wednesday at the Silverlake Lounge and Thursday at the Viper Room’s pre-Coachella party.

||| Download: “Wild Bird” from the trio’s EP of that name.

– Kevin Bronson

Photo by Jan Erik Svendsen

The Airborne Toxic Event, whose danceable, literate rock-noir captured the fancy of L.A. audiences (and radio programmers) over the last year, has signed with Majordomo Records, the indie imprint affiliated with the burgeoning reissue/DVD label Shout! Factory.

The Los Feliz-based quintet, which will release its debut album, “The Airborne Toxic Event,” on July 15, becomes Majordomo’s second signing. The label debuted in August when it released Earlimart’s fourth album, “Mentor Tormentor”; on July 1, the label will release Earlimart’s follow-up, “Hymn and Her.” Although Majordomo is new to the new-release business, its products have major-label distribution through Sony BMG.

“At the end it just felt like Majordomo were the smartest kids on the block,” says Airborne frontman Mikel Jollett, whose band was courted by labels big and small. “You look at it, and you think it’s a new venture, but there is a lot of experience in that room. … They came in with the smartest, most aggressive offer.”

Airborne’s album was made in the Eagle Rock studio of fledgling producer Pete Min, a friend of the band. It will include reworked versions of the three songs on the band’s self-released EP, as well as the single “Sometime Around Midnight,” which vaulted into regular rotation at radio outlets such as KROQ-FM (106.7) and Indie 103.1 (KDLD-FM).

The band has been slotted to perform on “Last Call With Carson Daly” on Tuesday, and has several festival dates lined up for the summer.

– Kevin Bronson

Photo of the Airborne Toxic Event by Jeff Koga

The steely, smoky tones in which Sara Lov narrates the rapturous songs on her debut, “Seasoned Eyes Were Beaming,” hint at old wounds viewed through new resolve. For Lov — and yes, that’s her real name — it’s the sound of a thirtysomething finding her own voice while Dustin O’Halloran, her longtime collaborator in the L.A. band Devics, advances his solo career.

“When Dustin started having all these great things happen with his career, I thought, ‘Maybe I should do something myself,’ ” Lov says. “I feel confident as a singer, but I don’t feel like I have a lot of vocabulary musically.”

While Devics’ albums and their Mazzy Star-like shimmer resonated with burnished textures and what Lov calls “Dustin’s complexities,” her own material keeps it simpler “and maybe a little bit darker,” relying on experiences and images culled from a high-mileage life. Lov was kidnapped by her father at age 4 and lived in Israel and then Minnesota until landing in L.A. at age 12 to be reared by an uncle. She met O’Halloran at Santa Monica College, and after Devics was signed to the Bella Union label by the Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde, the duo spent several years in a small town in northern Italy writing and recording their 2003 album, “The Stars at Saint Andrea.”

It was in Italy, where Lov kept an apartment until recently, that she first penned “a few tunes that didn’t feel like Devics songs,” she says. When O’Halloran’s “Piano Solos” gained traction (and earned him a slot as tour opener for k.d. lang), Lov began flushing out more songs, with the help of producer-multi-instrumentalist (and sideman for the likes of Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette and Gnarls Barkley) Zac Rae.

“He’s done it as kind of a labor-of-love-type thing,” she says. “I’m very lucky that a lot of really great musician friends have come in and played on the record.” Release plans for the album are uncertain. “I’ve learned not to have too many expectations about that sort of thing,” she says. “I’m just happy that I made something that I feel good about.”

–Kevin Bronson

||| Live: Lov is playing tonight, and the remaining Wednesdays in April, at Tangier.

||| Download: “A Thousand Bees.”

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff … other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. “Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: “Tane Mahuta”

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns’ debut album: “Look Out SOS!”

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

– Kevin Bronson