Butterfly Bones + Beach Cats – free indie MP3s

Sweet Reese from San Francisco indie electro players (possibly playas) Butterfly Bones sent us an MP3 from their album Pretty Feelings, a collection of “stuff we’ve been working on in our co-op basement;” which suggests a shockingly hot basement, because their tracks make me want to jerk my spine and shoulders in bizarre but satisfying directions, and throw all my layers and layers of Montreal sweaters off to reveal the happy, San Fran, secret, sparkly catsuit beneath.

Knowing our interest in the soft sonic underbelly, and livingroom and bedroom and kitchen recordings of all kinds, Reese also sent a track from an American cousin, a musical island of a man I’d like to meet, who for now goes by Beach Cats:

i also wanna show you one of my favorite songs. it’s a bedroom recording from my cousin who lives outside of new orleans. it’s called ice cream fingers, and i think he’s awesomely talented. he keeps changing his band name, but i think he’s Beach Cats now and will be for a little while. Ice Cream Fingers is an unfinished instrumental track. i think it’s perfect the way it is, but it’ll be even better after he adds vocals. it’s really cool cause he sort of comes up with this stuff all on his own. i mean that there aren’t too many people around where he lives that are into this kind of music, so he’s kind of an island of a man without the internet (don’t tell him i said that). anyway, he’s believes in a lot of things. i think you can tell in the songs he makes.

From the press release:

Butterfly Bones is half man / half electronics. Most often, in the early predawn hours, they can be found buried under a maze of wires and blinking lights manipulating the various sequencers, randomizers, synthesizers, samplers, and effects loops that have eaten their way to the forefront of their sound. The final product of their midnight machinations takes the form of a full live band backed by laptops, loop machines, and sequenced beats.

Butterfly Bones’ roots reach into the deep South, where guitarist / vocalist Reese Donohue and drummer Joe Gray attended school amidst the sugarcane fields of Louisiana. Although Gray had been playing drums since the days of elementary school, music came to Donohue in a roundabout way. While tubing behind a jet-ski in the Bayou Teche, Donohue swung too close to the banks and collided with a floating dock. After two weeks in the hospital, Donohue found himself bedridden for the entire summer. To help while away the hours, family friend and Louisiana swamp pop legend CC Adcock offered to bring by a guitar and teach Donohue a few chords.

Years later, Donohue and Gray found themselves relocated to the Bay Area, where they met Los Angeles native Austin Fraser playing bass in the basement music room of their UC Berkeley Student Co-Op. The trio formed an instant bond, but the formula for Butterfly Bones solidified with keyboardist Steve Lance. Lance, fresh off of a national tour opening for INXS with his former band, decided to enroll at Berkeley, where he met Donohue, Fraser, and Gray.

One year later, Butterfly Bones is releasing their debut EP Pretty Feelings (Secret Sauce Records). What began as a lofty, guitar-heavy shoegazey full-length, Pretty Feelings evolved during the recording process, and was eventually parsed from 14 tracks to 5. All the songs on the EP were written during the recording process, and not one track from the original album remains. Inspired by the heat of the dance floor and memories of carefree summers, Pretty Feelings is the first of many releases from up-and-comers Butterfly Bones.

“Butterfly Bones has been skipping around sprinkling their magic mix of colorful space blips and hip pop rock all over this fair country. The boys’ catchy electro tunes are comparable to Cut Copy, Passion Pit, and Starfucker but with a west coast laid back twist of lime mixed in. Their gleeful synth hooks and shimmer smooth melodies remind us northern folk it really is always sunny in California, which just isn’t fair. This past tour marked the band’s east coast debut, and their throw down in Brooklyn earlier this month was a revved up vision of crowd surfing shoulder to shoulder dance party good times. So grab a beer, turn up the heat, and give these boys a few spins.”

-Baeble Music

“This is the sound of sunshine: gleeful synths, featherlight melodies, no-fuss rhythms, and laidback tempos for dancing when it’s too hot to dance. More specifically, it’s all about the attitude of those ubiquitous electronics – smooth, smiling, just happy to be there. In five songs and 22 minutes, Bay Area newcomers Butterfly Bones drop the soundtrack to your Indian summer.”

-East Bay Express

“Butterfly Bones, if their music had a texture it would be velour. If it had a taste it would be pop rock candy, complete with the fantastic crackle. Oh giddy smile!”

-Bring Me Up

”For those eager to break out the jelly sandals, side ponytails and neon of yore, the perfect opportunity has presented itself: jamming to SF’s Butterfly Bones will bring you back to the Cyndi Laupers and the Bananaramas of your youth. Many tracks feature simple sing-along lyrics, making for awesome late-summer road trip tunes.”

-The Bay Bridged

“Butterfly Bones’ new EP is getting a lot of love from my stereo. The band crafts synth heavy indie pop songs that are so easy to fall for. Lyrically they remind me a bit of Magnetic Fields but do not sound quite as heavy as a Stephin Merritt project… Bones is of a much lighter fare. And while they don’t have much in common with MGMT, Butterfly Bones leaves you with a similar feel good feeling.”

-Big Stereo

“Someone’s gotta fill the airwaves with catchy dance-pop when Cut Copy is locked away in the studio *enters Butterfly Bones*”

-Hot Biscuits

“Pretty Feelings is like that first beer on a hot, sticky summer’s day. Its a blast of cool energy urging you to get your ass outside and do something fun. The song sounds like hundreds of overly good looking kids with huge smiles on their faces, just running around in the streets, not a care in the world.”

-Binary Entertainment

“Their debut Pretty Feelings is a synthlicious selection of summery songs to be your sonic serenade whilst you sweat, swim or sit back and sip a strawberry margarita, whatever your sunshine activities are.”

-Silence Killer

“Feel-good chill-out drink-up sun-shine pop, “XOXO” comes correct in many ways but it’s the back to back synth and guitar solos that pop my bottle. Their Pretty Feelings EP is out soon and packs 4 more sparkling ear-nuggets. Get on it people, their local gem status is about to bust out.”

-The Burning Ear

“Butterfly Bones is a new name to me, but after listening to this track they will be on my watch list. XOXO is a perfectly loveable, danceable, light-hearted jam that will bring you back to life after listening. A lot of songs that I’ve been posting are very synth heavy, however in XOXO the synths are prominent but not overpowering, which is refreshing. I don’t have anything bad to say about this song, it’s pretty much as perfect as it can be.”

-Cute Girls Dance!