Hitting the indie rock scene with a big splash, Wavves 2010’s album King of the Beach was a marriage of grunge guitars, punk attitude, and slacker bubblegum that propelled Nathan Williams’ group to the head of the blog rock class. Though it wasn’t the first music Williams had made — he had released many confusingly self-titled albums previously — it was when all the pieces truly came together. The years that followed charted a winding path that saw the band release albums, hook up with a major label for the slick Afraid of Heights in 2009, get dumped by said label, and turn themselves into a reliable maker of modern grunge punk who aren’t afraid to take chances (as on 2018’s sample-heavy You’re Welcome) or dial it down for some chill balladry as they do on 2021’s Dave Sitek-produced Hideaway.

Wavves was conceived just after San Diego native Williams, at age 21, quit his job as a clerk at Music Trader, while he was dividing his free time between skateboarding, writing for his hip-hop blog Ghost Ramp, and making music using an ’80s Tascam cassette recorder and GarageBand software. Due to his inexperience with the program, the result of one month’s worth of bedroom recording sessions was two full albums of songs: all completely mangled by overdriven inputs. Rather than scrapping the material, he embraced the in-the-red aesthetic and started promoting the songs online. Wavves was quickly embraced and touted as “the next big thing” by Internet music critics and fellow bloggers.

Many praised the immediacy and D.I.Y. nature of his work, and Williams capitalized on those aspects, continuously uploading free digital versions of his music — including two 7″ singles, a cassette, and an EP — all with simple self-drawn artwork or scanned photos for cover art. Wavves’ first LP, simply titled Wavves, became available around this time as well, and it was released in a limited run by Woodsist . The more confusingly titled Wavvves (note the third “V”) followed just after, and was planned for release by De Stijl before Williams jumped ship to Fat Possum . After the track list was revamped, the release date was pushed back a month and Wavvves was officially made available on March 17, 2009. After receiving mostly glowing reviews in April, Wavves got his share of bad press in late May. While performing live at the Primavera Sound Festival, assisted by drummer Ryan Ulsh, Williams had a minor meltdown and walked off-stage. Later, he issued an apology, chalking up the incident to poor decision-making and a drug concoction of ecstasy, Valium, and Xanax.

In 2010, after recording a few tracks with indie drummer extraordinaire Zach Hill , Williams entered the studio with Grammy-winning producer Dennis Herring to record a straightforward and surprisingly polished album. Following the August release of King of the Beach, Wavves toured as a trio with Williams assisted by bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes, former bandmates of the late Jay Reatard . After parting with Fat Possum , Williams released a new EP in the fall of 2011 under the Wavves name, titled Life Sux, featuring guest appearances by Best Coast and Fucked Up . He and Pope then began recording a new album with the production help of John Hill ( Rihanna , Santigold ), using their own money to finance the project. Mom + Pop signed the band and released the slickly produced, very ’90s-influenced Afraid of Heights in early spring of 2013. Williams next focused on his beat-driven project Sweet Valley — which he and his brother Joel started in 2012 — releasing their SV album in July 2013. Not content to stop at two, in 2014 he formed another band, Spirit Club , which featured his brother again, as well as Andrew Caddick (aka Jeans Wilder ).

Williams’ collaborative spirit remained unquenchable and he teamed with Dylan Baldi of Cloud Nothings to record an album, No Life for Me, in 2014. It was released by Williams’ Ghost Ramp label, right before Wavves’ fifth album. The stripped-down, very hooky V was their first album for Warner Bros. and the process was painful for Williams, as a series of angry tweets sent out just before the September 2015 release date made clear. The band jumped back out on the road after the album was released, playing a series of dates with Cherry Glazerr and Best Coast . Wavves’ tenure with Warner Bros. proved brief, and the next album was released on Williams’ own Ghost Ramp label. The sample-heavy, super-poppy You’re Welcome was mainly recorded by Williams alone, with contributions from his bandmates (Pope, guitarist Alex Gates, and drummer Brian Hill) added separately, one at a time. After the album’s touring cycle ended in December of 2018, Hill left the band.

Williams soon found himself back in San Diego, writing songs in a shed behind his parents’ house, the same place where he had written and recorded some of Wavves’ earliest music. He took the songs to Pope and Gates for their input, and the trio entered the studio. The sessions were less than fruitful and the band turned to TV on the Radio ‘s Dave Sitek for help with the production. This time things went much better and the resulting album, mid-2021’s Hideaway, captures the band’s pop playfulness and grungy slacker vibes in equal amounts. It was issued by Fat Possum , the same label that put out the band’s breakout records a decade earlier. ~ Tim Sendra & Jason Lymangrover, Rovi

One of the most fascinating things a music lover can do is witness the growth of a young artist. It starts as an inkling or a glimmer of natural talent and expands into something vast and formidable.

Jakob Armstrong—youngest son of Green Day frontman Billie Joe—began playing guitar at seven years old and honed his craft privately until about sixteen, then playing in bands in and around Oakland after meeting friends with like-minded tastes in music. Soon enough, with the memories of Ultraman action figures fighting in his head, he and a group of friends he cultivated from those years playing around and pouring over records, formed Ultra Q. Its name is inspired by an Ultraman prequel series; a deep cut for import action series lovers.

Fusing together the skyward lift of Interpol, the clever guitar interplay of the Strokes, the maudlin romanticism of the Cure, and the often impressionistic narrative gifts of Arctic Monkeys, Ultra Q’s growth since their 2019 EP We’re Starting to Get Along (and its 2020 follow-up In a Cave in a Video Game) has been exponential. A traditional alternative rock sound was baked by the California heat, shards of broken glass gleaming in the sunlight, spanning the distance from Berkeley to Rodeo Drive. Over blaring guitars and thunderous drums, Armstrong’s voice is carried by a very familiar lilt, self-recorded by Armstrong on a whim while quarantined, could easily be slotted between the blown-out, lo-fi tones of early Wavves and the works of intentionally harsh-sounding Columbus band Psychedelic Horseshit. 

Ultra Q’s earlier work marked the synthesis of a songwriter’s vision and his band’s ability, forged through an invisible existential threat and an ever-changing world, eager to show what they’ve found while we were all inside. But new album My Guardian Angel soars to heights unimaginable for us lowly, earthbound beings. 

Produced by Chris Coady, who has helmed classics by the likes of TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Beach House, My Guardian Angel offers a deep sonic palette to match Armstrong’s artistic ambition. Wildly vacillating between widescreen pop-punk (“Klepto,” the impeccably titled “VR Sex”), romantic new-wave (“Rocket,” “I Wanna Lose”), and shimmering synth-pop (“I Watched Them Go”), the album displays Armstrong’s songwriting talents—along with the musicianship of Kevin Judd and brothers Chris and Enzo Malaspina—conceived and recorded for maximum impact. 

Emotional growing pains, sleepless nights, the ethereal allure of romance, and the notion of sound being so closely attached to memory are all wrapped up in clever guitar interplay reminiscent of the band’s formative influences, but delivered in an identity all their own. The words are attached to feelings we think are going to slip away from us in the fading and tarnished pallor of adulthood; truth be told, those feelings emerge just as freshly the older we get.

And that is the gift of My Guardian Angel, the implicit understanding that growth is merely a tool we use to better process the past slipping away from us. — Martin Douglas

Nicholas Gazin (b. 1983) is widely recognized as the greatest artist of his generation. Painter, writer, photographer, former model before he got too fat, video director, DJ, and general bon vivantery are all things Nicholas Gazin has mastered. Please do not look him directly in the eyes.