Wavves — Wavvves

Wavves is The Beatles to No Age's lo-fi Rolling Stones.

The San Diego native, otherwise known as Nathan Williams, creates warm surf rock-meets-shoegaze tunes about goths, demons and the beach, often combing his inspirations on tracks like "Beach Goth" and "Beach Demon."

Of course, the vocals on the non-instrumental tracks are buried under a haze of mic effects, so speculating as to what he's really getting at is anyone's guess. Though the instrumental noise tracks are interesting, they get a little monotonous and throw off the record's pacing.

Williams' spiritual cousins up in L.A. inject an art school cool into their music, while Wavvves best songs exude bedroom-pop charm and innocence underneath the cacophonous noise. It's no wonder the blogosphere has thrown up reams of praise for the one-man band, although '90s lo-fi nostalgia probably helped too.

Wavves' logo, a re-appropriation of The Wipers, is incredibly telling of their sound — pop music buried under a mountain of overdriven riffs. Can the grunge revival be far behind?

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