Death Valley Girls, Adult Books, Spooky Cigarette

Think of Death Valley Girls as an acid-tripping science experiment that’s been buried alive, and resurrected as a sexually liberated dystopian chain-gang. A cosmic scar, if you will, on the hills of Echo Park, where the experiment began in 2013 by proto-punk Bonnie Bloomgarden and guitarist Larry Schemel — who got lost in the desert, returned to their haunted garage in Echo Park, and pieced together their vision with shopworn images of sexploitation babes, a blood-soaked Iggy Pop, and Bloomgarden’s series of phantasms, the result of spending a year in a mental institution, where she planned her neon-glowing odyssey by listening to Black Sabbath and UFO, reading about alien conspiracy theories, and deriving her band’s moral compass from a line she saw in a movie: “Everybody’s gotta be in a gang,” from campy sexploitation romp Switchblade Sisters (1975).

Adult Books is a post-punk band from Los Angeles, California. Its members are Nick Winfrey for vocals and guitar, Daniel Quintanilla for bass, and M.M. Sina for drums.

Spooky Cigarette music is dirigible synths, cumulonimbus pop sounds and the subtly decorated borders of night and day.