Cayucas brought California vibes and sun-pop to Brooklyn, and to a jam-packed Knitting Factory, on August 29.  I sat down before the show with lead singer Zach Yudin and his bandmates Ben Yudin, Casey Wojtalewicz, and Russell Henon, to talk about surfing, music, and Michael Jordan.

V: Zach, before Cayucas you had a band called Oregon Bike Trails. What started Cayucas, how was the band “born”?
Zach: Well, the guy who runs the label made me come up with a different band name to suit the sound a little better. And we had a song called Cayucos, so he threw out the idea of making that song title the band name. It just makes more sense. Oregon Bike Trails was just a name that I came up with before there was even a song. So once there was actually an album created, Cayucas made more sense.

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Sam Cohen’s post-Apollo Sunshine solo project, Yellowbirds, returns as a four-member band with the release of Songs from the Vanished Frontier.

Since the release of his 2011 Yellowbirds debut The Color, Sam Cohen has added drummer Brian Kantor, vocalist/bassist Annie Nero, and her multi-instrumentalist husband Josh Kaufman. Their brand of psych-pop combines vibes that Cohen describes as “…psychedelic, but less aggressive.”

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[portfolio_slideshow id=23956]Seasick Mama performs Friday, May 24th at Glasslands Gallery

I met up with 27-year-old Marial Maher, better known as Seasick Mama, to talk about her debut EP Dead Like Money, a few days before her upcoming gig at Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg. We sat down at Variety Cafe on Graham Avenue to get her take on Brooklyn, music, and her life as an artist.

Marial, a visual arts grad, told me about how she spent her Cinco de Mayo birthday in the Dominican Republic, shooting a music video. “I thought doing this music video was going to be a small production, maybe me and four more people. But I showed up and was like: holy shit! There were about fifty people on the team, all there to work for me. I was blown away.”

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