LOUDCROWD PICK OF THE WEEK: Dum Dum Girls Catholicked

Dee Dee AKA Dum Dum Girls

The divide between “punk” and “new wave” once seemed to be this unbreachable chasm. One of them offered “the truth,” while the other made no such claims but was generally more fun at parties. Here in the wonderful future, it’s absolutely clear you can have both at the same time — just listen to this amazing, ditortion-pop jam here! It’s totes new wave punk.

Dum Dum Girls is the alias of one Talk Talk-loving librarian named Dee Dee, from Los Angeles, CA. Dum Dum Girls has only released a few singles and one 12” EP on little labels like Hozac and Captured Tracks, but she’s already survived a few brutal bidding wars. As I understand it, Dee Dee’s not ready to sign to a major label yet, preferring to grow things indie-style for now.

Her music’s a uniformly excellent update of the moody, pretty yet noisy garage-pop pioneered by the likes of Jesus and Mary Chain, the Shop Assistants and Black Tambourine. In the little emailing I’ve done with her I’ve found her to be unpretentious and charmingly vague about her identity; I think she’ll go far. In fact, I hereby predict that within a year Dum Dum Girls will be at least as big as the Vivian Girls or No Age.

—DJ Yeti