Grady is all things endearing.  Originally from Santa Barbara and friends with lovelytheband, this solo act exists somewhere between Beck, Mac DaMarco and Justin Timberlake.  Grady is a sonic buffet line of hip hop, chillwave and acoustic bedroom-pop that helped get the crowd’s palette whetted for what was to come.  Refreshingly earnest and forthright (his catch phrase is “find me, hug me, love me” and began his set atop rollerskates), cheek-flushing songs like “The Idea Of You” (written with lovelytheband), “Garden” and “SO GOOD” are all new earworms you’ll be singing for days.  Check out his songs here.

If you’ve been living in a cave (or under a blanket) for two years, let me tell you about Cannons.  Fronted by Michelle Joy along with founders bassist/keyboardist Paul Davis and guitarist Ryan Clapham, (along with touring drummer Ben Hilzinger), they formed in 2013 via Craigslist and broke out in 2019 with their monster electro-disco banger, “Fire For You”—featured on Netflix’s Never Have I Ever—which has been the song-of-the-summer for what seems like ten years now and never gets old.  With influences like Sade, Prince, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Nicks and Motown, the band navigates an indie pop sound all their own, which blends walking bass-lines and Nile Rogers-esque rhythm guitar beneath Joy’s signature lush silky vocals.  Their set last night was an exploration of crooning sensibility and roller disco, with singles from their previous albums like “Ruthless”, “Baby” and “Down On Love” interspersed with never-before-played-live “Talk Talk” and “Hurricane”.  Not a single soul wasn’t swept up in Cannons’ ability to lift spirits after nineteen months of a pandemic that left the band, as well as the general public, wary of going to concerts again.  If you haven’t yet, please check out the rest of their 2021 tour dates here.

lovelytheband (spelled lowercase) is the indie band you keep running back to.  The LA trio, vocalist Mitchy Collins, guitarist Jordan Greenwald and drummer Sam Price, (along with Chainsmokers’ member Alex Pall touring on keyboards) are not only here with their 2018 feel-good breakout single, but so many other indie pop jams.  From the high-intensity “idwgtyp” (“I Don’t Wanna Go To Your Party”) from their 2020 release Conversations With Myself About You, to the more dewey “Make You Feel Pretty” (from Finding It Hard To Smile) to more traditional indie pop ballads like “Loneliness For Love”, these boys know how to get a crowd on its feet.  With musical influences from The Chainsmokers to Phoenix to Dire Straits and Weezer, lovelytheband is as versatile as they are ready to party.   Giving a small PSA about mental health and depression before their second encore “broken”, Collins cajoled the crowd to think about the past two years and “…check on the people who are happy on the outside…sometimes they are hurting the worst,” offering that a battle with mental health is a fight against your own brain, so “…you’re not weak, you’re a fighter.”  lovelytheband is not just here to make you feel good, but as Collins also says, “you’re perfectly you the way you are.”