Girls! Girls! Girls!

The Beach Boys wished they all could be California girls -- in fact, they wrote that song right after Brian took his first hit of LSD, and that’s about as pinpoint a moment as you get for the birth of L.A. psych-pop. Now it's 2010 and you can see where it's going next: Dum Dum Girls' Shop Assistants- Primitives guitar punk; Glasser's loops and voices reverbed toward infinity; Pocahaunted's long-form Fela-vs.-Yoko dub jams; Dunes' clattering "What happens now?" spirit of '79 punk; Pearl Harbor's Manchester-vs.-Maui pop and Best Coast's cranked-up-really-high take on the Ronettes. Some of them are just releasing their first vinyl, some have already made their own underground cult classics and some are about to do both at once.

BEST COAST

MEMBERS: Bethany Cosentino (guitar/ vocals), Bobb Bruno (bass guitar/recorded drums), Adam Garcia (live drums)

HOMETOWN: Eagle Rock

FAVORITE CELEBRITY-ENDORSED WEED: "Matthew McConaughey's," says Cosentino. "I don't know if he really has one, but even if it's just a rumor, I'm totally into it."

FAVORITE L.A. RECORD: "Pet Sounds. When I lived in New York, I'd listen to Pet Sounds all the time on the cramped, disgusting morning subway rides. You could see the sweat on people's lips. Especially in the winter because everyone is wearing 900 layers and when you get in the subway car, you can't take your coat off because there's 900 people around you. So I'd listen to that a lot on the way to school. Just look at everyone and think how mad I was."

BEST CALIFORNIAN OF ALL TIME: "I'm thinking Stevie Nicks, even though she wasn't from here. She came here and recorded all those records and took over, and she has this witchy California vibe I'm onto. I'm a native, but I'm into people that come here and get really into it."

COMING UP NEXT: A tour with Vivian Girls, an LP, an "awesome 90210 T-shirt" drawn by Kate Hall from Dunes and a "weed-related tote bag."

PEARL HARBOR

MEMBERS: Piper Kaplan (vocals), Skylar Kaplan (guitar) and Cody Porter (bass)

HOMETOWN: Hollywood

GUITAR OF PREFERENCE: "Some janky P.O.S. that Skylar spray-painted," says Piper.

FAVORITE CELEBRITY-ENDORSED WEED: "‘Woody Harrelson' by Woody Harrelson."

BEST THING ABOUT WAKING UP IN THE MORNING IN L.A: "Going back to sleep for another four hours. Because you don't have a job."

SAPPIEST MYTH ABOUT L.A. YOU STILL CLING TO: "I don't cling to shit. Reality's relative, you know? A myth to one man could be something completely legitimate to someone else. It's hard for me to look at everything from my own perspective -- I don't know how to separate myself. My whole thing with California -- I've never lived any where else, so I have no idea what is myth and what is real."

COMING UP NEXT: Three seven-inches out via Human Ear, Big Love and PPM.

GLASSER

MEMBERS: Cameron Mesirow (everything)

HOMETOWN: Los Feliz

MOST UNIMPRESSIVE CELEBRITY ENCOUNTER: "Darryl from The Office at the LA X baggage claim," says Mesirow. "There was this one episode where Steve Carell was asking him about things that people do ‘on the street'—you know, ‘urban lingo'— and he made up some funny shit. When I was growing up, I was friends with surfers and they used the word ‘dusion' a lot. I'm bringing it back. It's like, ‘Dude, let me get a dusion of your Funyun.' Am I blowing your mind right now?"

BEST CALIFORNIAN OF ALL TIME: "John Muir. I was determined to have a snap answer for you. And it was easy because I've read My First Summer in the Sierra."

L.A. MUSICIAN YOU'D MOST WANT TO SPEND 24 HOURS IN A STUDIO WITH: "Mark Mothersbaugh. I'm such a huge fan. I've envisioned myself just walking into Mutato Music a billion times. I'm wearing a diamond-encrusted evening gown and glasses identical to Mark's."

COMING UP NEXT: A UK tour, recording with Fever Ray producers Van Rivers and the Subliminal Kid as well as Foreign Born's Ariel Rechtshaid.

Above from top to bottom: Best Coast (photograph courtesty of Best Coast). Pearl harbor (photograph coutesy of Andrew Youssef). Glasser (photgraph courtesy of Ida Falck Øien).

POCAHAUNTED

MEMBERS: Amanda Brown (vocals), Diva Dompe (vocals), Cameron Stallones (organ), Ged Gengras (drums), Britt Brown (guitar)

HOMETOWN: Eagle Rock

SAPPIEST MYTH ABOUT L.A. YOU STILL CLING TO: "That there's a lot of traffic," says Brown. "I think traffic is romantic. If you're not going any where, it's very L.A. to be sitting and listening to tapes in your car and talking. I've had great conversations over traffic!"

SONG ABOUT L.A. YOU'D BE MOST LIKELY TO COVER: "I can't speak for the rest of the band because they'll probably all kill me, but ‘Going To California' by the Zeps. Because Led Zeppelin is the greatest band of all time. We do cover ‘California Love' by Dre and 2Pac live -- when we were in Europe, that was our one cover."

L.A. MUSICIAN YOU'D MOST WANT TO SPEND 24 HOURS IN A STUDIO WITH: "Madlib -- he's the greatest thing on Earth. He lives in the city and he smokes the same pot as our drummer Ged, who always sees his name on the registry at the med-pot place. We're always trying to run into him -- not trying to get in his face -- but we're always two steps behind."

COMING UP NEXT: The Make It Real LP out on Not Not Fun, South by Southwest and a Midwest tour.

DUNES

MEMBERS: Kate Hall (drums), Stephanie Chan (guitar/vocals), Mark Greshowak (bass)

HOMETOWN: East Hollywood

MOST UNIMPRESSIVE CELEBRITY ENCOUNTER: "Tara Reid!" says Hall. "I heard this really annoying conversation in this really annoying voice -- 'I'm really back on track and my weight's great and I'm really happy with how my boobs are!' This voice like 'Eee-ee-ee-ee-ee!' the whole time. I was like, 'That bitch looks like Tara Reid -- that bitch is Tara Reid!'"

BEST THING ABOUT WAKING UP IN THE MORNING IN L.A.: "The bells ringing from the ice cream cart. It's very comforting. You can expect it to be there."

SAPPIEST MYTH ABOUT L.A. YOU STILL CLING TO: "I have serious L.A. love. People come in like, 'This place sucks!' But it's so awesome. We like to get out and have a sense of the neighborhood. There's gangsters all around and they're totally cool with us. They even started tagging our house and smoking weed and having sex right below my window. I think L.A.'s a beautiful place! If people think it sucks— no, you don't understand it!"

COMING UP NEXT: A twelve-inch EP out on Mexican Summer. "We recorded it all in our living room -- it's super casual. We had The Simpsons on in the background."

DUM DUM GIRLS

MEMBERS: Dee Dee (vocals/guitar), Jules (guitar), Frankie Rose (drums/vocals), Bambi (bass)

HOMETOWN: "At this point I can hardly even say we're from any where," says Dee Dee. "We're all from different cities. We're actually tri-coastal, but we don't go to Texas very often."

FAVORITE L.A. RECORD: "I hardly ever think of albums in terms of locations—but Love's self-titled. I love that!"

MOST UNIMPRESSIVE CELEBRITY ENCOUNTER: "I once ran into Leonardo DiCaprio and he was wearing—he wasn't wearing a sweatsuit, but he was pretty sloppy. A crappy T-shirt, a baseball cap and jeans. He was one of my pre-teen crushes… so I was crushed."

SAPPIEST MYTH ABOUT L.A. YOU STILL CLING TO: "When I was a kid and I used to visit, I'd go to Grauman's Chinese Theatre and look at the [celebrity handprints and footprints in the sidewalk] and sort of … not write off the possibility of some day having my own. I have this great photo of me when I'm about 13 and I'm wearing -- I'm in this weird fashion stage -- a feather boa and safety-pin jewelry and I'm putting my hands in Marilyn Monroe's handprints."

L.A. MUSICIAN YOU'D MOST WANT TO SPEND 24 HOURS IN A STUDIO WITH: "Nite Jewel. I feel like if I wasn't doing Dum Dum Girls, I'd probably be doing something more like that. Nite Nite Girl Jewel?" SONG ABOUT L.A. YOU'D BE MOST LIKELY TO COVER: "I might just do 'California Uber A lles' by the Dead Kennedys before any L.A. one. I'm very California—but I'm from the Bay Area originally."

COMING UP NEXT: A "Jail La La" seven-inch, the I Will Be LP out on Sub Pop and a tour in March.

Above from top to bottom: Pocahaunted (photograph courtesty of Caitlin C. Mitchell). Dunes (photograph coutesy of Raul Perez). Dum Dum Girls (photgraph courtesy of Lauren Dukoff).

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