No matter which coast has dibs on your heart (if your heart even cares about such things), it’s tough to deny the pulse currently thrumming through Los Angeles. From the icy Violet Tremors and Frank Alpine to the sweltering Present Moment and just-transplanted Jewels of the Nile; from Stallengrad’s black metal disco to Teams’ strobed-out dance; from Chelsea Wolfe to Zombelle, Bestial Mouths to Disaro, Killing Spree to Part Time Punks to dozens, hundreds, more: The Los Angeles heartbeat is, at its best, bloody and beautiful and constant.

And then there’s Brandy St. John. She makes beauty like you wouldn’t believe, the would-be oxygen to LA’s blood, but you probably have yet to meet her; though it’s gaining loads of traction, her solo project The Long Wives still simmers just below the radar. But it’s the good kind of simmer, the deep and mysterious kind; the kind that makes you wonder how you’ve managed to miss her dark, tumultuous fallen-angel folk…and when, where, you can hear more.

Holy Water by The Long Wives

Self-described as writing “songs about death and love, and the death of love,” St. John spins haunting yarns through madness and misery, endless hope and its terrible indecency, each woven simply with a guitar, piano and her throaty, impassioned voice. The Long Wives is the stuff of lucid dreams; tangible unil you try to touch it — then it whispers away like so much cool air. But close your eyes and go back for more; hers is a dreamscape of angels and demons, love and its perfect loss, the Los Angeles of Francesca Lia Block and Nick Cave and Trinie Dalton. The veins of a city, all that beauty, bloody and infinite.

Hear more at The Long Wives’ Soundcloud, and watch her exclusive videos on YouTube. (Embeds were disabled, but trust me. Go.)

Off Toward the Great Sea by The Long Wives

- Rue Sauvage