Great pop that's not on the radio - La Roux

With Coachella coming up, now seems to be a good time to introduce you to La Roux.  The core group is vocalist, keyboardist, co-writer Elly Jackson and co-writer, co-producer Ben Langmaid.  These two do all the studio creations as a total team effort.  On the road Elly fronts a touring band that includes: Michael 'Mikey' Norris (on keyboard), Mickey O'Brien (keyboards and backing vocals) and William Bowerman (on drums).  La Roux hails from Brixton UK.

Elly did find a little time on the U.S. charts with "Bulletproof".  One of those little tastes corporate radio gives people to try to cover the game of convincing listeners that drek is good.  "Bulletproof" is a one of many great dance tracks and so it lent itself well to playing on the car radio while driving or in the clubs.  It's also a great platform for remixing.  So this catchy song hung around for a little while and seems to have caught the interest of some American listeners.  One of the best remixes was actually done by Skrillex.  La Roux also drew enough attention to land a Grammy in 2010.  It was more than well deserved in the Dance Music category.

My live experience with La Roux was at The Webster (Hartford) a few years ago.  First, the demographic of the artists' audience in my area was very  broad.  From 16-30 LGBT and straight 'typical' dance music fans then there was a small group of really jocky frat-boys.  Everyone got along and had a great time.  From the opening drum beat to the closing note everyone was dancing and singing along.  Elly's energy never lost any momentum and that awesome hairstyle was still intact at the end.  The part that impressed me the most is that she sings at the highest end of her range on almost every track and does so live too without a single cracked note and she does sing live-no lip-sync.  She and the band mesh perfectly which makes for a great performance and musical show.

Currently she is back in the studio with Ben and there is word that we will get a new album this year.  One of the collaborators on the record is one of my new favorite people, Nile Rodgers.  For more on La Roux visit http://www.laroux.co.uk/ from there you can link to their Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Blogger, etc.