CROWBAR SHOW - Shy Girls, Young Ejecta, Alma Contra

Shy Girls, née Dan Vidmar, is a 27 year old vocalist and producer out of Portland, OR. Vidmar spent the last several years working nights at an emergency room, returning home in the pre-dawn hours to craft a unique breed of soulful future-pop. What began as a bedroom recording project became an all-consuming passion for Vidmar, who took a leap of faith and decided to turn down his acceptance to medical school and focus on Shy Girls full time.

Since then, Vidmar has begun churning out seductive pop hooks with a dark edge in full force. His bold productions are influenced by boundary-pushing club music and eccentric hip-hop, yet are grounded by his heartrending R&B vocals which exude a deep authenticity.

After releasing his first EP, Timeshare, with LA tastemaker label Hit City USA in the fall of 2013, Shy Girls quickly started garnering attention from an array of artists and producers. Vidmar has collaborated with dance music heavyweights like Cyril Hahn, ODESZA and Jagwar Ma. He's also toured clubs across the country in support of artists as divergent as HAIM, Little Dragon and Grammy award-winning R&B singer Maxwell.


Yong Ejecta is an electronic duo based in Brooklyn, NY comprised of singer-songwriter Leanne Macomber (Fight Bite, Neon Indian) and acclaimed producer Joel Ford (Autre Ne Veut, Oneohtrix Point Never, Ford & Lopatin). Their collaboration began in 2012 when Ford sifted through years of Macomber's foggy melodic bedroom demos. He, in turn, offered instrumental pieces of his own and a record was in the works. His slick sound and skillful arrangements elevated Macomber's lo-fi pop ballads, while her acrobatic melodies and whispery vocals gave whimsy and dimension to Ford's determined beats and dancable textures.

The result was their well received genre-traversing debut "Dominae". The band would go on to perform these ten tracks showcasing their inspired yet disparate talents in a variety of iterations and settings. Macomber's previously frayed-edged love songs were now granted the grandiosity of the emotions implied therein. What Leanne describes as Joel's "endless tinkering" now urges and embellishes the themes she is forever exploring in her music: "Unrequited love, failed attempts at adulthood," and perhaps most importantly, "the death of her closest friend."

Macomber describes Ejecta as a character, one that is conceptually represented by volcanic activity and the earth's constant state of change and rebirth. Leanne explains a desire for Ejecta to be "universal", "timeless," and representative of the "everywoman".

Young Ejecta's upcoming release "The Planet" is an expressionistic marrying of ambient omniscient storytelling and seductive glittery unrestrained dancefloor mayhem. The band are previewing these songs live, in anticipation.

*Dominae, was released November 5th, 2013, on Driftless Recordings (a completely independent label founded by Ford and collaborator Patrick McDermott) in the United States and Happy Death over the rest of the globe. Happy Death was founded by Peter Darlington and Ed Horrox (4AD).