Buzz Bands: Hearts of Palm U.K.’s sly electro-pop

Everything about electro-pop trio Hearts of Palm U.K. seems a little coy, except the music.

The group hails from Echo Park, not England (keeping the “U.K.” appellation draped in mystery), and isn’t even a band but more a project of songwriter Erica Elektra — whose surname, of course, is merely something she adopted after almost being electrocuted while playing bass in the basement of her New York City apartment. Friends Frankie Rose and Billy Kaye (ahem .... not their real names; they’re to Elektra’s right in the photo) have come aboard to help Elektra shape the songs that emerged from “the sorts of things that come with the end of a long-term relationship,” she says.

Self-pity apparently wasn’t one of them; the music on the group's debut album, “For Life,” suggests there is no wound a lousy boyfriend inflicts that an airy melody can’t soothe. “He doesn’t get a love song,” Elektra says of her ex, who is name-checked in a song with an unprintable title. “But he is kind of my mini-muse.” Elektra’s twinkling, twitchy keyboard-and-sequencer ditties imply a long history with Euro artists such as the Notwist and Stereolab, but in place of icy detachment there is plaintive optimism.

And for the last couple of years, things have gone Elektra’s way. The Bay Area native moved to L.A. from Europe, where she had been teaching English, “and played with just about everybody on Craigslist before I realized I needed to take matters into my own hands.” She entered some songs she recorded with Scott Ford in an emerging artists contest and won $20,000 from Bioré Skincare and the Gen Art Foundation. She used the money to make “For Life” in Dan Horne’s studio; the album has been picked up by small New York label Hypnote Recording Concern for fall release; and Eastside audiences have opened their arms and ears.

“I’ve never been in a place where there’s as much cool music,” Elektra says. “I’d much rather be a small fish in a big sea than a big fish in a small sea.”

||| Live: Hearts of Palm headlines the Echo on Wednesday, supported by Happy Stars and the Broken Remotes.

||| Download: "People & Logistics"

-- Kevin Bronson

Photo by Ian Broyles