Coachella 2011: Warpaint’s watery signature

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Warpaint, looking like the shipwrecked daughters of a one-eyed pirate captain and Stevie Nicks, regaled the Outdoor Stage crowd Friday with their portentous rock that locked into cool-toned grooves. A tall woman in a gold bikini and alarmingly low body fat wandered out of the crowd, her expression dazed in the way that you see many people wearing at Coachella in the hour when the sun burns at its brightest, and then begins slipping away. That dreamy feeling could have only been enhanced by a transfixing band like Warpaint.

Images from the 2011 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival

Not unlike Odd Future or Best Coast, Warpaint is one of the local bands at Coachella that has a home-court advantage -- whether that’s squandered or spent well is up to each act. By the time Warpaint got to ‘Undertow,’ it seemed the four-piece was in safe waters. The defining track on the band’s Rough Trade debut, ‘Undertow’ is the kind of song a band can build a house on: transcendent and a leap forward.

Click through for a clip of Warpaint’s Friday performance of ‘Elephants.’

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-- Margaret Wappler