Photo by Dan Monick

Los Angeles’ the Smell scene of the mid-Aughts was a wonderfully weird period of new music discovery where its circle of DIY punk bands sounded nothing like one another, yet bonded over the shared pursuit of singular noisemaking. Alongside the likes of No Age, HEALTH, Mika Miko, and Vivian Girls, Abe Vigoda were arguably the most transfiguring, beginning as a bright, tropicalia punk band to abrasively compliment the preppier corners of Vampire Weekend’s rise before embracing full-on goth pop on their 2010 standout, Crush. Abe Vigoda would splinter a year later, but more than a decade onward, its formidable half in vocalist and guitarist Michael Vidal and guitarist Juan Velasquez resurface as Cupid & Psyche. “Angels On the Phone”, the lead single from their debut full-length, Romantic Music, mends the time lost over the course of its crystallization of transfixing ‘80s post-punk glum, sizzling neon, and dreamy synth-pop that again breathes mystery into the dark with the duo’s rekindled style chemistry. “It’s not what I thought / It’s what you wanted it to be / Angel laughing,” Vidal sings, as if knowing the music would always pull him and Velasquez back in this strange form of love.

Directed by: Gerardo Guerrero

Cupid & Psyche’s Romantic Music will be released September 22nd on Felte Records.