Music’s Top 10 Rising Stars

Looking at the youthful faces of the Chicago-based Smith Westerns, you’d swear you went to college with them. And you might’ve been right. It’s only been a couple years since the band members were in high school, and their second album, Dye It Blonde has already made it to the U.S. Billboard 200 chart. Their shows have been selling out everywhere, including their most recent stop in Los Angeles at The Echo, where a couple celebrity fans (Kate Bosworth and True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgard) were spotted enjoying the music. “We played here a year ago and there were like 20 people here. So we’re doing something right,” the Smith Westerns’ frontman Cullen Omori told The Daily Beast. The band sounds almost better live than they do on the album; if that’s possible. They have a sound akin to 1960s Beatles’ tunes that make you want to bop your head and dance around. Rolling Stone compared them to the “bittersweet emotional power of Big Star and the shimmering production values of Electric Light Orchestra” and they’ll soon make appearances at South By Southwest, Lollapalooza, and Austin City Limits. 

 

Smith Westerns’ album, Dye It Blonde, was released Jan.18 on Fat Possum Records.