Best Coast

With an innocence redolent of 1950s pop and a fondness for 1960s Californian surf music, Best Coast hit the big time in 2010 with the single Boyfriend and the album Crazy For You appealingly blending the old and the new. The band is built around singer/guitarist Bethany Cosentino, the daughter of a musician and a former child actress who first started writing songs in her teens and had already built a strong following on the internet by the time she was 17 - after posting her songs on MySpace using the name Bethany Sharayah. She was offered various record deals but instead joined the experimental band Pocohaunted - strongly influenced by the Cocteau Twins - with her friend Amanda Brown, and spent time in New York before returning to LA to link up with multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno to record demos for what was to become Best Coast. Mixing California's surf pop heritage with the style of 1960s girl groups while laced with sharp, punky guitars and a garage mentality, they played "songs of summer, sun and sea". Adding drummer Ali Koehler (ex-Vivian Girls), the band quickly made their mark with the simplistic urgency of teen love tracks like Up All Night, Make You Mine and When I'm With You. Becoming media darlings and a powerful live attraction, they released debut album Crazy For You - notable for a striking picture of Beth Cosentino's cat on the sleeve - in 2010