La Luz - the band led by Shana Cleveland – has dropped a new single today titled “Poppies.” The baroque Sergeant Peppers-esque pop song has an air of dystopian surrealness that colors much of La Luz’s new material. The single comes on the heels of their recently announced new album, News of the Universe, out May 24. The LP marks their first for Sub Pop. Fans can pre-order the album HERE. 

La Luz’s Shana Cleveland on “Poppies”

Poppies is about the surreal feeling of going through the horror and isolation of a cancer diagnosis and treatment and then suddenly being out in the bright world again, trying to make sense of it all, feeling like I’m walking through a waking dream, seeing the first wildflowers come out and feeling a similar sense of rebirth.

With a credo adapted from science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, an album title from a collection of metaphysical poetry, and an expansion in consciousness brought on by personal crisis, News of the Universe finds guitarist and songwriter Cleveland embracing a changing world with unconditional love.  News of the Universe is also a record born of calamity, a work of dark, beautiful psychedelia reflecting Cleveland’s experience of having her world blown apart by a breast cancer diagnosis just two years after the birth of her son. 

La Luz will be touring North America, Europe, and the UK in support of News of the Universe, and the first run of dates will kick off May 23 in Barcelona.  The band’s first show stateside is on May 30 at The Crocodile in Seattle, WA for a Record Release Show.  Their touring goes into full swing starting on September 26 for a show in Chicago, IL, stopping at Brooklyn’s Elsewhere on October 9, before concluding with a 2-night run at Lodge Room in Los Angeles, CA, on November 8 and 9.  All shows are listed below.  

Formed by Cleveland in 2012, La Luz is beloved for their ability to balance bedlam and bliss, each new record another fine-tuning of the band’s mix of swaggering riffs with angelic vocals borrowed from doo-wop and folk; a band so reliably great that it makes the huge step forward in confidence and sheer musicality that is News of the Universe all the more formidable. Cleveland, also a writer and painter, has developed into a truly original songwriter with her own canon of haunted psychedelia that, in recent years, has drawn upon the changing landscape around her rural California home for inspiration, notably on last year’s critically acclaimed solo release, Manzanita, a magical realist documentation of her pregnancy and early motherhood that appeared on many year-end lists.

Sonically, the record is all urgency. Songs trip over themselves as if trying to outrun the apocalypse. The powerful sense of openness that permeates News of the Universe is at least partially due to the fact that it is a record made entirely by women—from the performing, writing, and producing all the way through to the recording, engineering, and mastering. “There is something inherently and simultaneously sweet and brutal about womanhood,” says Cleveland. “That is something I hear on this record.”

Working with producer Maryam Qudus (Spacemoth), the all-female environment allowed Cleveland to feel safe tapping into difficult places and expressing hard emotions women are socialized to suppress. Unashamedly vulnerable, unabashedly feminine, and undeniably triumphant, News of the Universe is another knockout record from a band so reliably great that it has perhaps led people to overlook how pioneering La Luz really are: women of color in indie music forging their own path by following their own artistic star into galaxies beyond current musical trends, always led by an earnest belief in the cosmic power of love and a great riff. Never is that more true than on News of the Universe, which might be La Luz’s most brutal record to date but also their most blissful. After everything, how could it not?

La Luz Tour Dates

05/23 Barcelona, ES @ Sala Upload

05/24 Madrid, ES @ Tomavistas Festival

05/25 London, UK @ Wide Awake Festival

05/30 Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile (Record Release Show)

07/27 Portland, OR @ Project Pabst

08/30 Brighton, UK @ Brighton Psych Fest

08/31 Manchester, UK @ Manchester Psych Fest

09/01 Edinburgh, UK @ Edinburgh Psych Fest

09/03 Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew

09/05 Paris, FR @ Point Ephemere

09/06 Sart-Messire-Guillaume, BE @ SMG Music Fest

09/07 Asten-Heusden, NL @ Misty Fields Festival

09/08 Amsterdam, NL @ Indiestadt x Sugar Mountain @ Paradiso

09/10 Cologne, DE @ Bumann & SOHN

09/11 Hamburg, DE @ Prinzenbar

09/12 Berlin, DE @ Badehaus

09/13 Schorndorf, DE @ Manufaktur

09/14 Zürich, DE @ Bogen

09/26 Chicago, IL @ Subterranean

09/27 Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon

09/28 St. Paul, MM @ Turf Club

09/30 St. Louis, MO @ Blueberry Hill

10/01 Louisville, KY @ Zanzabar

10/02 Nashville, TN @ The End

10/03 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade - Purgatory

10/04 Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall

10/05 Richmond, VA @ Richmond Music Hall

10/06 Washington, DC @ The Atlantis

10/08 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s

10/09 Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere - Hall

10/10 Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall

10/11 Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz

10/12 Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern

10/13 Ferndale, MI @ The Loving Touch 

10/28 Denver, CO @ Marquis

10/30 Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge

10/31 Boise, ID @ The Olympic

11/03 Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl

11/06 Sacramento, CA @ Harlow’s

11/07 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall

11/08 Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room

11/09 Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room

News of the Universe is available to preorder now on CD/LP/DSPs from Sub Pop. The album can be pre-ordered in North America from megamart.subpop.com, select independent retailers, and the band’s website, and in Europe and the UK from independent retail stores, and Mega Mart 2 (the new, UK-based sibling site to the world-famous Sub Pop Mega Mart), with vinyl available on limited variants. All colored vinyl versions are available while stock lasts.