KCRW DJ Marion Hodges speaks up about one of her favorite LA acts:
“Dum Dum Girls first appeared on my radar at the end of 2008. At the time very little was known about the project except that it all sprang from the mind of a mysterious woman who called herself Dee Dee, who may or may not have had something to do with a more well known band, and who never played live.
Well, here we are a little over a year later. Dee Dee released a few singles on both CDR and vinyl and revealed herself to be Kristen Gundred of the San Diego-based band Grand Ole Party, and finally got herself a full live band. I am quite relieved to see the gimmicks relegated to the back burner and the songs being pushed to the forefront. She does a nifty spin on filtering Phil Spector-style girl group melodrama through layers of fuzz in a most delightfully punk rock fashion. What sets Dee Dee apart from the many that are embracing this endlessly satisfying sound is her execution. She has an incredibly powerful singing voice, a knack for zeroing in on perfect harmonies, and a way of manipulating sound that makes every inch of her performance from the purest pop thrill to the most jarring shard of noise resonate to your very core.
The new year finds her signed to Sub Pop with a 7″ single for one of her strongest songs, “Jail La La,” due on February 15, and her first full length “I Will Be” due on March 29. She’s teamed up with producer Richard Gottehrer who has produced Blondie, the Go-Gos, the Voidoids, and the Ravonettes, which sounds like a match made in heaven to me.
The band blew the crowd away during a recent show at Spaceland, with talk of how great the set was spilling over into multiple Facebook status updates the next day. Something tells me that “I Will Be” will have a similar effect on the music-buying public in 2010.”