Stream the Energizing Third Album "After the Snow" of Los Angeles DIY rockers Elle PF

Elle PF has finally unveiled their third album After the Snow, a sonorous and tenaciously joyful collection of songs from the DIY Los Angeles four-piece. Composed of band members Ranelle Labiche (lead vocals/piano), Jenessa LaSota (backup vocals/bass), John Acarregui (drums), and Doc (guitar) the group has a definite talent for coalescing their versatile influences in genre and sound into formidable melodies.

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Labiche — who also serves as the band’s songwriter and producer — threads earnest longing, bittersweet romance, and gloaming existentialism across the album’s many enthralling soundscapes. Whether they’re channeling verdant indie-pop as they do on the album’s opening track “Now or Never,” or digging into jumpy rhythms coated with grungy fervor as on “Happy” — the songs of After the Snow are buoyantly eclectic.

Shimmering synth ballads in the vein of Cocteau Twins burst on “And It’s True,” while the drifting melancholy of the piano-led “Love Drifter” drips with the lush resonance of Labiche’s vocals. On the haunting electronica lullaby of “Black and Blue,” she gives voice to the restless anxiety of life’s brutalizing attempts to keep you down, the song’s sodden atmosphere made heavy with the weight of her words.

Ultimately, the album is sustained by Elle PF’s knack for creating such energizingly unique music. Its final two tracks are giddily representative of that talent. Out of the sad hum of violins and sublime instrumentation that begins “Ghost,” the song eventually grows into a drumming anthem that pummels triumphantly along to the jubilant echo of distant guitar riffs. While the album’s final song and title track finds itself carried by the euphonious trill of Labiche into an airy melody of quivering percussion and radiant harmonies — giving the album a fittingly heavenly end.