360 Staff Pick: Wild Flag

The first track on Wild Flag’s debut release is called “Romance,” and ends with this:We love the sound, the sound is what found us, sound is the love between me and you.

I love how we don’t know who the “you” is. The song might be about a lover, but the way Carrie Brownstein switches to “we” suggests something else. She could be singing to us fans, who’ve kept the indie-rock flame alive in our hearts. (Brownstein played in the late, lamented Sleater-Kinney, the most ass-kicking three women ever to play rock together.) Or she could be singing to her bandmates, friends who have played together over a decade-plus: Janet Weiss, also of Sleater-Kinney and of Quasi; Mary Timony of Helium; and Rebecca Cole of The Minders. “Me and you” is the democratic promise rock holds out, generation after generation: that we are all, fans and stars alike, together in this thing, united by the power of the music, that they only exist because we’re here for them. Amen.

Wild Flag formed last year; the self-titled release is just out. Sound is the love, and Wild Flag’s sound is not the tight ferocity of Sleater-Kinney, but a looser garage-pop. It makes room for plenty of reverb, a touch of fuzzy keyboards here and there, even an echo of psychedelia, a heavenly backup round ofbah bah BAH bah. Above all, though: the hooks are killer. This is music you can party to, dance to, sing along in the car with, loudly, to the embarrassment of your children, as I did. Or what the hell,screamalong with it. Wild Flag is the scratch of an itch you might have forgotten you still had.

Video: Wild Flag’s “Romance”