by Grady Mitchell | Vancouver band Smash Boom Pow consists of brotherly duo Zane and Ulysses Coppard, on drums and guitar/vocals respectively, alongside bassist and producer Tobias Schuch. The band’s emphatic name is echoed in their dark, woozy riffs and punchy, hip-hop-infused percussion. Every Smash Boom Pow song is an amalgam of the three musicians’ divergent tastes — Ulysses cites John Frusciante, The Strokes and Radiohead as influences, Zane has The Roots in mind every time he sits at his kit, and Tobias pulls from darker acts like Nine Inch Nails and The Dead Weather.

Their music sounds like all and none of those bands. The drums are low and heavy, stalking with a deliberate, irresistible pace. Tobias’s bass runs deep and smooth, allowing Ulysses’s crackling guitar and fervent vocals to arc overhead. The boys perfected that sound last year, while recording for their upcoming LP. In fact, they loved Smash Boom Pow’s new direction so much that they wiped every trace of their previous material from the internet. It was a bold move in an age when general practice is to smother fans in minute-by-minute content. But, Ulysses says, “when we started working on the new material for the LP it became clear really, really fast that it was gonna be way tighter than the old stuff.”

Their track A Girl (above) is a good place to start, and those who want to hear more won’t have long to wait. The band has a slew of west coast concerts planned for the coming weeks, including a May 1st show at The Fox Cabaret with Tough Lovers, and the release of their first, as-yet-untitled LP on June 20th at The Remington.