Pitchfork

I was so young the one time I visited Hawaii that I might as well have never been. It doesn't matter if you've never gotten lei'd in the Aloha State, either, because, like Panda Bear's Person Pitch, Seattle producer Jason Holstrom's solo project the Thieves of Kailua evokes its own self-contained island locale, easily imaginable if too realistic to be idyllic. A founding member of United State of Electronica, Holstrom uses overdubbed Pet Sounds vocal harmonies, complex song structures, and, yes, ukulele to set out this tale of a visitor to an Oahu beach town (and its pickpockets), but he also updates the Polynesian percussion of 1950s and 60s lounge and exotica. "Now do I look like the purest tourist?/ Look at my skin, so white," he sings in an undulating, tiki-ready bridge, leaving behind the party anthems of U.S.E. for a summer that isn't endless, and could quite possibly result in sunburn. Which is the best we can really hope for, anyway. That, and a summer without "Kokomo".

MP3:> The Thieves of Kailua - "The Thieves of Kailua"

[from The Thieves of Kailua; due 7/24/07 on Mill Pond]