When it comes to picking songs for that carefree, windows-down summer playlist, front seat selectors would do well to consider The Mowgli’s. With acoustic anthems about holding hands beneath a California sunset and disco-punk celebrations of kissing in the dark, the SoCal indie-pop outfit have built a career upon songs in praise of life, laughter and, above all, love.

Indeed, love takes center stage at every Mowgli’s show and on every Mowgli’s record—not just through the band’s music and lyrics, but also through the deep love and appreciation they all have for each other as fellow musicians.

“We all love what we do, from making and playing music to performing that music,” says Katie Jayne Earl, the band’s cherry red-headed vocalist. Speaking from the group’s hometown in Los Angeles, Earl shares that her group’s creative process is based upon collaboration and sharing the spotlight.

“Everyone is really multitalented, so it’s really about making sure that everybody who wants to express themselves differently on the record or on stage has that opportunity,” Earl says. Guitarists Colin Dieden and Josh Hogan, bassist Matthew Di Panni, keyboardist Dave Appelbaum and drummer Andy Warren all sing, and it’s not uncommon for the band members to switch instruments and play with vocal arrangements on stage “We’re always pushing ourselves to be a little bit better and a little bit braver in our craft.”

The Mowgli’s play a particularly vibrant brand of indie rock—full of sunny ukulele chords and choral melodies that are easy on the ears.

Spreading positivity and good vibes is what the band strives to do on stage, as well as off stage through charity work. Last year, The Mowgli’s released the single “Room for All of Us” and donated the proceeds from the song to the International Rescue Committee, a refugee-relief nonprofit. They also wrote “I’m Good,” the single off their sophomore album, Kids in Love, for an anti-bullying campaign.

That’s not to say The Mowgli’s don’t have their faults, Earl says.

“We’re definitely assholes in a lot of ways—just like everybody else—but when it comes to giving back, it’s a really easy thing for us to do,” the singer says. “I seriously can’t stress that enough. If more people knew just how easy it is to make a big difference in somebody else’s life, hopefully more people would make the choice to do that.”

The band recently wrapped recording on their third studio album, due this fall on Photo Finish Records. The as-yet-untitled album was produced by Mike Green, whose past credits include Paramore’s All We Know is Falling and All Time Low’s Dirty Work. Earl says the recording process as “really chill and super awesome,” noting that Green’s production style, paired with minimal outside pressure or opinion from their label, cleared the way for the band to just make music.

“Nobody heard any demos and we didn’t have to get anybody’s approval during the process,” she says. “We just made the record that we wanted to make. We listened to each other a lot, and everybody was the bravest version of themselves when it came to giving their input and sharing ideas. We got a chance this time to hear everybody, because we trust each other after all these years.”

The Mowgli’s upcoming show at The Ritz—which serves as a warm-up before the band embarks on a nationwide tour—will give fans an opportunity to hear a lot of the new music live for the first time. For Earl, being on the road and interacting with fans every night gives the band the ability to spread their positive vibes to audiences across the states, and reminding fans that love is really what it’s all about.

“I think we try to tell people the same things that we try to remind ourselves—because we all need a reminder every once in awhile,” Earl says. “It’s not always easy being the best version of yourself, and we all fail at it regularly. Every once in awhile you need to remember to hit the refresh button.”

The Mowgli’s
Jul 3, 8pm, $20-$23
The Ritz, San Jose

In his mind-bending essay on Marx and Shakespeare, visionary French philosopher Jacques Derrida imagined a future, which comes from the past. “The same question had already sounded,” he writes in Specters of Marx. “The same, to be sure, but in an altogether different way. And the difference in the sound, that is what is echoing this evening.”

Echo. Sound. The echo of past voices in current artists. Artists who could not have been foreseen in past eras, even if they now harken back to those same eras. The interchangeability of times in art.

“It’s not older music, it’s just music,” says Kelly Finnegan over the phone. Kelly sings for the once—or future—San Francisco band, The Monophonics. “Music is the only thing… it’s not like anyone looks at a painting and goes, ‘That’s an old painting.’ It’s just art. It’s a stamp of time.”

The Monophonics came to prominence when Finnegan joined the band in 2010—riding a wave of bands which harkened back to a previous era of music. “Popular music,” Finnegan is quick to clarify.

“Popular music was such a different term back then,” he says. “Because it was just popular music, and now it’s kind of just… pop. James Taylor was popular music, the Isley Brothers, really it just described people who were selling records. You know what I mean?”

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings found great success reviving the classic sounds of ’60s soul and motown in 2002. The soul revival went global with Amy Winehouse in 2007, and Duffy in 2008. More recently, Charles Bradley, with his almost unbelievably moving voice, has captured the popular imagination while recalling a similar era.

Though they draw from a related pool of influences, The Monophonics also bring elements of ’60s psychedelia into the mix, which sets them apart from their contemporaries. Strains of Jefferson Airplane, Love, and The Zombies can be heard all over their 2015 album, Sound of Sinning. The title track, with its bob and weave bass line, tambourine snaps, and crisp ooh-ing background vocals instantly recalls the paisley pysch of the Zombies’ classic, “Time of the Season.”

The band is incredibly tight on record. Each guitar line and overdriven horn part are woven together into a seamless and taught sonic fabric. They sound like they’ve been working out each minute detail of the song together for months on the road. So it is almost bewildering to hear about the Monophonics’ unconventional writing style.

“We don’t demo songs, we don’t rehearse them for weeks, we don’t like go and be like, ‘Let’s see how audiences react,’” Finnegan says. “Every song that you hear is written that day and played like an hour later. So if we show up at noon, we’ll sit around, we’ll talk about what we want to do that day, we’ll listen to some music…and then we start writing a tune. We roll tape that day and record it, and 95 percent of the time, that’s what gets kept.”

This may sound like a slapdash approach. But Finnegan once again draws from an earlier era to explain the thought process.

“A lot of the songs we all like from the ’80s and ’90s,” he says. “Someone would show up to a session and it’d be like, ‘Here’s the song, here’s the charts,’ and a couple hours later they’re rolling tape and, boom, it’s done.”

The proof is in the pudding. The band sounds hot as hell. Throughout the record, moments from earlier times pop up, like the echo of a ghost, drenched in reverb and compression. “A question of repetition,” Derrida reminds us. “A specter is always a revenant… it begins by coming back.”

The Monophonics
Jun 4, 8pm, $13-$15
The Ritz, San Jose

Though he doesn’t have the energy he had in his 20s, Bobby Liebling, the creator and longtime frontman for pioneering metal band Pentagram, says he still feels like a 25-year-old at heart.

“I didn’t grow up,” the singer and songwriter says, speaking over the phone from Mesa, Arizona, where his band is gearing up to perform for what they anticipate will be a packed house.

According to Liebling, his band’s current tour has been going great—drawing crowds that are equal parts men and women from the ages of “6 to 60.”

All of this makes sense, considering. Liebling, who started Pentagram 47 years ago, is 62. With recorded demos dating back to 1972, he has fans that have been into his music as long as he has been making it. There is an entire Gen X subset of his fan base, who discovered his band in the late ’80s and early ’90s; those fans hopped on the bandwagon during a spate where Pentagram was active, signed to multiple labels and touring.

Many of the youngest generation of Liebling devotees—who occupy the coveted 25-to-35 demographic—discovered the band online, where bloggers have identified Pentagram as a seminal, if obscure, group responsible for creating music that would ultimately pave the way for what is now called doom metal: a sludgy and plodding, yet melodic, branch of the many headed serpent that is modern heavy metal music.

For his part, Liebling dismisses the label, noting that all the doom bands he’s heard have growling, “cookie monster” vocalists, while he prefers to keep his vocal lines clean. Nevertheless, the Virginia-born musician is grateful for his group’s newfound fame, which came about thanks to file sharing, YouTube, blogs and a 2011 documentary, titled Last Days Here.

The documentary debuted at South by Southwest, and was quickly snapped up by Sundance. The film follows Liebling through some of his darkest days—beginning with footage from 2006, when the 50-year-old was using heroin, smoking crack and living in his parents’ basement, and ending with the singer straightening out as best he knows how and hitting the road with his band.

“I’ve relapsed here and there,” says Liebling, recalling the years since 2009, when things started going his way. But, he maintains that he stays clean when he’s busy with music—touring and putting out records, like the band’s 2015 LP, Curious Volume. “When I’m on the road, I don’t use anything at all,” he says. “I like knowing what I’m doing. I’m trying to live.”

Pentagram
May 28, 8pm, $20-$23
The Ritz, San Jose

Most gringos know very little about Selena, other than what they may have picked up from the eponymous biopic on the Spanish- and English-language pop singer. However, among Latinos of a certain age, Selena Quintanilla-Perez is much more than the character that launched Jennifer Lopez’s career—she is a diva, on par with Madonna.

Keeping that in mind will make it easier for the uninitiated to understand why last year’s inaugural Selena Tribute Party was such a smashing success and why so many are anxiously awaiting the second installment of the Sonido Clash-hosted party.

Scheduled for April 16, Selena’s 45th birthday, the second annual Selena Tribute Party will celebrate the life and music of an artist whose flame burned brightly and far too briefly (she was shot and killed in 1995 at the age of 23). The event has already sold out and it’s Facebook page shows more than 2,000 people are “interested” in attending—far more than the capacity of BackBar SoFa where the party is to be held.

In an effort to live up to expectations, organizers with Sonido Clash are going bigger this year—recruiting local DJs and flying in artists in from Selena’s home state of Texas for the massive dance party.

“We felt the ripple effect,” says Roman Zepeda of Sonido Clash, adding that he sees the Selena party as an event for which San Jose might become known.

Sonido Clash’s signature fusion of cumbia, reggaeton, salsa, rap, electronic and hip-hop will be deployed in the service Selena’s music. But the tunes will not be the only draw. The intensely competitive Selena look-alike contest will also return, with a $100 dollar prize going to the winner. The organizers say the event will not only cross genre lines, but generational and racial lines as well.

“It will be multigenerational and beyond Latino,” Sonido Clash’s Fernando Perez promises, explaining that the idea is to make the event appealing for everyone, no matter their background.

Local Latina selector, DJ Mare. E. Fresh, of the all female San Jose art and music collective Casa Chikimalas, will kick off the celebration, and the NPR- approved DJ Teardrop, a.k.a. Claudia Saenz, will be spinning her signature combo of soul and oldies on wax.  “I’ve never kept anyone in my life as long as Selena,” Saenz says.

Thee Commons, an East L.A. band specializing in merging cumbia, psychedelic and punk, will perform an all-Selena set and will have a 10” vinyl pressing of their popular, punk cover of “Baila Esta Cumbia” for sale.

Selena Quintanilla-Pérez impacted each of the night’s scheduled artists and Sonido Clash profoundly. Her crossover and accomplishments inspired them all to create and dream. “We should admire Selena for her talents, but we should shine on our own,” says Gracie Chavez, a performing DJ and founder of Houston music collective Bombón. “It’s not being Selena. It’s permission to express yourself creatively. If she can do it, so can you. That’s the real message.”