Alex Izenberg

The music of Alex Izenberg rides the smoke trails of Los Angeles’s golden-age fade. Over the past decade, the multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter has been maturing his top-shelf vintage sound across a handful of obscure aliases, and more visibly, a quietly stellar quartet of albums for Domino Recording Company. For 2024’s Alex Izenberg & The Exiles, produced by indie luminary Phil Ek, Izenberg assembled a loose-knit crew of standout LA musicians (many of them longtime friends) to shape one of the most ambitious and refined takes on his retro-pop sound.

Izenberg taps members of that same circle on a batch of new material for Mexican Summer that coolly pivot toward the bright punch of sunbleached funk. Subliminally inspired by some of his all-time heroes—The Beach Boys, Dire Straits, Pink Floyd—these songs trade the sweeping, time-warped atmospheres of his earlier work for tactile grooves and unflinching lyrics that land fast and linger long.

The first single, “Old Gold,” unfolds as a breezy meditation on Alex Izenberg’s endless affection for time tested rhythm and groove, free-wheeling and brimming with feels. For Izenberg, the 60s and 70s records he loves are more than just a forever-spring of inspiration—these sounds are grounding forces that have the power to transform and even heal. The song’s refrain “sing it with me, my love” feels less like a lyric and more like an invitation, framing “Old Gold” as an open-hearted soundtrack for living that bops along on a piano riff thick with easy and infectious joy.