Tic Tic Boom!

For Mike DeLay and Leilani Francisco, that’s exactly what Tic Tic Boom!
has been for the last five years. The two founding members live together
above their home studio in Los Angeles and invest everything in Tic Tic
Boom! They pride themselves in independently handcrafting everything
from start to finish—from the home recordings to screen-printed merch
and DIY music videos. In April 2012, the duo will release their third EP
Before the Sun Rises, which promises to be stronger, dreamier, darker, and a major evolution of their sound from their previous releases.

DeLay moved to Los Angeles from Seattle in 2001 with his previous band,
but not long after, things started to unravel. In the meantime, Mike had
befriended fellow bartender Francisco and she had introduced him to
some songs she had written. Their relationship—-musical and
romantic—-blossomed from there. They moved into Mike’s back-alley
rehearsal studio and holed up for a year just writing and practicing.
The band released their first punk-influenced EP How to Defuse a Bomb in 2008.

After DeLay earned his certification as a pro-tools engineer, the two
began writing and recording their second EP, drawing inspiration from
new wave, punk, and indie rock. Released in January 2011, Reasons & Rhymes
received a wealth of praise and recognition from publications like
Sonicbids, Buzzbands LA, and The Owl Mag. CMJ.com described their music
as “hook-laced synthpop that casts live drums and guitars as
conspicuously as it does sugary vocals and catchy synth loops.” It also
earned the band the opportunity to do an official remix of one of the
most popular songs of 2011, Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks,” and
an invitation to showcase at CMJ Music Marathon in New York.

After a year of tirelessly playing shows and releasing acoustic versions
and remixes, Tic Tic Boom! is nearly ready to release their third EP, Before the Sun Rises.
It was dubbed thus by the two’s nearly nocturnal writing and recording
schedule and, as with each of their previous releases, the upcoming EP
showcases a different side of Tic Tic Boom! “[Before the Sun Rises]
deals with concepts of life and death,” explains Francisco about the
inspiration behind the EP. “How all things are cyclical and we’re all
just a small piece of an enormous never-ending puzzle. It’s about
struggling to understand your place in all of that.”


To support their live performance, DeLay and Francisco are joined by
Trevor Hunnicutt on drums and Matt Gurgol on bass. Live, Tic Tic Boom!
commands the crowd to dance with floor-shaking bass synths, sweeping and
sometimes jittery arpeggios, disco-drum beats, and distorted guitars,
all under Francisco’s dreamlike vocals. “You can almost smell the
perfume and sweat from the dancefloor in the electro-pop of LA quartet
Tic Tic Boom,” depicts Kevin Bronson of Buzzbands.la.


As last March, the band will be performing at unofficial venues for
Austin’s SXSW. They have also confirmed a residency at Los Angeles’ Lot 1
Café for May 2012.