BUZZ BANDS

Hello Fever is running high

The post-punk trio Hello Fever lurches along like dozens of bands in the L.A. underground, juggling musical vision with day jobs and personal lives and finding support at almost-secret venues such as the Smell or Il Corral and on college radio. Often the obstacles to making music seem insurmountable -- like when your band’s co-founder up and moves to Europe right after your debut album is recorded.

“I had to step back and rethink a lot of things,” singer-drummer Chy Lin says of what transpired after her original collaborator, Stacie Lyons, moved away in December. “She sang on half the songs, so I had to step up. Playing drums and singing is a difficult thing, but we have a lot of female-male vocals and we didn’t want to lose that when we reconfigured.”

The album, “Broken Lines” (released last month on indie label Sound Virus), offers the requisite stab of guitars, desperately pulsing bass and a riot-grrl (and -boy) lyrical antipathy. Lin credits guitarist Sam Farfsing with adding a lot to the original lineup, which recorded with producer Alex Newport. And bassist Jonah Flicker, who replaced Lyons, brought an appropriate sensibility.

“He’s from the East Coast like me, and what I’m used to is a sound that’s really raw and gritty,” Lin says. “Some of the difficulty with L.A. audiences is they’re used to bands that are really polished and heavily produced.”

That won’t necessarily be the case Sunday, when Hello Fever joins more than 20 other local bands (including the likes of Irving, Lavender Diamond, the Willowz, Darker My Love and Die Princess Die) at the KXLU 2000 Fundrazor. The shows, starting in the afternoon at the Echo and Jensen’s Rec Center in Echo Park, benefit Loyola Marymount radio station KXLU-FM (88.9), an incubator for much of L.A.’s indie music.

The Weepies aim to move you

The Weepies write the kind of songs that film and television supervisors cry for -- billowy ruminations that move through the mind’s sky like cumulus on a spring day. If they stop short of bringing rain, it’s probably just the listener.

“That’s where the name comes from -- we want to make music from, and for, that place that moves you,” says Steve Tannen, half the Weepies’ songwriting tandem. “It’s like Steely Dan said, ‘I cried when I wrote this song ...’”

No tears were shed in the early days on Tannen’s collaboration with singer-songwriter Deb Talan, unless they were tears of happiness. The pair -- she was based in Boston, he in New York -- met because each was a fan of the other’s music. “She showed up at one of my shows in Boston with a bevy of about 25 beauties. They were all dressed in black, but she was wearing red,” Tannen says. “I did the same in New York City, except all my friends are kinda goofy. They said, ‘You know her?’

“Deb and I tiptoed” into collaborating, Tannen adds, “simply out of mutual respect for what each other was doing.”

When it became evident the pairing was synergistic, however, they hotfooted it to Southern California, for its proximity to the film and TV industry. The Weepies’ debut for Nettwerk, “Say I Am You,” was made in a rented cottage in Pasadena, the album’s lush folk-pop flushed out by a cadre of studio musicians. And, indeed, the music is making its way into cinematic projects, including the single “World Spins Madly On,” featured in the movie “Friends With Money.”

The Weepies perform tonight at the Knitting Factory.

Fast forward

*Shouts: To the Phoenix Foundation, the New Zealand sextet whose affable, psych-tinged pop won a few friends at shows this week at Spaceland and Safari Sam’s.... And to Bedroom Walls, who celebrated the release of “All Good Dreamers Pass This Way” with a winsome show at the Troubadour that opened with some of Lavender Diamond’s charm.

*Touts: Southland expatriate Richard Swift, now living in the Northwest, returns to the El Rey Theatre on Friday night, paired with Josh Ritter.... Silversun Pickups, a month away from the release of their debut “Carnavas,” perform ahead of San Francisco’s Film School on Friday at the Echo.... You’ll want to buy them new instruments when you see them, but the brass-packin’, deliriously ragtag Morning 40 Federation are in town from their native New Orleans this week, at 14 Below in Santa Monica on Friday, at On the Rox on Saturday, at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach on Sunday and at Spaceland on Monday.... Monsters Are Waiting are monstrously busy -- they’ve played three shows already this week; building momentum for the July 18 release of “Fascination,” the trio plays the Monday night residency this month at Spaceland.