Exploding Flowers - Watermelon/Peacock (2025)

Watermelon/Peacock finds the Sharif Dumani-led Exploding Flowers seamlessly blending jangle pop, power pop, and psych influences. Dumani’s résumé includes collaborations with Alice Bag, Cody Chesnutt, Sex Stains, The Moon Upstairs, Classics of Love, Nick Garrie, Jowe Head, Nikki Sudden, and Silver Apples, but if you need a single reason to dive into this band, just listen to album opener Crowded Streets—a masterclass in hooky guitar pop. The album shifts gears smoothly from there: What Are We Going To Do brings a quieter jangle pop moment before the band launches into the upbeat, instantly gratifying Life on a Timeline. At first, the sequencing seems to alternate between full-blown hits and more laid-back moments, but in the middle of the record We’re Flying Half As High and American Strife, American Life shake up that pattern. And on the B-side, No Arms Around (The Isolationist) is another highlight, packed with the kind of catchy melodies that stick with you. The same goes for album closer Across A Sea, a song that checks all the boxes of a timeless guitar pop classic.

Exploding Flowers are a Los Angeles quartet who have crafted their own universe of guitar-based pop, with its flourishes of piano, organ, synthesizers, vibraphone and glockenspiel on top of a foundational rhythm section. This music continues a lineage of like-minded melody chasers, from both past and present. Led by Sharif Dumani who has worked with a variety of artists which include Alice Bag, Cody Chesnutt, Sex Stains, the Moon Upstairs, Classics Of Love, Nick Garrie, Jowe Head, Nikki Sudden, Silver Apples and many more, the quartet is comprised of members Josh Mancell (the Moon Upstairs, Cell\Borg), Happy Tsugawa-Banta (Lassie Foundation, Ray Barbee), and Mark Sogomian (the Moon Upstairs). With two previous albums and an ep released, they have been compared to everything from Big Star to the Soft Boys, and L.A.’s Paisley Underground to New Zealand’s 1980s-era Flying Nun Records guitar pop roster (such as the Chills, the Bats, etc.). Exploding Flowers explore some similar territory but expand to occupy their own space in that landscape.

To quote journalist Mariana Timony of Bandcamp Daily Staff for their “Essential Releases” spread on the group, “A colorful and kind-spirited amalgamation that will press all the right buttons for a certain type of pop fan starved for some jangling guitars, handclaps, and sparkling melodies in these days of glitchy suspended animation experienced mainly via computer screen.”

“Watermelon/Peacock” is Exploding Flowers third release packed with analog production, poetic lyricism, and the same strong melodies and hooks we’ve now come to expect from a band that prioritizes its songwriting with smart left turns. Both economic and expansive, they utilize all measures to craft something both beautiful, grand, and driving. Joined on this release by indie veterans Rachel Love of seminal pop legends Dolly Mixture, and Jowe Head of D.I.Y. legends Swell Maps and post-punk/mod/psychedelia legends Television Personalities, this is a release that has something for everyone to enjoy. Album artwork by artist and musician Jill Emery (Hole, Mazzy Star).