Eversons Pre-Orders + Who Are The Porch Singers??

We are very excited to announce that The Eversons debut album "Summer Feeling" has just come back from the pressing plant, on green vinyl.



The album is due for release on 23 April but because only 300 copies have been pressed you can now start securing your vinyl preorders today.

CD and digital presales are also available.

The Cool Rainbows album is also available for preorder (CD, Blue Vinyl, Digitally) and is released this month, on 19 March.



The Porch Singers will be supporting Cool Rainbows at their Auckland album release at the Wine Cellar on the 25 March.
And exactly WHO are the Porch Singers?

Well apart from the strikingly obvious clue on the gig poster, I can tell you that they are comprised of members from a flagship Lil' Chief band that plays only rare performances, and are certainly not to be missed!

If you need more strikingly obvious clues, it's original Tokey Tones members Scott Mannion, Gareth Shute and Nick Buckton, plus a bunch of generation one Lil' Chief dudes like Ryan Mcphun, James Milne, and Jonathan Brunette performing hits from the albums 'Caterpillar' and 'Butterfly' plus unreleased classics like "A Capella Loves The Country" from the sophomoric Tokey Tones release which after nine years we are still hoping is going to be finished one day.

They are performing as The Porch Singers, because founding member Li Ming Hu will be overseas and unavailable to play with the band.

Truly a band ahead of their time, they were aligning themselves with indie cats in music videos well before it made sense in the marketplace.

Princess Chelsea Colouring Books!

A special run of 50 Princess Chelsea colouring books are now available for a limited time from the Lil' Chief online store.

These are limited to 50 eight page copies that are designed, hand sewn and numbered by New Zealand based artist Harley Jones. The illustrations are from a photo shoot Harley put together with Chelsea as well as stills from her music videos.











Harley Jones is an artist currently based in Dunedin, New Zealand. He most commonly creates large scale outdoor paintings, collaborating with artists in Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland. Recently he has been more focused on illustration and concept work for bands / poster art for local shows.
Coincidentally, he also designed the poster for the Eversons + No Aloha show at Cassette Bar in Auckland tonight!

New Princess Chelsea Music Video

Princess Chelsea has finally dropped the music video for Yulia, an anthemic & visual masterpiece sure to appeal to the myriads of people who are into cats and having tumblr accounts.



Princess Chelsea & Her Best Friends will be playing a special show this Sunday 26 February, at the Wine Cellar with Boycrush and Guts. In keeping with the slightly incestuous Lil' Chief vibe, Boycrush is the project of Alistair from the Ruby Suns, and Guts the project of Bradley Artesque, former TeenWolf colleague.

A special run of handmade magical princess themed colouring books made by Harlequin Jones will be available at the show!

Cool Rainbows Pre-Orders!

With the imminent release of Cool Rainbows debut 'Whale Rocket' on March 19 - Pre Orders are now available on the Lil' Chief Website for both limited edition Blue Vinyl and CD formats.

Cool Rainbows Auckland album release will be on Sunday the 25th of March at the Wine Cellar with support from surprise guests, possibly on the Lil' Chief Roster. Stay Tuned!

One Million Views - An Essay On Achieving Internet Hype in 2012

Well today a song I wrote called ‘The Cigarette Duet’ has hit one million views on Youtube.



To blow my own trumpet, after I had finished writing it on the Roland E-20 I used to play in Teenwolf (a keyboard which for some inexplicable reason appears to have a large bitemark taken out of the 3rd A key) I decided it was a catchy and good pop song and was fairly convinced I’d written an indie hit. I began to suspect that I’d written an indie crossover hit when early on my parents leaked it to a number of Jehovah’s Witnesses who gave them very positive feedback.

Turns out I was somewhat right.

Like a lot of independent artists everything I do is made on a shoestring budget, although not necessarily by choice.

However, as of today, the music video for 'The Cigarette Duet' has more views on Youtube than for instance, all of Six60's and The Midnight Youth's music videos, combined (two top 40 artists in New Zealand).

This is extremely encouraging. It is encouraging because in the music video I am wearing a swimsuit, which means people must generally agree that I look attractive and cute in my swimsuit / quirky wig.

Possibly even more encouraging though, is that this also indicates that the power of a good song can transcend limitations in funds and resources, and still go on to connect with people all over the world, and on this occasion surpassing the results of even the most structured and high budget marketing campaigns. (In Lana Del Rey's case the combination of these two things has proven to be phenomenal).

In a chinese whispers scenario, much of the online interest surrounding 'The Cigarette Duet' has been simply due to people from all walks of life passing links around via websites like facebook, tumblr and most certainly not myspace.







The slightly controversial subject material has probably helped too, sparking a number of intellectual debates via the comments section of Youtube.














Of course there has been support from the fingerboarding scene;



The Brony Scene;



a number of covers;



and copy cat videos.



If the resulting sales continue at their current trends, and one in every 15,000 viewers orders a Lil' Golden Book LP then I am very excited to be able to pay off most of the vinyl shipping costs in the next few months!

Of course there are other angles to examine. As an artist, I am aware of the danger of becoming pigeon holed as 'the hipster girl from the cigarette duo'. Perhaps it will be that not one percent of youtube viewers will care about my sophomoric album, which is going to be, naturally, a concept opera concerning our perception of each other on the internet.

However I could almost be happy to settle for these consequences having garnered the knowledge that even if people don't pay for a good song these days, they most certainly will listen to it.

Cool Rainbows First Single!

Way back in March, we at Lil Chief Records were excitedly talking to everyone we knew about our newest signing Cool Rainbows.

Cool Rainbows is the new project of Djeisan Suskov, former frontman of Nova Echo, and Trees Climbing Trees. He also happens to be a bit of a genius in the studio. But like all studio geniuses, he does tend to get a bit obsessed with sonic noodling when it comes to his own work. This is probably why half-a-year has passed since we last mentioned his upcoming debut.

HOWEVER, the time has come and we've finally managed to squeeze a single out of him. Perfect timing to ease you all into summer with the melodically-hypnotic sound of 'Southern Summer Sun'.



"Southern Summer Sun" is the first single from Cool Rainbows first album - the upcoming Lil' Chief release "Whale Rocket" and is now available as a pay what you like download.

And while you're downloading that you may as well have a browse at the Lil' Chief online store, because we're having a Christmas sale - buy any 4 items get one free!

New Pikachunes Music Video!

Lil' Chief Records is proud to premiere the new Pikachunes music video for his student radio hit 'Nervous'. The video was filmed on location in Manhattan during his stay in New York earlier this year and was made by Doug Schachtel who has also directed other video clips in NYC for The Brunettes and The Go Team.



If anything is going to send Pikachunes careening into mainstream consciousness it's this song accompanied by this video - much like Princess Chelsea's Cigarette Duet video which seems to be confusing people all over the world at the moment.