{Lushy plays this Sunday (January 10) at Neumos with Dengue Fever, $15, 21+.}

For a decade now, Lushy has quietly been making some of the coolest and catchiest music to come out of the Northwest. Their sound and aesthetic immediately brings to mind retro, cocktail parties but with more international influences. You hear elements of swing, jazz, bossa nova and whatever the music was in Bond films back when Sean Connery was 007 and at the same time you want to dance in between sips of your dry martini.

As the band gets ready to release their third official LP, Spaced Out, they have just started playing with a new, full lineup and have sort of rechristened the band “Lushy 9”. While previously playing with a revolving cast of musicians and using a laptop to supply the remaining instrumentation, the band has just begun playing with an expanded lineup to that now has a steady rhythm section, synths, keys and a horn section. The principle members of Lushy are singer Annabella Kirby (who sings in an indie pop band called The Moonspinners), multi-instrumentalist Andy Sodt and guitarist Matt Nims, who I met for an interview over drinks at a cozy downtown bar. Some of the musicians that have played with Lushy over its history include the KEXP DJ Johnny Horn and Lynval Golding, now a Puget Sound resident who was a member of the hugely influential (and now reunited) English ska band The Specials.

Ten people in all complete the live Lushy band, but the name Lushy 9 will remain. Kirby joked that “we counted wrong and now there are ten people in the band.” While the principles agreed that Lushy 9 would be their name and liked the ring to it, Kirby added “it’ll never be the Lushy 10, even if we have ten or sixteen people in the band.”

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See all the winners in the TIG Best Northwest Releases of 2005 Readers' Poll (see the top 10 winners, including Death Cab, Tullycraft, the Decemberists, and more).

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We'd been wondering when we'd get paired with the illustrious Sean Nelson for our KEXP appearance, and this month it finally happened! It was everything we dreamed it would be, and we played some great local tunes from The Briefs, Man Plus, Izabelle, and loads more.

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This is the whipped-icing demonic dialect that is Buttersprites.

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