Besides floating hollowed out orange halves down the street after heavy rains, one of our favorite pastimes as a kid was to melt together two of our brothers' G.I. Joes using only the power of the sun and a magnifying glass. He would get mad for a second and then get over it because some sweet new G.I. Joe Scuba Pack would come out and he'd forget all about the two-headed melted Joe monster that we created without his consent. Crazy, we know, but what's even crazier is that a band now exists that will forever serve as a reminder of these wonder years. Melted Toys are a San Francisco trio who probably melted G.I. Joes together when they were younger too. Their sound is playful and imaginative—toyed around guitar riffs on top of a steady synth stream. "Portals" comes from their first release, the Washed and Dried 12" EP out February 22nd via Underwater Peoples. It's a hypnotic slow-burner that takes you in and out of all your favorite made-up places, like the ocean of your mind or wherever else. We caught Melted Toys over the weekend at Silent Barn in Brooklyn. They played to a hazy room full of backpacked moppets and one orange cat. Everything about them makes us feel young again (though not in a Robin Williams-in-Jack kind of way) and that is never a bad thing.
Download: Melted Toys, "Portals"