Sept. 14
Wild Nothing w/ DIIV, Betsy Wells and Sun Settings
The Sandbox, 2406 Leavenworth St.
9 p.m., $10 in advance/$12 day-of-show, mooseriot.com
Jack Tatum spent the last years of college watching the songs he recorded in his bedroom turn into a full-fledged band. That band is Wild Nothing and now the recently-graduated Tatum is devoting his full attention to making music. The bedroom indie-pop songs caught the attention of New York label Captured Tracks, which released Wild Nothing’s debut Gemini in 2010. Tatum is part of a growing crop of 80s synth-pop revival, creating simple, small-scale odes to the sort of shimmering, widescreen New Romantic pop that soundtracked Molly Ringwald movies. His 2012 release Nocturne sheds the homemade, lo-fi intimacy for a warmer, more polished sound, doubling down on the mid-tempo wonders of his first album. Wild Nothing’s strength is in floating, head-bopping melodies with the right amount of fizz to make their songs well worth keeping around.