YACHT is so L.A. — and Claire Evans loves it.
“My goal in life is to make the saying ‘That is so L.A.’ into a positive for people. To me, that’s the greatest compliment,” said Evans, the other half of the creative force behind the Los Angeles-based experimental indie pop group.
As YACHT (Young Americans Challenging High Technology), Evans and Jona Bechtolt, both Oregan natives-turned Angelenos, have led something of a fabled L.A. life. They met in Los Angeles about six years ago and have since thrived as artists on multiple platforms, coming a long way from their humble beginnings as a two-piece lugging around laptops and projectors from club to club.
Now the Silver Lake residents, joined by touring band members, have quite the following throughout the globe with fans in love with not only YACHT’s music, but its brand that includes just about anything from home decor and sunglasses. Coming off a monthlong tour, YACHT is ready to return home for the first ever Downtown Festival to perform tracks off its latest EP “Where Does This Disco?”
“We haven’t played a show in L.A. in a long time — I couldn’t even tell you when we last performed here,” said Evans, from her home as she took a break from writing a book review (flexing just one of her many talents). “We wanted to save our L.A. show for something special, so when this opportunity came up we were excited.”
The two-day festival, presented by New York-based Downtown Records, starts Nov. 7 at the Regent Theater with YACHT as the headlining act, while Connan Mockasin closes out the festival on Nov. 8.
“We had to be in Downtown Los Angeles since it’s really evolving so much with emerging music, design and restaurant talent,” said Josh Deutsch, founder and chairman of Downtown Records. “We have always wanted to put our flag in the sand in L.A. and do something on a small scale that’s highly curated.”
The Los Angeles version of the event is part of the expansion of Downtown Festival, which started in New York in 2011 to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the record label. Now it has evolved into a full-blown celebration.
In addition to New York and Los Angeles festivals, Downtown Records hosted its signature event in Cleveland and Minneapolis earlier this year, with plans to host the festival in Houston Nov. 14-15.
“The concept is to deliver a festival experience on the club level,” Deutsch said. “We’re not trying to compete against the large format outdoor festival. What we’re looking to do, since there’s a downtown in very city, is try to provide a discovery experience in every city.”
Downtown Records prides itself for discovering seminal artists like Miike Snow, Santigold and Diplo, so with its festival “we really try to showcase emerging talent,” Deutsch said.
Which is why Downtown Record’s newest member, YACHT, is the perfect headliner for the festival’s Los Angeles debut. While not newbies to the music scene — Bechtolt created YACHT as a solo project in 2002 and Evans joined in 2008 — YACHT continues to evolve to not only include fresh, thought-provoking music, but has pushed its creative limits in design, literature and live performances to provide experiences for fans on multiple levels.
This year alone, YACHT launched a free app called 5 Every Day that informs users of five fun things to do in Los Angeles each day and has partnered with the eyewear company Chili Beans to release a YACHT-designed line of sunglasses.
And on its latest tour, which just wrapped up a few weeks ago, the group conducted something of an experiment when it sold “Where Does This Disco?” via a two-disc set with “hidden messages.” The EP’s official release date is Nov. 11, but YACHT lugged around 500 CD packs in an attempt “to see if we can make CDs valuable again.”
“People buy a CD and rip it to their computer and then get rid of it. Well, we made this more complex so people would be more inclined to save the disc,” Evans said. “We even made it hard to buy because we had people sign a non-disclosure form. We actually had them promise to not share the music, and told them to take it home and listen with headphones so that no one else could hear it.”
The experiment was particularly apropos as “Where Does This Disco?” is “a CD about our love of compact discs,” with the sultry single “Works Like Magic” about a future where “we’ve consummated our relationship with technology.”
“It’s one of the most overtly sexy songs I’ve ever done. It kind of made me feel uncomfortable to play for my dad,” Evans said, with a laugh.
The quirkiness of YACHT ‘s music and experiments are just one of the reasons Deutsch is excited the band will headline Downtown Festival.
“They have such a concise vision and are very articulate with who they are,” Deutsch said. “Claire gives TED talks, writes for National Geographic and Jona does a ton of collaborations — independently they’re super evolved artists. But their idea for YACHT is playful, yet intelligent, and those are the kind of artists we want to help bring to new audiences.”
