Prayers
Even though self-proclaimed “cholo goth” band Prayers earned a fair amount of national press over the past couple of years, the hallmarks of impending success still seem to elude them. They haven’t exactly set afire any chart that can’t be infiltrated by anyone with a modem and a microphone, although they do seem beloved by whoever comes up with the San Diego Music Awards nominations. One of the main signs that your band is a hit remains MIA, in that nobody is copying them. Seriously, there’s no RIYL list one can attach to a band like Prayers, and their visual iconography can only be described as Mad Max villains emerging from a violent sandstorm in order to invoke the devil. The jury is still out on whether one member’s very public romance with now-pregnant TV tattoo star Kat Von D is helping or hurting the band’s chances of being taken seriously, let alone scarily, now that more people have heard about them via the National Enquirer than Pitchfork and Stereogum combined (tattooing Kat’s name on his face only makes it harder to stifle the laughter). It should be noted that they do indeed still make new music from time to time, including a collaborative single with Christian Death late last year. The ongoing tour supporting their Baptism of Thieves full-length hits Observatory North Park on October 13.