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Local favorite Indigo Kidd celebrates its first full-length album

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Indigo Kidd, from left: Garrett Curtsinger, Eli Curtsinger and Dalton Willett.
Photo: Steve Marcus

It’s hard to believe the indie pop-punks of Indigo Kidd have lived in Las Vegas for only a year and a half. Because ever since they moved here from Yakima, Washington, cousins Eli (guitar/vocals) and Garrett Curtsinger (drums) and Dalton Willett (bass)—have fit right in, as if they’ve been playing on the Downtown scene forever.

Amazingly, Indigo Kidd amassed such strong local support without an LP or even a full EP to its name—only a two-song “mixtape” the group dropped as it arrived in town in June 2016. So when the guys announced that first album Sad Daze in Happy Valley would arrive on November 17, it signaled an exciting new chapter—taking Indigo Kidd in a more mature musical direction that brings emotional storytelling to the band’s irresistible, dance-in-your-seat pop songs.

“We’ve all grown in every way since we’ve been here,” Willett says. “It’s humbled us, in a weird way.” Turns out, completing album No. 1 meant overcoming unexpected obstacles. “It took a year to put together,” Curtsinger says. “There was a time where we were all just really burned out on this album, and we didn’t know what to do. For a while we were like, ‘Do we give up?’” Now we’re excited. We can’t wait for everyone to hear this.”

The album’s title nods to an influential record, 2012 EP End of Daze by LA’s Dum Dum Girls, and the songs are littered with tongue-in-cheek lyrics about heartbreak, partying and other coming-of-age rites of passage. Take the anthemic “Nicotine Queen,” for example, which features Curtsinger’s witty words arriving in his sing-shout style. “I hate life/And I really want to die/Nobody has to know/… I know my life’s a mess/But I won’t say I’m depressed/’Cuz then I’ll sound like every other pissed-off teen.”

“We’re really critical of our own work and won’t release half of the things we make,” Curtsinger says. “We want every song on the album to be like, Oh my God, I feel this.”

The Curtsingers, Willett and their fans will celebrate Sad Daze with a release show at east-side bar Starboard Tack on Saturday, November 18. Also on the bill: Seattle’s Seacats, Portland’s Mo Troper and local act Homebodys. An 11-date West Coast tour will follow for Indigo Kidd, beginning in LA and ending in Salt Lake City. Willett says the guys are already writing songs for a second LP and planning a tour for early 2018. “I don’t want to do anything else,” Curtsinger says. “I want to get to the point where I can do this full-time.”

Sad Daze in Happy Valley is available at indigokidd.bandcamp.com.

INDIGO KIDD with Seacats, Mo Troper, Homebodys. November 18, 9 p.m., free. Starboard Tack, 702-684-5769.

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