Cold Beat Live At WAMU

By Ally Schweitzer

Hannah Lew is already a familiar name on the indie-pop scene: The San Francisco native used to play bass in the great-but-dormant Grass Widow.

In 2013, Lew debuted her solo project Cold Beat with Worms/Year 5772, and followed up last year with the full-length Over Me. Both packed the harmonies, snappy drums and pop sensibilities of a Grass Widow release, but sounded vignetted — even a little goth. (A writer at Wondering Sound compared Cold Beat to “Aislers Set at a seance.”) Lew has said she’s used the band to express some of her thoughts about death, particularly the passing of her father in 2009.

Before Lew and her bandmates played Comet Ping Pong in D.C. a few weeks back, we invited them to our studio to tape a couple of songs. We got two we hadn’t heard before — and fantastic performances of them, too. Above, hear Cold Beat play “Broken Lines,” and check out “Am I Dust,” below.

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Cold Beat for WAMU's Bandwidth

Photos by Rhiannon Newman for WAMU