BUZZ BANDS

Back to work

When Dada re-formed to tour in 2003 after a three-year layoff, the L.A. trio didn’t “worry about becoming the next huge thing,” singer-guitarist Michael Gurley says. But was the band -- whose 1992 album, “Puzzle,” sold more than 500,000 copies and whose single “Dizz Knee Land” cracked the top 10 -- prepared to play a bowling alley in Sioux City, Iowa? “We did wonder, ‘What are we doing here?’ ” Gurley concedes. Yet it speaks volumes that the band ventured outside the metropolitan areas where it had guaranteed audiences.

Dada, after four albums for major labels, will release its new record, “How to Be Found,” March 2 on the group’s own imprint. “It didn’t take long for us to realize after we got back together that, yeah, this is still fun,” says Gurley, whose band plays Friday night at the Whisky. “We know most labels are going to put their efforts into 21-year-olds ... but we also know we have a fan base.” That base won’t be disappointed by the new album; Gurley and collaborator Joie Calio continue to set the bar high for harmonies (take note, 21-year-olds). “We’ve always tried to create harmonies that are a little bit different,” Gurley says, “but I was raised on pop radio.... When it’s done, if it sounds like something you heard when you were 9 years old, that’s cool.”

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They’ll conspire

Robert Fisher’s baritone voice sounds like it comes from a place where they have no indoor plumbing. It resonates with a woodsy, melancholy loneliness -- surprising for a man who has collaborated with some 33 musicians during his eight-year folk-noir project, the Willard Grant Conspiracy. “We certainly wouldn’t be out of place in a festival of sad music,” says Fisher, 46. “But it’s like the blues; people sense a universal truth about it. And when people see the blues, they don’t walk out of a club morose.” The WGC’s fourth album, “Regard the End,” a string-drenched collection that Fisher calls a “meditation on mortality,” features myriad contributors, including vocals by the Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh on the chillingly beautiful “The Ghost of the Girl in the Well.” Fisher, who recently relocated to his native Southern California, performs (with collaborators Robert Lloyd and Kirk Swan) Friday and Feb. 20 at the Hotel Cafe.

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Fast forward

The Notwist, the German “indietronic” outfit who sold out two shows last summer at the Knitting Factory, returns to L.A. on Tuesday to headline the El Rey.... Southern rock songstress Garrison Starr celebrates the release of her debut, “Airstreams & Satellites,” next Thursday at Club Lingerie.... Beth Thornley’s self-titled debut earned DIY album of the year honors at last week’s DIY Music Festival in L.A.

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