BUZZ BANDS

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound -- an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music -- as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship. McPhun, 25, center, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says. Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns. “Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff . . . other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.” That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on SubPop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations. “It’s a very broad album -- geographically speaking,” says McPhun, who brings his band to L.A. for a show Saturday night at the Echo. Also check out: The Cribs are back in town, playing the El Rey Theatre on Friday night with Ra Ra Riot, while Les Sans Culottes bring their neo-Parisian kitsch to Safari Sam’s. . . . On Monday, Johnathan Rice kicks off a residency at Spaceland; Radars to the Sky launches an Echo residency that includes strong local bands every week this month. . . . And on Wednesday, Miss Derringer gets a deserved headlining gig at the Troubadour.

--

-- Kevin.Bronson@latimes.com