By Alex Brinkley
Supporting local businesses, artists and musicians keeps the heartbeat of the Las Cruces community pumping, and that is the main mission of “Local Vibes Live.”
Airing 9-10 p.m. every first Thursday of the month on 101.5 KTAL-LP, “Local Vibes Live” features on-air interviews and performances with local musicians.
For this month’s edition of “Local Vibes Live,” the studio hosted Planet I Love You, a six-piece indie rock band from Las Cruces, with a name inspired by community and the love for everyone on the planet.
Forming in 2019 as a small project, they continued to evolve into a six-piece collaborative group that draws inspiration from bands such as the Strokes, Butter Tones, Mustard Service, Spirit Ghost, Peach Pit and more. With their high energy and cohesive jamming throughout each set, they blend their indie influences with their own experiences of heartbreak that is expressed vividly through their lyrics.
The band members include Damian Salinas on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Kayla Varela on bass guitar, Cynthia Elnajjar as co-lead vocalist, Mattias Maez on piano, Corbin Wikert on lead guitar, and Max Michael on drums.
As the band played in the studio, the passion of their friendship resonated from every hit of the drum and every strum of the guitar. The deep understanding and connection of each other as friends, as well as musicians, was impossible to miss.
“Throughout all these practices and these shows, we all had our personal times together and experienced each other’s stories and learned. It made a bond of us,” Salinas said.
Planet I Love You will perform 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, at the Battle of the Bands finals at Lowbrow Palace in El Paso; noon Sunday, March 1, at the downtown El Paso Plaza; and 9 p.m. Friday, March 13, at The Rockhouse.
They also recently announced that they will be going on tour July 6-11, making their way from Las Cruces to Nashville, while also hitting a few mystery stops on the way. This tour is to celebrate and announce their first official album release, centered around one of the band’s first songs, “Blue Lofa,” which was dropped earlier this year, and will conceptually focus on heartbreak.
“The music we are writing now has to do with the theme of getting over heartbreak, what you do in these moments when you break up with somebody and you don’t know what to do but you just have to go through it,” Wikert said.
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