Upon releasing their six-song debut EP Don’t Worry, You’ll Be Here Forever online for free last fall, Los Angeles’ NO had the city abuzz. Now with a slew of much-talked about performances and local acclaim under their belts, NO will be releasing the EP on 12” vinyl on February 14 through Origami Vinyl. Limited to 500 copies, pre-orders are available now through the Origami Vinyl Online Shop. Local tastemaker Buzzbands LA exclaimed: “Judging from the gravitas in NO’s first single “Stay With Me”…. redemption is but a life-affirming anthem away.” Yvynyl declared: “Bradley Hanan Carter’s vocals seem to fill the bowels of Echo Park, Los Angeles. The deep timbre announces the romantic vision of yearning with conviction in the same fashion of baritone voiced Matt Berninger of The National.”

Don’t Worry, You’ll Be Here Forever is currently available as a free download via the band’s website and the lead single “Another Life” is available as an MP3 to post and share. NO will be touring the west coast in February in support of the album. In March they will return to their hometown LA for a month-long Monday night residency at The Echo before heading to Austin for the SXSW Music Festival. All shows are listed below.

The romanticism and desolation of Los Angeles breeds restlessness in its people. It’s a brooding temperament best captured by Echo Park’s NO – a band that feels it in their bones, with the kind of fevered anticipation for something more. Frontman Bradley Hanan Carter’s baritone vocals speak to the tension between the wanting and waiting, waiting for love or for some kind of order or sense to how it all works. Their track, “Stay With Me” is a ballad of calculated pleas one of slow, delicate movements. It’s being in love with someone, and hoping for some kind of stillness in the unpredictability of love. He asks, “Wasn’t there a place for me/inside your heart?” It’s all the words you’d ever want your lover to say, the fantastic notion of running away, the return to youth, when everything was uncomplicated and wonderful.

NO began as a response to the limiting idea behind the word – in an effort to reclaim it and reinterpret it as more than just an antithesis to possibility. These are sing-along songs, hymnal and anthematic; born out of a desire to connect with the greater collective of young people seeking their truth, adventure, love. There are remnants of odes to Bill Callahan, The National, and Arcade Fire—epic, atmospheric drums that pulsate, buttered bass tones, melodic choruses.

It’s not about naivety; it’s about not being calloused by a city of strangeness and strangers. Something the band knows quite well. The band itself is composed of near-veterans, all claiming a vast history with various bands, solo efforts, defunct projects, cities-travelled, loves made and lost. The core of NO first emerged mid 2010 when through a chance meeting at a local breakfast diner, Sean and Bradley started sharing songs they had both been working on. Shortly after Joseph started coming around too, and after many months of creating, and finding Reese and Mike, it seemed there would be no choice not to finish whatever it was they were starting.

NO marvels at the growing pains of a vibrant city, in all of it’s aching limbs and veins that run down dead ends. The interplay between hope and despair weaves itself throughout the collection of six songs in their debut EP Don’t Worry, You’ll Be Here Forever a sentiment that suggests that wherever “here” might be, it’s a good place to start.