Combine the sophisticated chill of a New York City winter with the girlish, laid back romance of California in the summertime and what to you get? The answer is Best Coast, the latest musical endeavor by perennially cool, self-described “weird girl” Bethany Cosentino. Best Coast was born when Cosentino decided to come home to LA after a time in New York City, to get a fresh start at living in the place she knows best—California. Quickly garnering praise from critics and listeners with the single “Sun Was High (So Was I),” Cosentino was approached by UK-based label Blackest Rainbow, who released her now sold-out tape Where the Boys Are. Also in the works are two new 7-inch’s, one being released by San Diego-based Art Fag Recordings and the other, the debut release from brand-new Brooklyn label Group Tightener.

A Los Angeles native, Cosentino grew tired of what she had grown up with and did what so many have done before—she picked up and left for the East Coast, specifically Brooklyn, with the intention of going to art school for Creative Writing. “I was like, I hate the beach, I hate flip flops. I want to go to New York.” But Brooklyn quickly turned out to be far different from what she had envisioned. “I realized that I actually liked all those things, they reminded me of home,” and life in New York was too cold, both literally and figuratively, with too many people trying way too hard, “it’s like, there are people in New York who look like they’re at the beach sometimes but it’s not real, it’s not the same.”