dios malos are defined by their four-track mission statement: "proud to be a home recording;" an experimental approach to song and studio-craft, creative freedom, and lack of time constraint that had informed the hundreds of recordings the band made during their ascent from backyard party band to critical darling.

dios began working on album #3 in late 2006, following years of touring throughout the U.S. in a van converted to run on vegetable oil, and abroad to the UK and Mexico. After a brief foray into the world of professional recording with the Phil Ek-produced sophomore effort "dios (malos)" and time on ultra hip indie Star Time International, the band felt compelled to once again embrace their DIY-fusion of budget gear lo-fi and spiritual melodic devotion that had defined their previous efforts, this time adding a greater degree of sonic experimentation and genre-bending.

Taking an almost Howard Hughes-ian approach to the recording process, leader Joel Morales largely disappeared from the Los Angeles music scene to commit the better part of a three-year period toward realizing and expanding the schizophrenic combination of powerful melodies and compelling arrangements that debut effort dios hinted at. Songs melt together, creating a pocket-symphonic-folk-song-cycle in which leitmotifs drift in and out, aurally suggesting a Fellini score played over the Electric Kool-Aid acid test.

Spiritually inspired by the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Mexican bolero standards of Chavela Vargas and Cuco Sanchez, and the tortured devotional atmospherics of Los Pasteles Verdes and Los Angeles Negros, the result was a concept record about home-recording, and by extension the group's cultural identity.

It must also be noted that dios are a product of their environment.

The group hails from the South Bay of Los Angeles; a collection of burnt-out, perennially overshadowed, and disregarded semi-urban cities, specifically the "City of Good Neighbors," Hawthorne - home of the Beach Boys. This once quaint hamlet, however, has slowly devolved into its current chaotic blend of race riot aftermath, shuttered malls, and used car lots. Smog, graffiti, and strip malls; not surf, orange groves, and beach bonfires. They have more in common with the high-school dropout, the homeless man, and the ragged car-wash attendant smoking in the sunset.

Los Angeles-based rock and roll band

SIGNALS is a band that includes cousins Jon and Bill Gray and their pseudo-adopted younger brother Jacob Cooper. The Grays first met Jacob in 2006 while their two Retard Disco bands toured the Southwest. "Tour forever" was a reoccurring saying for the short weekend they spent together, but the joke soon became a reality. Beginning in 2008, they found themselves touring the continents of North America and Continental Europe as Bark Bark Bark and members of The Mae Shi.

Some say they sound like a "hard rockin' Cars", others Wire, and one person said Big Black, but their ultimate goal is to become the next Cheap Trick.