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Anthony Gomez III explores how out of the commercial failure of the 1980s Paisley Underground genre, a Los Angeles that suffered one of the highest crime rates in the country, the rise of Chicano/a art in the public eye, and record label disputes, singer Hope Sandoval and guitarist David Roback form the influential dream pop band Mazzy Star.

Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See was a slow, reluctant success. Pushed by Capital Records as an album for teenagers to make out during, as a record about girlhood, and as music for those uninterested in the era's male aggression, the album's reputation has been plagued by these forced connections ever since.

But by tracing the hurried development of So Tonight That I Might See and the band's efforts to bend the record company's wants to their will, this book revisits and challenges these imposed narratives that have overshadowed the band's interest in the mystical, the American Southwest, ranchera music from the mid-century, and a surrealism which summons the strange, dark shadows of everyday life in the US.