Yellow Dogs: The Latest Iranian Underground Rock Band to Breakthrough

Following the success of expatriate underground indie rock bands Hypernova and Tarantist, Iranian quartet Yellow Dogs has landed in Brooklyn, New York. The group, which was featured in prominent Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi’s latest flick, No One Knows About Persia Cats (which was co-written by Ghobadi’s girlfriend, journalist Roxana Saberi, who was briefly encarcerated in Iran under the suspicion of espionage, but was later released), recently performed at the prestigious annual South By Southwest (SXSW) music conference in Texas and were praised as “one of the best bands in the world” by Huffington Post columnist Andrea Chalupa in March.

According to their wikipedia page, the Yellow Dogs played their first legal concert at Peyote, in Istanbul, Turkey January 2010. Two days later, they flew to New York City and soon after played their second legal concert at Cameo, in Brooklyn. Since then, they have played Santos Party House and the Delancey in New York, as well at the afterparty for the U.S. premiere of No One Knows About Persian Cats at 2nd St. Y Tribeca. The band is comprised of members Obash, a lanky, shaggy-haired vocalist who sounds eerily like Iranian pop crooner Mansour; guitarist Looloosh, who doubles on the synth; bassist Koory, and Zina on drums. The group formed in 2006 and claims to be the youngest (none of their members are older than 23 years of age) Iranian rock band alive.

Yellow Dogs’ upcoming shows include May 29th (Fat Baby concert venue) and June 21st (Make Music Festival), both in New York, as well as west coast gigs with Hypernova in Sacramento on July 14th (Shire Road Club) and July 21st in Hollywood (Troubador). Check out their Facebook and MySpace pages for more info.

Get to know the Yellow Dogs in this piece by Jehangir Irani:

Also, check out a music video by the Yellow Dogs, compiled with footage from No One Knows About Persian Cats:

We were able to dig up a CNN interview as well, from 2009: