Genre-defying music group Kapakahi is back at the Elbo Room on Friday, Oct. 17, this time with another team of mash-up masters, LA band The Elevaters and DJ Deedot.

Kapakahi, which defines their distinctive style as “Urban Reggae,” has been on a monster touring season – from San Francisco to San Diego to Hawaii and back, and most recently as the support act to legendary reggae band UB40. They are also back in the studio recording the follow up to their debut record: Twisted Bent and Confused.

The Elevaters have had a similarly awesome summer, performing for sellout crowds at LA stomping grounds The Troubadour, The Mint and the Key Club. Like Kapakahi, their brand of music is hard to pin down – but they prefer “Urban Alternative” as their category.

“It’s great for us to be back with the Elevaters, who always give a really solid performance,” says Kapakahi drummer and manager Steve Salta. “We’re good friends with them and we started out around the same time. Our audiences overlap and can definitely grow together.”

Part of the appeal seems to lie in each band’s distinct sound, which is vastly different from the standard, pre-fabricated songs that dominate today’s MTV and Top 40 charts. “We’re old-school in the sense that we still write our own music and play our own instruments” says Steve. “We’re new-school in the way we distribute our music.”

Kapakahi and the Elevaters, who both formed around 2005, are part of a new breed of indie band that eschews the usual distribution channels, instead relying on iTunes, social networks, and massive word of mouth to gain success and a loyal audience. So far, the experiment seems to be working: both bands have upwards of 20,000 friends on MySpace, and have sold thousands of records through iTunes and their various gigs.

“Our bands are hard to classify into the usual genres, but as soon as people hear us, they get it immediately,” asserts Mike Dayao, Kapakahi’s lead singer. “We’re hoping that our band pages and websites get people to our gigs, and once they’re there we know the performance and the music will do the rest.”

Come by the Elbo Room on Friday Oct. 17, 10pm, if you’d like to put that statement to the test.

About Kapakahi

Kapakahi has been wowing crowds on the West Coast since their inception in 2005. Their eclectic sound is as diverse as their musical origins– bassist Chris Jones reps Philadelphia electro-soul, drummer Steve Salta brings latin and jazz-trained drumbeats, sax player Josh Hoover has the horn stabs, and singer Mike Dayao adds the killer Hawaii island croon. The result is a sound that makes you “get the same feeling you did when you first heard Sublime (AllAgesZine.com)”

links: www.kapakahimusic.com, www.myspace.com/kapakahi, www.elevatersmusic.com, www.deedotmusic.com