Working between pop, club music and post-punk, California Girls aka Gus McGrath has been operating from his hometown in Canberra since 2014, before moving to Sydney at the end of 2019.

His debut album 'Desire' in 2016 came to terms with the complexities of romance through contemporary synth pop. Now in 2020, California Girls' moves forward with pop to dissect emotional and theoretical ideas of being.

'Beat Boy' is loosely built around the performances of identity and sex, which California Girls attempts to play out within a pop framework. While California Girls isn't pop music, it references that vocabulary within its own expansive, punk approaches. California Girls is electronic music; intense, dance-able and mechanic, with vocals that move from soaring autotune, to moans, to yells. These shifting textures align with the personal narratives and lived experiences that drive California Girls' lyrics.

Up to the album release, singles 'Give Me Everything', 'Small Birds' and 'Out The Door' have been well received from both radio and music press, with Weirdo Wasteland describing the project as "charting the murky and strobe-lit terrain of life, love and dance clubs, documenting both the ecstatic release of shared movement and the crushing pressure of loneliness that is experienced at the heart of the rhythmic swell."