Betty Boop sucking down a caustic milkshake, slowly, very slowly her benign little world turns into an insidious churning mess of previously undiscovered horrors, if this alone could only describe KLeen. It does however lay the foundation for understanding this complex sound. Since their inception Los Angeles based KLeen has put their indelible mark on the LA music scene. Seemlessly fusing pop, goth, punk, industrial, metal into a sound as dark and distraught as the poor child left abandoned, cold and frightened awaiting the return of parents never to return. Or as angry and unforgiving as the mother who's child had once been taken so brutally away from her, suspicious and lost for eternity.

After touring for several years with the likes of Suicidal Tendencies and Hed pe, John Rapp and Brett Tollis decided that it was time to unlock their minds and create a sound which would leave the rest of LA clambering to try and keep up with these pioneers of a new musical movement. Yes, KLeen has single handedly rerouted the comatose brains of this stagnant LA music scene.

For years the two founding creative forces in KLeen had visions of what the music they wanted to create would be. It wasn't until late 1999 when Australian born Brett Tollis and Detroit native John Rapp crossed paths on the Australian leg of the Van's Warped tour, the sick and oddly amusing journey had officially begun. John's ability is to take a complex arrangement, intertwine it deep with melody lines, heavy guitars, deep swelling synth bass lines moving within pounding loops and beats made Brett's otherworldly and ear catching instrumentations flow as easily as wine into an alcoholics bloodstream. Yes, John's enduring years of mom running from his abusive step father and landing him face first in the muddied pit's of Los Angeles compiled with Brett's training in World music and terrible boughts with Social anxiety disorder created one sick yet palatable musical moment called KLeen. Finally, something the two founders of this project could smile about, if only for a moment..

Next, with the pounding and moving lines created they need just the right guy on drums, in late 2001 they finally found the hard hitting and dance influenced Josh "Mantis" Hudson. Having left the LA based Ska band Unleadedplus to utilize more of his ability Mantis and KLeen joined forces. Moving effortlessly from Dave Grohlesque hard pounding patterns to drum n'bass/dance, the spine of KLeen was now in place.

Finally, after their recent bassist left to pursue his career in art, or was he mauled by a dog and badly disfigured, the very, very present Pola Cornella ex. Venus In Rage, came on board to anchor down the rest of the project with the solid low-end fury needed to fill KLeen and complete this amazing lineup.

The band recently joined forces with producer/engineer Brian Zee (David Bowie, Radiohead, Grant Lee Buffalo) who was willing to put his time and energy into a project that he felt was, "the best local band I've heard in LA in years" to record their 8 song ep "Fail". This was 10 months of redoing, yelling, getting fired from jobs, late night after late night at the famed Hollywood Recording workshop to record this sick and just off of center collection of songs called "Fail". Wrapping up recording in late November they had it mastered by the one and only Joe Gastwirt (Michael Jackson, 311, Tom Petty etc). Spins on Santa Barbara's KUSB in December followed, the first order at Amoeba records sold in the first month.

As John Rapp says, "We are going to buck the trend and bring the trend to us!" This statement couldn't have been more evident than at the Ventura Theater on Fri, Dec 13th 2002. As the band broke into the creepy, romantically slinky guitar line of their song "New Chune" from their debut EP "Fail" the crowd snapped to attention in recognition of a song that had been embedded into their subconscious all week on KUSB. KLeen has bucked the trend and is now the true beginning of the Worlds new music scene.