Cold War Kids, “Miracle Mile”

There’s countless songs both celebrating and bemoaning famous L.A. streets such as the Sunset Strip and Hollywood Boulevard, but the Miracle Mile, a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard best known for its office buildings and banks usually doesn’t make the cut.

So maybe that’s lightly worn irony in the Cold War Kids’ first single from their fourth LP Dear Miss Lonelyhearts, due out in April.

The song is a propulsive trip through the heavy traffic of personal reinvention after bitter disappointment, always hoping it leads to some sort of promised land.

“I was supposed to do great things,” Nathan Willett sings with a smidge of regret in his voice. But as the band keeps pumping polished quarters into the Arcade Fire anthem machine, you can tell where Cold War Kids want this song to go.