Sentinel

Sentinel is the pairing of Tarabud, who sings and plays bass, and guitarist Dennis Bestafka. The two started the band in San Francisco and put out a self-titled record in 2004, followed by The Singles (2005), the Sequels & Hunches EP (2007), Kites Without Strings (2008) and For Days Deep (2010). A run of singles came after: Jet Black (2010), Dark End (2011) and Somewhere Else (2012, with an extended dance remix). The most recent album is Points of Light (2015). The two now live in Seattle. Their own list of influences runs from Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance to Fleetwood Mac, ABBA and Ella Fitzgerald.

Sentinel worked the Bay Area club circuit hard: Bottom of the Hill, Cafe Du Nord, the Great American Music Hall, the Make-Out Room and the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco, the Uptown in Oakland, Blakes on Telegraph in Berkeley, 19 Broadway in Fairfax, plus a KZSU live-in-studio session at Stanford. Local radio picked them up too: Live 105, KSAN The Bone, KALX, KUSF and KZSU. In 2011 Live 105's music news named Tarabud one of the Bay Area's top female musicians.

When Bands of the Bay captured the profile in November 2008, Sentinel described itself as an indie and dream-pop four-piece based in Oakland, with friends Jenna on keyboards and David on drums filling out the live band. The page streamed the song Spades, listed Kites Without Strings as new that May, and had drawn close to 900 views.