Out of all the faces that emerged and survived from the quicksand of the blogosphere this past year, Best Coast âÄî the gloomy yet endearing creative project of L.A. songstress Bethany Cosentino âÄî might be the brightest. With her sunny jams soundtracking summer nights and her pretty California face illuminating laptop screens, Cosentino may be the lady of 2010 and is one of the bright spots of Pitchfork’s 2010 lineup. A&E chatted with Cosentino before her Pitchfork set to discuss malls, yahooligans and Pavement. You are popular in Minneapolis. How’s that make you feel? That’s cool. I’ve never been to Minneapolis and we’re coming there soon so it will be cool. The Mall of America’s there right? That’s us. We’re very proud of that mall. (Laughs]. I love malls, so hopefully I’ll be able to go to the Mall of America while I’m there. How’s 2010 been for you thus far? It’s been really amazing. We’ve done a lot of great stuff and I feel very lucky to have been able to tour Europe and do a record and do a lot of awesome stuff that I didn’t ever think would happen within the span of a year. I feel really, really lucky and privileged to be able to do what I’m doing. More than a year ago I was living in New York and was not really enjoying myself and now I’m living back at home [in LA] and get to hang out with all my best friends and get to tour and then come home. Life has really changed but I’m really excited about it. It’s all going really well, so that’s cool. Would you say it’s been the best year of your life? Um … probably. Yeah I guess so. I don’t think there’s been much else that happened to me in my life that’s been as amazing and weird as this. When I say weird I just mean, ya know, it just happened so quickly that it really took me by surprise. All of a sudden we were touring all the time and shit just got really crazy and hectic. But I probably had some good years as a kid. I think you always have good years when you’re a little kid. But [2010] has been the best year of my adult life. How has it been getting so much buzz before even releasing an LP? It’s definitely a little overwhelming but it’s really awesome and exciting at the same time. The thing that sucks is that in gaining popularity you gain a lot of hatred and people who don’t like you because you got bigger than they wanted you to, which is kind of silly. So it’s been a little difficult, dealing with reading things about yourself on the internet âÄî which I don’t do any more, because I’ve learned my lesson that you can’t read that stuff because it’s stupid and I don’t care what people say anyways. But I feel really lucky to be one of those random bands that people on the internet decided they liked. I understand your album is leaked on the Internet. Are you cool with that? You know what, I expected that to happen. And to be honest with you, Bobb [Bruno] and I checked. Well Bobb is more into looking at the Internet and stuff than I am. I mean we were expecting it to leak âÄî everybody’s album leaks. Jay-Z’s records leak. You can’t really stop records from leaking anymore. To be honest with you, I don’t really care. I download music illegally. I do that, so I can’t be a hypocrite and say people can’t do it for me. I just want be to hear the record and I want people to enjoy it. So if someone finds out about us by downloading something illegally on a blog, I don’t really care. The day it leaked I was a little like, “Oh God,” because I wasn’t prepared. I sorta had this release date in mind and was planning on waiting until then and then it happened and I was like “Eh!” and then the Internet kinda went crazy and then I turned my computer off for a few days because I didn’t want to deal with it. Since I’m not one of those yahooligans who downloaded illegally, how is it? Are you happy with it? Yeah, we’re definitely happy with it. It’s definitely a record that has a story to tell. The record’s called “Crazy for You” because pretty much every song on the record is about dealing with the emotions of one specific person. I wrote a lot of the songs when I was going through a difficult time. It’s a record that somebody that’s going through a break-up can relate to and someone who’s not going through a break-up could listen to and relate to. I just wanna make music that’s fun and happy and that, if somebody listens to it when it’s freezing cold in the Midwest it makes them feel happy and funny and all that sorts of stuff. So what’s it mean to be invited to Pitchfork? It’s exciting. I feel insanely lucky to be playing the same day as Pavement because Pavement is one of my favorite bands and has been one of my favorite bands since I was in like the 8th grade. I think there’s a lot of rad bands playing this year and I’ve never been to a P-fork fest ever. There’s always a lot of good people-watching at festivals: people in really crazy outfits so I think it will be really fun. And Chicago’s an awesome city so I feel lucky they asked us. What’s next for you? We’re touring ’til the end of the year. It’s really hard to write when we’re on the road. I use the voicenotes thing on my iPhone. I’ll just record a melody, I’ll hum a melody or play it on the guitar or whatever. So hopefully we’ll be able to start working on some new songs. We don’t have anything planned yet but I’m sure we’ll do an EP or something a few months from now.