Category: Interview

Shep Treasure Creates Climate to Evoke Memories on Blanket | Interview

February 17th, 2026

Written by Emily Moosbrugger | Photo Courtesy of Shep Treasure

“I saw the first flakes falling, I saw your t-shirt crawling,” Sabrina Nichols sings on “Cold Air,” the third song on her recent album Blanket under the moniker Shep Treasure. Like much of Nichols’ lyricism, the line depicts a moment that feels featherlight and shrouded in mystery. A detail from a memory so subtle it seems sacred, brushing past with the fleeting delicacy of the soft gust of wind that brought it into focus.

Nichols started drawing before she ever picked up an instrument. Her background in visual art is embedded in her approach to songwriting, both lyrically and sonically. When she started collaborating with other musicians, she relied on an intuitive musical vocabulary made up of textures and images to communicate the sounds she heard in her head. “I’ll say ‘oh, this should be spikier, or ‘this pattern should look like this,’ or I’ll pull up specific images of things I’ve seen,” Nichols said. Since her debut, 500 Dead Or Alive, her recording process has become increasingly independent as a result of a push from her collaborator and partner James Keegan, who makes music under the moniker Kitchen. In the process of recording Blanket with Keegan, she learned to mix and record on her own, making for a smoother process of translating those mental images into sounds.

A “spiky” sound, Nichols explained, is what she had in mind for the lead solo keyboard part in “Fired and Expelled,” describing the prickly exterior of a horse chestnut seed. The notes pierce through a thick veil of distortion like blades of grass through snow, setting the icy backdrop for Nichols’ callous delivery: “Watch me growing old/ I just wanna be gold/ and when I’m not/ I want to leave the world.” The atmosphere is dense, forming a dizzying fog around an apathetic narrator whose impassivity cracks just enough at the chorus to reveal a restless unease: “I’m in hell/ I want to be fired and expelled.”

Creating atmosphere is one of the things Nichols does best – there’s not a song on Blanket in which you can’t feel the harshness of the climate, or the movement of the air around you. “I love extreme temperatures,” Nichols said, noting that temperature and wind help her visualize specific moments with precision, and elicit the feeling of the memory in her music. One of the ways Nichols does this is by building space. The guitar melody that opens “Dove” loops with a dull sense of foreboding, the air around it echoing a deep, wintry emptiness. On “Tornado,” Nichols lets her thoughts “all blow away.” Her voice drifts delicately with the gentle strum of her guitar before it’s left behind, swept out into an open, quietly trembling expanse.

The serene, contemplative stillness in these parts of Blanket is mirrored by Nichols’ process of writing it. “For this album, I kind of got stuck on playing one note and looping that one note and listening to the subtle wave changes,” Nichols said. “It became pretty meditative, because I normally record everything in my basement of this apartment, and if I went down there and started looping one note, the rest of the day would be gone, and I could just be there. It made a new atmosphere kind of instantly.”

There are times on the album when the narrator and setting become so closely entwined that their separation becomes blurred. In “Omnipotent,” Nichols takes a celestial form above the clouds, singing from a bed of “concrete pillows” at the gates of heaven: “In the sky soft light falls down into my throat/ filling me up so that all I do is shine and glow.” Nichols explained that the album’s title is symbolic of the way she felt at the time of writing it: “It kind of felt like there was a blanket over my mind and I couldn’t see my thoughts,” she said. The otherworldliness of “Omnipotent” sets it apart from the rest of the album, but there’s an eeriness in the narrator’s unnatural surroundings and cold detachment that replicates this feeling – like she is caught in a fog, stuck somewhere just out of reach.

Nichols said she also associates the album’s title with temperatures, and that it can be a reference to a fresh layer of snow, or the warmth from under a literal blanket. That warmth can be felt on the album’s enchanting closer, in which Nichols’ sweet, whispery harmonies drift with her into sleep: “Close my eyes/ Gonna sleep another night/ I have secrets in my sight.” There’s a sudden sense of trust that seeps into Nichols’ delivery as she repeats the closing line with a comforting certainty: “If I have it, then it’s mine.”

In her writing of Blanket, Nichols relied on a similar hopefulness as a way to embrace positivity, channeling a recent intuition she had that everything would turn out all right. “Whatever positivity there is, I really had to lean into it,” Nichols said. “A lot of times I’ll get into this emotional despair and the only thing I can do is write a song about it to feel better. But now that’s been happening for so many years that I know whatever it is I’m going to get through it. So, I tried to focus on that, like ‘this is going to be fine, I’m just going to get through this and try to put some of that in here.”

You can listen to Blanket out now as well as order it on cassette and CD.
Triples Looks Up at All the Tall Buildings | Interview

February 11th, 2026

Written by Shea Roney | Photo Courtesy of Triples

“When I first moved to Toronto, I lived more in that area where there’s a lot of tall buildings and lots of glass and metal,” Eva Link says, our conversation wrapping up in the depths of melodically versatile reflections. “Just having that contrast, but also the nostalgia of being in those kinds of environments was interesting.”

It wasn’t long ago where Link found herself in a unique position, taking over as band leader and primary songwriter on her own for the first time ever. Originally formed as a duo with her younger sister Madeline, Triples was a force, glimmering and carefree, slinging pop songs that beamed with playful melodies and distortion that tangled up loose harmonies like a knot of twinkle lights. After the release of 2019’s LP, Big Time, Madeline found her other project PACKS taking up a lot of her energy and soon departed from the duo. To Eva, this wasn’t the end of Triples, but rather a chance to reimagine the project at her own pace.

Eva now returns with her new EP, Every Good Story, the first collection of Triples songs in five years. Every Good Story is a tried-and-true pop whirlwind – “door be propped, tunes be cranked”, as the saying often goes with these types of releases. These songs live in moments, flashes of thoughts and feelings scribbled on the back of crumbled receipts, unopened cereal boxes or the back of your hand with your freckles as guiding margins, just to make a note before the thought is running right past you and straight outta town.

“I end up writing a lot of songs that have a bit of a mantra energy about them, where it’s almost more aspirational than being 100% real about how things are at that moment,” Link shares, leaning into foundation rather than expectation of both her creative and personal growth. After moving to Toronto, becoming enveloped in the harsh angles of these looming skyscrapers, Link soon found the natural trajectory of what Triples could now become. And as these songs find their own place, Every Good Story is not just a statement on an old creative flame, but rather holding a marker to both an optimistic and joyous form of self-actualization that only comes around with patience and care.

We recently got to call Link to talk about taking breaks, being weird, pop song supremacy and her shifting use of the simple music video.

Every Good Story is your first collection since your last LP Big Time back in 2019. Let’s just start with how you’re feeling about where you and the project are at now?

I think it’s almost a bit surreal, because it’s been a while since I’ve put new stuff out. But in my mind, it feels like such a natural progression from Big Time. I’m not scared of how people are going to react to it because this was the natural next sound for us to have. It just came a little bit later.

Going from a duo to this full band, taking the time to do some reimagining of the project, what is that natural progression that you experienced?

To give a little bit of context since we released Big Time, we had our release show in November 2019, and then 2020 happened. It really made both of us reassess what we wanted to do with music. For [Madeline], it was really digging into her other project. For myself, I really just wanted to put a pin in this, to revisit when I feel like it makes sense to make more music. I went back to Ottawa, where I’m from, and it just felt like life wasn’t real. Nothing that I was doing previously I was doing that year. I think that that energy just carried over where I think it took a minute to get back into the flow of making music – and at that point, my sister wasn’t part of the project anymore. I needed to figure out how I was even going to play live. A lot of it was trying to wrap my head around collaboration, because I was so used to only collaborating with her, too.

When referring to that time of waiting as ‘once it makes sense again’, what were you searching for? What made sense to you?

Well, shows weren’t happening anymore during that period, it felt really natural to just take a break. I knew things will eventually feel like I’m getting the signs to pick this back up again, which did happen when I eventually came back to Toronto – I found some new bandmates and played the first show back since the shutdown. I really do feel that playing live gives that fuel to keep a project going. It’s one thing to generate your own motivation when you’re in your room recording demos by yourself, but it’s another thing to perform those songs and feel like you’re connecting with people.

Were you performing older Triples’ songs those first few shows back or were you starting to sneak some new ones that you had in your back pocket, that maybe you were looking to workshop through live sets?

It was a lot of Big Time songs, but then I also had a bunch of work-in-progress stuff that me and my sister had been working on leading up to 2020. So, it was just a matter of opening up my Voice Notes app and starting to arrange stuff. It had always been just the two-piece with my sister and I, so I was used to just arranging songs with drums and electric guitar and then singing on top of it. But when I started to collaborate with my friend Lucas (drums), that felt like a good jumping-off point of resurrecting these songs that I have. And then my friend Emily, who’s not in the band anymore, but added bass felt like the next step of just adding that little bit more depth to the songs. Having a fuller lineup has less pressure, too, honestly. When you’re a two-piece and you’re the only one playing guitar, it just feels scary.

Did that slow build of new instruments and collaborators open up what this project could be that you didn’t plan for previously?

Totally. Even vocally, I tend to write songs where my rhythm guitar playing was simplified in this way, where I almost had it in my head that my vocal melody would be acting as the top melody in the way a lead guitar could do. So, I would be writing songs where I’d be so out of breath at the end of a performance, because I was just trying to fill every little area with some more little vocal melodies. But then it was also a fun opportunity to write a song where if I don’t sing the entire way through, then what if we have some little breaks there’s a fun bass part, or maybe there’s a guitar solo?

Early last year, you released a one-off single called “So Soon”, making your big comeback, but you chose not to include it on Every Good Story. Where does “So Soon” fall into that progression of this project and what it would eventually become?

That song is interesting because I wrote that one during 2020, and really represents me trying to find both a new lineup, and then a new recording process. That song had many, many cooks in the kitchen from the recording to the mixing. I had it mixed by several different people while also working with a different label slash management at that time.

On top of the same track or each having their own try at it?

Different tries at it. That was an interesting learning experience for me in terms of being a project leader and really knowing how I want something to sound – being confident enough to say how I want it to sound. In “So Soon”, there’s a weird little remix thing, this really choppy part, and I remember working with the person who mixed it, and they were like, ‘why do you want that?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, why not? It’s weird.’ It’s hard to communicate how weird you want something to sound. I’m happy with how it turned out, but it definitely made sense to release it as a one-off single and see how it does. Looking back, it’s interesting to listen to that compared to our new stuff, because I feel like it’s almost a little too polished.

These songs were written in a very intense emotional period for you, but you made it clear that you didn’t want to write from these emotions you were feeling. What was the need for you to craft a process like this? It’s kind of counterintuitive to what other artists would say.

Especially for the song “Gonna Be Good”, I end up writing a lot of songs that have a bit of a mantra energy about them, where it’s almost more aspirational than being 100% real about how things are in that moment. I really like songs that are not only reflecting on how things have been, but also having a little bit of a realization about yourself and where I want to try to make things better.

So in this space where you were able to create this distance, what felt natural when it came to writing these songs that tell a story and what turned you off creatively?

I do feel that my first instinct is to write a catchy pop song. And then I find that by playing it on my acoustic guitar and singing along to it, I end up coming up with little ideas that I can then expand upon. But what I’ve wanted to avoid, I don’t like songs that are just simply sad and living in that depressed space. I mean, I love Elliot Smith, but I think that someone like him, there is that other level of reflection. My songwriting approach is also not entirely planned, you know? Like, these ideas for songs sometimes just flow in this way, where it’s not my intention going in with what I’m going to write about this. Sometimes it’s just a journey of discovering how I’m actually feeling about life.

And through a really good pop song.

Yes!

I mean, with Elliot Smith, at its core, those are genuinely good pop songs. But there is so much depth, like you said, it’s not primarily sad, but rather weighs a lot. To you personally, utilizing a really good pop song, what makes that such an appealing vehicle for you to explore storytelling?

I find it’s like a puzzle, where you’re trying to make the melodies click in this way that just makes it a nice little package. I get pretty obsessive with things feeling neat. I mean, my songs are pretty short – they end up being 2-3 minutes long. But there’s a song on the LP that’s pushing 4 minutes, and I’m like, yay!’ I think Robert Pollard, Guided by Voices, is a good example of that kind of succinctness in writing little melodies that are just fun to sing. Writing short songs makes them really fun to perform, and especially as a band, we get the songs down pat.

Music videos are a core element to the Triples experience, having co-written and directed several fun ones with Madeline years ago. What’s the appeal of the music video to you and has it changed over this transition period?

Music videos are interesting, because it obviously involves you showing your image and your face and your vibe in a visual form. I love watching music videos, and I find that authenticity is something that I’m very critical about. So, I feel kind of scared when I make music videos, like, how do I make this come across as the most authentic? I think the approach definitely changed from when me and Madeline were playing together, where we would brainstorm and do it together, versus now, where I collaborate with Seamus, which is great. But when it was my sister and I, it was both of us in the video, so that was always a little less pressure, versus, now it’s just me. But I’m very obsessed with visuals. I’m a graphic designer and artist, and I get really into finding the right visual story to tell that will align with the song.

Going from having your co-conspirator in Madeline with you in the music videos to just you, how do you think that authenticity shifted? Or do you weigh authenticity differently now?

When you’re two people, there’s just a natural, fun dynamic that happens. Especially, you know, we’re sisters, and our banter and our energy allows us to feel like we can be a little sillier and amp each other up a little bit more. Now it really does feel like it has to come from me, and I think that goes back to the many different facets of the fact that I’m at the helm of this project now. I have to push things forward and I have to decide on the visuals. While I love having that control, I definitely miss having my sister to be in the videos and to perform with.

For this rollout, we wanted to keep it super, super simple. And, honestly, these videos are more so visualizers, and that’s kind of what I wanted. For “So Soon”, I did this whole production where I rented my friend’s space, and we planned all these different shots with the whole band in the video. But something that I have found in my experience is a simple video does the exact same thing, in terms of, we as musicians, we just need visuals to accompany the music. I find it interesting that artists, and in particular musicians, use their budgets and try to figure out where the money is best allocated? Is it photoshoots? And I think the recording is where to invest. Once you have your songs, you can make cool stuff no matter what. You can make a cool music video for $0.

With these music videos and visualizers, do they fall into that natural progression of the band that you experienced?

So, the EP titled ‘Every Good Story’ and the cover were inspired by the downtown Toronto buildings. That aesthetic to me, pairing that with indie rock, is just kind of fun. But, when I first moved to Toronto, I lived more in that area where there’s a lot of tall buildings and lots of glass and metal. Just having that contrast, but also the nostalgia of being in those kinds of environments was interesting. But all these music videos are shot around different areas of Downtown Toronto.

Those environments feel so grown up, so hearing the word nostalgia thrown in there is really interesting. It’s got depth [laughs].

Yes! The idea of being a young person, just plopped into this big metropolis, it’s interesting to think back on. I feel like a lot of these songs on the EP are written about being in your mid-20s and figuring out your place in a big city.

Every Good Story is out everywhere now. You can also grab it on cassette via the new Toronto label, Bleak Enterprise.
Home Improvement with This House is Creaking | Interview

February 9th, 2026

Interview and Photos by David Williams

The air is electric in the blistering, windy winter that we have grown accustomed to in Chicago, Illinois. It’s not only that the Bears are surging back to NFL relevancy again that are keeping people up lately during our most frigid nights. Every day, seemingly fresh out of the box, exciting bands within the indie community are being created. Chicago has now become a hotbed for those new voices breaking out and exploding onto the scene.

Ehmed Nauman and Micah Miller created the band This House is Creaking, which belongs in the conversation with other forward-pushing, future-thinking artists that will continue to push the envelope sonically, like Lifeguard or Joe Glass. THiC is starting to hit its stride with two albums in its catalog. Their latest album, I Want to Feel at Home Here, was a DIY hammer house filled with fuzzed-out guitar textures, mixed with lyrics that lean towards inner monologue that would normally rest solely in one’s head.

THiC should be lauded for essentially laying themselves bare on different songs. They’re trying to find their place in the world with a soundtrack of 90s alternative rock, Midwest emo, and spasmic dubstep noises as their playground. The band triumphantly molded what each other listened to growing up into one brand of music. Them growing with each other with each passing song and album, it would be easy to see THiC bursting down the door with the ferocity of the Kool-Aid Man entering the mainstream.

Micah Miller, raised in the Evanston area, is the producer between the two known for bringing his own style of chaotic digital experiments to each song. His influences of Skrillex, deadmau5, and Porter Robinson bleed through the speakers. Ehmed Nauman, hailing from Las Vegas, is the traditionalist of the group. His weapon of choice is his guitar. He can shred, mold, and bend sounds at his whim. There’s a keen sense of aggressiveness within his riffs and distortion, similar to the grunge bands he listened to as a child through his dad’s guidance. They play off each other, bringing the best of both worlds from their upbringing into an amalgamation of memorable songs. Together, both sonically bring more twists than a Ford Mustang in a Fast and Furious film.

A new record with the potential of attaching themselves to a bigger name band to hit the road are some of the ambitious plans ahead for THiC in 2026. If their new album is anything similar to their latest singles, “Something Else” and “2 lamp (lava lamp)”, we’re in for a real treat. I got a chance to sit down with THiC to talk candidly about their aspirations, how they met, the origin of their band name, and what music they listened to growing up. Also, check out the gallery from the photoshoot on a cloudy December afternoon.

What’s your first musical memory?  

Micah: School of Rock was mine. I wanted to play the drums because the dude with the spiky hair in the movie. I remember I would get in trouble at school for drumming with pencils.  I’m not even a drummer at all, but I would drum on the desk with pencils. My teacher told my mom, “you should get him drum lessons since he can’t stop during class.”

Ehmed: I think the most significant, pivotal music moment from when I was a kid was seeing my friend Kasim, whose since passed away, he just shredded the guitar. I remember I would go to their house literally every day after school. He used to play Guitar Hero on silent – he would actually mute Guitar Hero because he would have to focus. But he shredded on the guitar and he had this cream Les Paul with the P90s. This specific guitar is burned into my musical being. Just seeing him play the guitar and get good at it was actually the first time where it clicked in my head that it’s like, “Whoa, you can practice something and get better at something through practice.” I think Casen is certainly the biggest inspiration to me other than my dad. I remember one distinct memory driving to the Hoover Dam with my father, because I’m from Vegas, and we’re listening to “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” by The Beatles. Just hearing that play, being like, “wait, this is fucking awesome!”  

What were some of your favorite bands growing up?

Micah: That’s a tough question. One of the bands that I was the most into when I was between the ages of like seven and eleven was Cage the Elephant. Then I kind of got into a lot of electronic music as I was growing up. Skrillex is one of my goats. “Raise Your Weapon” by deadmau5 is one of my favorite songs of all time. And a lot of my musical memories are bands that my sister showed me. The Menzingers were really big for me when I was younger. Funnily enough, American Football and a lot of Midwest Emo stuff.

Ehmed: In my earliest days, I was mostly listening to the music my dad showed me. A lot of classic rock, but also a lot of grunge music like Soundgarden, you know, the big grunge bands at the time. Then when I started to discover music for myself I got really tapped into the Chicago scene in my high school years. I got tapped into Moontype, Options and Post Animal – that sort of scene was very impactful for me and that’s why I came out to Chicago. Chicago has a genuine love for making stuff.

Does the music you listen to when you’re growing up influence what you’re doing today?

Micah: 100%! We do a lot of our stuff very production heavy. I started making dubstep and electronic music when I was eleven years old. I heard Skrillex for the first time and I needed to figure out how to do this. Then I got into Porter Robinson and it brought in my view of what electronic music could be. I think you can hear some Porter in our stuff. I was also listening to a lot of bedroom pop like Frankie Cosmos and early Porches when I was younger. I think that also translates into a lot of our mode of thinking.

Ehmed: My first love was the guitar, studying all this classic rock shit like Eddie Van Halen that has stuck with me and will stick with me. The guitar is where I feel most confident.  Like what Micah was saying, he is a producer to his core. I came from playing bands, playing guitar and doing all that. So that’s where I think This House is Creaking lies in the middle. At this point, we’re both playing guitar, and we’re both heavily producing it. I think that’s pretty essential.

Micah: For my 12th birthday, my parents asked what I wanted and I made a PowerPoint presentation on why they should buy me the full version of Ableton Live. And they did not buy it for me. But they bought me a keyboard and AOSIS 49 keyboard that came with a free trial of the light version of Ableton, where you could only use 8 tracks within a project file. This lended a lot to my learning of it, and as you were with the guitar, I would YouTube tutorial every day on the bus to school and when I got home. I was bringing my laptop on the bus and I remember kids making fun of me. I played baseball and kids would ask me, “you stopped playing baseball for dubstep?”  

How did you originally meet?

Ehmed: We have a lot of mutual friends, and then by happenstance, we ended up living together a little bit.  

Micah: I was moving to a new spot and saw someone had an open bedroom. I said “I’ll freaking do it.” We lived in Rogers Park for a year. We made so much music together and had so much shit that we said we should probably put out. I was sitting on a project of like 4 songs that I was going to do solo. Eventually, not all of them, but a couple of them will eventually come out as This House is Creeping songs.  

Ehmed: I had demoed out a whole record of my own that summer. Then I was planning on going and recording it at a proper studio. But those will come out as THiC songs also at some point.

Micah: So it’s kind of just perfect timing. I remember Ehmed pushing me. Not in a negative way, but it was either, ‘you gotta put out the stuff that you have recorded or we gotta put out the stuff that we have now, we can’t just keep sitting on stuff’. I was really afraid of putting stuff out for a little while, so that extra push helped. I’m also beholden to my best buddy. We got to respect our own music and respect our own time. The response was really cool and it felt really good.  I started picking up a guitar again. I wanted to be able to play live and not just stand on stage. It all just lended itself to the current iteration of what we do now. 

Ehmed: Micah has a dubstep taste with mixing. I wasn’t used to working in Logic a lot, but Ableton literally changed my life. But for me I like learning more about the mechanics of production and mixing and stuff from Micah. I feel like we’re always learning back and forth from each other.

How did you come up with the band name This House is Creaking?

Ehmed: Dude, we lived in a very loud house. (laughing)

Micah: Yeah, it had these guttural noises because we had radiators that would make sounds and we would always feel as if someone was in the house or the house was creaking? We were sitting there, and one of us said, “dude, this house was creaking.” And we’re like, wait a second. We knew we wanted it to be a longer name that could be an acronym.  

Ehmed: But the “thick” pronunciation wasn’t intentional.

Micah: It was not intentional for it to be able to be pronounced as thick, even though it works.

Do you remember the first This House is Creaking show? How did it feel? Just walk me through the whole emotions of it.

Ehmed: Okay, so we played downstairs at Subterranean. This was my first time playing music. I have been writing since I lived in Vegas. It was a big deal for me.

Micah: It was my first time ever playing music I’ve written, not behind a DJ deck, but having a guitar and in front of a mic and singing. It was crazy.

Ehmed: When we play live there’s 3 guitarists in the band. So our friend Hunter Borowick, who plays third guitar with us, our friend Taylor [O’neal], who I played in dozens of bands with, was playing drums, and Will Izdepski, he played bass. So it’s like literally our dream team of people. 

Micah: I just realized I lied. It wasn’t my first time playing. It was the first time playing in a band rather than something that I just wrote.

Ehmed: It’s a crazy feeling to play your own music.  For me, I play a lot of other people’s music all the time. I was a hired guitar player, I actually really enjoy it because I like to bring my own thing into other people’s music. Playing your own thing is different. It’s the most rewarding experience. Although we’re a studio band and there’s a lot of production, the live thing is a beast. I mean, it’s loud, it’s aggressive and it’s pretty all rolled into one.  

Was there a band that you saw live that lit a competitive fire under you, like, you just want to go harder next time you’re in the studio?

Ehmed: There is a band called Palm that are no longer playing, but they are from Philly. We’re big fans of the Philly scene. Palm just made this unbelievable, timeless music. Truly, this is future forward thinking, and completely genuine, non-pretentious, just crazy shit they would make. Everytime I see them, it’s like, how the fuck do you even come up with? It’s nuts.  

Micah: It’s funny because we both have listened to them separately before we knew each other. I mean, they’re legends in their own right, but they’re not like a huge band. They’re a cult band. I think that’s the ultimate one for me at least where I was like, ‘holy shit. You can do that?’  

Ehmed: It’s not necessarily competitive, it’s more inspirational. It’s like, I want to do that too, you know? I get that from our buddies on a daily basis. We have a chat with all our best buds who all play in bands. They’re also just normal dudes, but anytime you go and see their shows, it’s like, “wait a second, you are so killer at what you do.” I think that’s a really cool part of Chicago.  Just like being a part of a community.

You mentioned opening up for Water From Your Eyes. I was at the Hotline TNT show when you guys opened.  You’re opening for DIIV in January. Do you feel you’re gaining momentum with people? That the music is starting to connect and now people are reaching out to you to open for bigger named artists?

Micah: Yeah, I definitely think so. It’s a knock-on-wood thing. And it’s not even that we’re doing it for that. I just love writing music and writing music with my best buddy. And it’s just a brain exercise and fun. But it’s definitely affirming to be opening for these bands I’ve listened to for a long time. My sister showed me DIIV when I was like 14 years old. That’s one of the bands that we were driving around in the back of the Volvo, hanging out after school and listening to DIIV, being like, “damn this is really cool.” Coming back around to it later and saying, ‘oh shit, I cannot believe that we’re gonna play with them. That’s crazy!’ It definitely feels like the music is connecting. The last two singles especially feel like we’re hitting our stride musically for me. It’s connecting really heavily and emotionally as well, which is cool. The last two are definitely pretty emotionally poignant songs.

Ehmed: I’ve been thinking about this a lot because at this point, I’m 24 and about to turn 25, but I’m just thinking about, “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing any of this? What is the point?” I’m more sure now more than ever that I love to make stuff. It’s the kind of thing that I’m gonna do. I am gonna do it no matter what and if I can have the materials and the means and the time to be able to make things, maybe eventually one day I could have a home studio where I could set up a drum kit and not have to worry about being too loud. That’s my goal. This is the way for me.

How do you feel like you grew from album one to album two as artists?  

Ehmed: Album one was very… What’s the word? Like reactive?

Micah: Yeah, it was like a flash in the pan.  

Ehmed: Yeah, it was a little impulsive. And not super deliberately made, which is good.

Micah: It was definitely more of a collection of tracks that we had made. The second one felt far more intentional. We sat on it for a long time.

Ehmed: Yeah, and they’re different. They’re very different albums.  

Micah: The first one is more uptempo which I think of as a summer album. The second one is definitely a lot more introspective, I think, which feels like a fall/winter album. At least for me.  

Ehmed: The second album is a very reflective one. It’s all about acknowledging these kind of fucked up things that occur inside, and then living with them. Now that I’ve put this out, or now that I’m aware of these patterns of behavior, what do I do now with this information? It’s not about me looking for answers, but it’s just acknowledging my actions.

Micah: I would agree with that 100%.  It’s a lot of screaming into the void. I don’t think there are a lot of answers for a lot of the questions that we might be asking on these songs.  And I think the beauty of it is also just giving space to somebody who’s listening to the songs. I can ask that question for myself and I don’t know what it might mean or what that answer might be, but the fact that I can ask it leads me to understand myself better in some capacity. I think that was what we were both kind of going for – to find an understanding of ourselves. I think that’s the biggest theme in our music.  As a whole, it’s a lot of introspective introspection and like who, what, where, and why?

Your second album is titled I Want to Feel at Home Here. What does “I want to feel at home here” mean to both of you?  

Ehmed: I think that’s along the same lines of gaining more understanding of myself, and himself, through posing the questions that are not necessarily looking for the answers. But, you know, it’s that desire to become better and more comfortable with yourself.  You know, more confident or doing harder things that you know maybe need to be done.

Micah: I 100% agree. I think the song “Become,” which is the last song on the record, is very much a big piece of the ethos of that record. The hook is “I don’t like who I am inside,” which is this kind of cathartic release of just taking control, getting comfortable – you gotta sit with it, and you gotta get comfortable with it, and you just gotta do the thing.

Ehmed: I mean it’s kind of hard to face yourself sometimes, and I think that this album was that – it was a mirror.

Micah: It’s tough to listen to for me. I don’t listen to it… It makes me sad.  

Ehmed: But it’s really interesting to have this sort of time capsule of what I was feeling at 23, 24.

In your latest single “Something Else”, you have a fart sound in the song. The last time I heard a fart on a song was Kid Cudi “Maui Wowie” which has gone viral on TikTok. Cudi’s fart is at the end of the song which is like a cap off to the experience. Your’s feels like it’s the jumping off point of the song.

Ehmed: I think we’ve been very serious about all this, right? It’s really not. It’s a big part of the way that this works, we just fuck around. When we were starting that song, we made it with Hunter Borowick and Peter Schultze, who Hunter plays in our band, and Pete also sometimes plays in our band. They’re best buds, and we started with them. We were just fucking around, you know, we’re in our living room, and I just got a whoopee cushion. I said “let’s just use this.” That’s not one that you write in the air necessarily.

Micah: Another thing that I have always loved about that song is lyrically, it’s very…what the hell? The lyrics are “I’m not that good, what’s wrong with being just okay.”  And then you cap it off, this massive, massive, introspective, existential question with a fart and a release of laughter – it’s the catharsis in the release.

Ehmed: I think that’s big, it’s taking everything in stride. This is all in the grand scheme when you look at the bigger picture, the fart is a beautiful metaphor.

Micah: Yeah we do it live too. 

Ehmed: Oh, my God, we just played a whole acoustic tour and we were playing “Something Else” and we were farting on the mic. (laughs)

How did you come up with the cover art for “Something Else?” Because it reminds me of a 90s Nickelodeon cartoon. It looks really cool.

Ehmed: Thank you. I dabble in drawing. Normally my drawings take weeks and I’ll just sit there and do this forever. I started to do a lot of stipple stuff, so I’ve been wanting to figure out how to do this a little faster in a more flowing way, so I’ve been watercoloring a lot. And that was just one.

Micah: The first two records are both paintings from two different friends of ours. Sarah did the first one. Drew did the second one. For “2 lamp (lava lamp)”, I found this crazy archive of lava lamp manuals from the 80s to now. Some dude runs this website who is just obsessed with lava lamps. And I spent three days just going through it all, and the art in these instruction manuals is insane.

Ehmed: What we did was we were thinking about our merch table, and we said, “how do we need to up our merch table?” So we were like, fuck, what do we put?  Like, we’re making a list, and in Micah’s notes, he just had 2 lamp, parentheses, lava lamp, because we’re like, we need lamps for the show. I’ve gotten clowned on in sessions and stuff in the past for the way I label projects. Everyone’s like, ‘ugh, date, time stamp.’ Doing any of this is so unserious, it should not be serious. There are an infinite amount of songs to be made. This is just a song, you know? And this is another one of those infinities. I think we’ve both gotten very hung up in the past on making sure everything’s in line – making sure all the art is perfect. I feel if you’re spending that much time on one thing, you’re getting expectations and there’s room for disappointment. If you just do it, just make it and get it out, the beauty of things is in the moment of the creation.

You can listen to I Want to Feel at Home Here out now as well as grab it on CD.
The Guppies and Their Rock n’ Roll Prophecy | Interview

January 30th, 2026

Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo Courtesy of The Guppies

Instigating that Boston and Brooklyn crossover of classic 4 Your Ears and Denizen brouhaha, The Guppies are a natural concoction of rock n roll nutrients from the creative peer bandmates of Dino and American Ninja Warriorz (formally known as Scotty Malcom’s Acid Minion). Debuting last month, The Guppies shared The Answers To Which We Do Not Know the Questions, a spur of the moment collaboration that stemmed from a co-headling tour this past November in Canada. Making up the limbs of the band is Gavin Caine (The Alaskas, American Ninja Warriorz), Colin Curcio (Dinos, Jack O. Lantern), Scotty Malcolm (Acid Minion, American Ninja Warriorz ), Aidan O’Reilly (Dinos) and Chase Allardice (every band ever). Recorded in a tight two days on a trusty 8-track Tascam, what came about was a clear and animated response to each of these musician’s creative spirit and passion to fill in the gaps of undesirable silence with something truly desirable and certifiably fun.

The Answers To Which We Do Not Know the Questions revels in the scruffy intermediates as The Guppies perform with some old back pocket magic. Without hindering its power, these songs excel in their low-fidelity holy prowess, making any type of formality a bit sweatier, engagement a bit bolder and infatuation a bit deeper. Harnessing a range of noises, the synth heavy drive of the opener “Yeah”, the twirling guitar crusades of “Allison” and “FBI Woman”, the decrepit country ballad of “Gigantic Tumbleweed and It’s On Fire”, or the more reserved pieces like “Kimba” or “Wizard Song” that feel like finding that lowly extra fry at the bottom of the bag, The Guppies consistently tinker away with undoubtedly sincere melodies and sonic novelties. And deep down there’s lucidity that comes through on all these songs, a fresh foundation begging to reconsider the guidelines of what makes a proper album or even a proper band. But don’t think too hard about it because sometimes even these questions get ahead of The Guppies themselves, and that’s where they prefer to be.

We recently got to ask The Guppies a few questions about their freaky fast album, their lore, the importance of a solid unison chant and the band’s destiny.

“Six Guys and One Girl” alludes to this album’s creation. Two bands go on tour, three come back – what’s the story there?

Scotty: I was excited to tour with Dinos because they were and are the hardest rocking band in Boston and the best band I’ve seen in a long time, I used to live in Boston, now I live in New York, and if they lived here they’d be the hardest rocking band here as well. It was awesome touring with them and also intimidating to play with them every night because I knew they rock extreme. I really respect their songwriting, recording style, and general ethos. We had lots of fun touring and partied and became friends, cuz I didn’t really know them that well before. A couple of shows got cancelled and we decided it was the perfect time for us to combine our powers and make an album. And it was so smooth and I think we have discovered a combination of elements that will be studied for the next 3000 years. It was really fun and I believe in The Guppies and this is only the beginning….

CC: Yeah that song is a funny one. Dinos and Scotty Band were on tour back in November and we had a few days off where we were able to go back to Boston. Initially I think we were gonna do a split ep/album of half Dinos songs half American Ninja Warriorz/Scotty band songs. But then we just started writing all these new songs and really got into a flow and were kinda like “wait, ok, this is actually it’s own thing”. And from there we just ran with it over the two-ish day period! This was definitely the smoothest/most fluid recording experience I’ve ever been a part of! It was really just the definition of nonstop fun.

Chase: Well, Dinos and Scotty Malcolm’s Acid Minion (now American Ninja Warriorz) had a two week tour in which the Warriorz were supposed to record our next album. However, that fell through as our drummer, bless up Gideon, had to go home. So I think myself and Scotty mentioned the idea of just making a new album from scratch. We had also recorded a live set from the tour on Aidan’s four track.

Whether it be touring, collaborating on releases or the connections with 4 Your Ears and Denizen Records, you guys have worked together for some time now. How did these connections come to be?

Scotty: We have not worked together for that long actually or even known each other that well for long. I don’t remember the first time I met CC (Dinos) sometime last year I guess, I remember the first time I met Aidan, I was playing with my band American Ninja Warriorz for a reunion show in Boston, I had heard his album ‘I’ve been a bad dinosaur’ and I knew Dinos were great. When I ran into him at the show (cuz Dinos was also playing )I gave him many compliments and bent the knee and said we were meant to be together and he agreed and that was the seed of our love. I made a couple j cards for him or album covers (aidan_).then months later they asked us to go on tour with them and I said yes absolutely. And that’s when I got to know the Dinos and I never looked back…..

CC: I’ve known Aidan (Dinos) for three-ish years now because we used to play in a different band together before Aidan started Dinos! Scotty, Gavin, and Chase are all definitely newer friends. However, I’ve loved all of their music for a super super long time and they’re some of my favorite songwriters around! The Denizen world especially was something that made me be like “Whao what is this” cause there’s almost endless music on the bandcamp and it goes back so far (2016?). So as I started to dig into it I became familiar with Scotty and Gavin’s songs and was just really floored by it all! I don’t fully remember the exact time I met Scotty but I think it was in passing at a show at Cuckzine that we were both playing? I actually vividly remember meeting Gavin! Dinos was on our summer tour and we were playing a gig in this basement in Brooklyn called Romania. The Acid Minions were also on the bill and that’s where I was introduced to Gavin for the first time! I remember us talking about music for a super long time and it really being a blast! Chase I remember meeting on the way to a show that Dinos was playing at the Boston venue Obriens and we really hit it off haha! With everyone I think we really bonded over our general recording ethos regarding recording to cassette and our approaches/interests in song writing (Rock!). When we started planning to go on tour together I was just unbelievably stoked and I couldn’t be more happy with how it all went!

Chase: Personally, I have known Scotty since April Fools 2024. We played a show at the jungle and I was blown away by everything about him. I met Gavin soon after and the plan was for me to eventually make music with them. Then I went to a random house show in September 2024 and recognized Aidan from the newly formed Dinos. A friend had told me they were gonna be the next cool band in our music scene and said I should meet them. Aidan and I hit it off really quick and soon after I met CC. We all bond over our love of the denizen / allston music universe and garage rock recorded on tape.

Gavin: We have all known each other and collaborated in different ways over the past few years. Allston Rock City is what unifies us, but our future lies beyond.

What sort of things did you bring from your respective projects into The Guppies? Was there anything you wanted to try out that felt separate from Dinos and American Ninja Warriorz (formally known as Scotty Malcom’s Acid Minion?

Scotty: I don’t feel we tried to separate ourselves from anything, we just let it flow through us like water in a pasta strainer. What is special about the guppies is that every member brings such a powerful element to the collective…everyone has unmatchable talent, and is unlike any other that has ever or will ever exist, this is why they will change rock forever and to infinity and beyond.

CC: Hmmmm I don’t think we were consciously thinking about separating anything! It felt like we kinda entered this unconscious state where everything was just super easy and automatic and based on gut instinct.

Gavin: The prior bands held no influence. We all became individuals, which in turn made us one.

With the challenge of making an album in such a short sprint, what sort of myths, tropes, inspirations, etc did you want to bring into, not just how these songs came out, but also what it means to make an album in general?

Scotty: Doing it fast was our only option because Dinos lives in Boston and the acid minions live in New York. But doing things fast is the best way, you tire yourself out and enter an awesome place where you have so many ideas and we were all inspiring each other and while three people were recording a song the other 2 were writing one. We pushed each other and influenced each other and grew stronger, like a pack of penguins gathering in the arctic cold. Everything that is on the album is true and it’s about what happened to us when six people went up north to tour Canada and many things happened and I’m glad that they all did and that is that.

CC: I love making stuff fast! So the challenge of having only two days made me and everyone else really excited. We were still in the midst of the tour and the haze that touring sets upon you, so that definitely was super inspiring for the songwriting. We were also down to work really long days, if I remember right the sessions were around 13 hours each day. Give or take. But making the album in that way just set on this general vibe of like “lets just see how far we can push this” and every time there would be a moment of “hmm maybe we’re done?” suddenly one or two people would perk up and be like “wait I have something new!” and we’d jump back in and make it! So much of this felt like total gut instinct and just really trying to go for it with the time we had. I think as the process continued we all fell into the same groove which allowed us to really push each other!

Chase: We had no songs, and then wrote them all in 2 days. We would start a song, finish it and record it. Everyone had ideas brewing at all times. We knew we’d get it done; it was just a matter of how many songs we’d have.

Gavin: The Guppies do not deal in myth or legend. Everything we do is true and what you see is who we are.

The title, The Answers To Which We Do Not Know the Questions, is an interesting perspective, working backwards. Was that backwards approach something that came out of this process, or something you wanted to explore in those two days?

Scotty: I didn’t think backwards that much, I mostly think forwards, but what I think about that title is this: I think that myself and fellow band members all have something inside of ourselves that is rare and powerful. I think within our body lies a mine of gems and when I look into my brain I can see it but I have to pick away at it to capture the stones but I know that they are there and all the answers I need I will unlock when required.

CC: I don’t know if we really thought about working backwards but we definitely were going into it knowing at the end of the few days we were gonna come out of it with something! And I think what it became organically revealed itself to us along the way!

Gavin: Nothing ever happens backwards. Anything backwards is just forwards in a bunny suit.

What do you think a good unison chant brings to a song? Is there something you think songs without a good unison chant miss out on?

Scotty: Team is a good feeling. It’s great when you have the element of many people at once on a song, it’s rare to get so many good people together so you should probably record it. The greatest unison chant song is “we are the unwavering beacon of righteousness” by Bradford Barker, every unison I’ve ever attempted has never and will never reach that level of greatness

CC: I love chants and chanting and all things related to the topic! I think it is possible to have a good song with no unison chant…. However… The deck is stacked against you.

Chase: Unison chants are the ultimate spirit of rock. It is a POWERFUL thing.

Gavin: Singing in unison is the mission of humanity. It’s the least we could do.

Is there more to come from The Guppies in the future or are you content with this whirlwind statement as a one off?

Scotty: There is more, and there will always be more. At least that’s what I want, I wonder what the others will say. I’m up for going fully in, I think we all got the skills to be a great band,

I really wanna go all in on guppies because for years and years I’ve had my bands with my friends in it and all the friends in it have their own bands and you’re all in each other’s bands and all your effort is divided into 5. I think the guppies are important because we could leave everything behind and work towards one common goal: To be the most rocking band you’ve never heard… until now?

CC: Yes! Soon! We’re definitely playing some shows in the next few months which I can’t wait for! Me and Aidan are in Boston at the moment but are gonna move to The Big Apple most likely between August and September. So once we’re all in the same spot I think it’s just gonna be a blast. There’s gonna be tons more albums and shows and all the stuff! Guppies Forever!

Gavin: There will be more Guppies in the future. Each Guppie has their own short destiny to fulfill; once complete, we will join as one again and swim.

You can listen to The Answers To Which We Do Not Know the Questions by The Guppies now with cassette tapes on the way to purchase.
0 Stars Talks Creative Restrictions and Latest Release World No. 2 | Interview

January 29th, 2026

Written by Emily Moosbrugger | Photo Courtesy from 0 Stars

At the start of each year, 0 stars’ Mikey Buishas creates a bingo board. He organizes 25 new year’s resolutions neatly into squares and hangs them from his wall as a visual reminder. If he accomplishes five in a row in any direction, he gets a bingo. “I was thinking, this is the year I get off the notes app and I get a pencil,” he said.

Much of Buishas’ songwriting starts this way – through simple, self-imposed creative restrictions. Similar to getting off the notes app, a goal set with the intention of confronting his habit of overthinking lyrics, he collects pages and pages of games he’s invented to close the borders on himself creatively. Sometimes these are open-ended ‘write a song a day’ challenges, other times they’re based on more specific constraints, like writing a song without using any pronouns. “I think every record I’ve ever made, which is like 10 or something at this point, is usually just a collection of these dart thrown attempts at a song in 20 minutes before midnight type things,” he said.

Photo Courtesy of 0 Stars

To record World No. 2, his second album as 0 Stars, Buishas brought a collection of songs that he’d kept stored on his 8-track to the studio of his good friend and musical inspiration, Hunter Davidsohn. “I basically brought some reels up there where everything was out of tune. He just helped me, with his tape machine and my tape machine, sort of cobble together these things,” he said. Buishas and Davidsohn spent half a week with the reels, re-recording instrumental sections, re-doing some songs in different keys, stitching parts of different songs together and scrapping others entirely. “It’s kind of the first thing I’ve made that I feel 100% proud of and I think that’s largely because of my friend Hunter who helped record it,” Buishas said of the album.

Written over the span of the last six years, World No. 2 deals with the complexity of taking change as it comes and settling into life’s slowing pace as we grow older. “I wanted the burst of an immediate wind/ Started over and over and over and over/ Tipped over the poison/ Started again,” he sings gingerly on the album’s title track, a tender acoustic ballad echoing an ever-evolving attitude towards life’s unpredictability. Much of the beauty of World No. 2 is in the moments just after our momentum is lost; feedback hanging in the air after a guitar solo is abandoned, raindrops bursting on the windshield at an uncomfortably long red light, fragments of conversation still lingering on the walk back to the car. Like the feeling of quieting the mind with a long walk, it’s a reflection of slowing down and finding an abundance of comfort in the world that exists around you.

Buishas’ lighthearted approach to songwriting is reflected on “Jeanine,” a rocking 90-second song inspired by Arthur Russell’s “Janine.” “You know I want to write a song like ‘Janine,’” he explained of his thought process. “If I title it ‘Jeanine,’ okay I’m like 20% there and it just becomes a little game. And you’re like ‘oh maybe I should write about… I know a Jeanine!’ And now you’re like 30% there.” In the first half of the song, Buishas casually contemplates his mom’s thoughts about his musical pursuits: “Maybe if I start a band/ Jeanine would understand.” But as the song progresses, he creates a steady balance between his tongue-in-cheek lyrical storytelling and the self-doubt that comes with maintaining a long-term creative project: “It’s hard to say for sure/ How long this will endure/ I want to free you from the panic/ And plop you in the hammock.”

Throughout World No. 2, the songs shift between the driving, spirited indie-rock of “Jeanine” and the lush, intimate acoustic recordings of songs like “Link in Bio” and “They Say.” Others like “Atlantic” land somewhere in the middle, with dreamy, soft-rock verses punctuated by brisk electric guitars and a droning feedback section. “Atlantic” moves through a series of lyrical vignettes detailing the experience of running errands on a rainy day: “Mow me down at the DMV/ Make me frown, make me see/ That I’m nothing without my documents.” Like “Jeanine,” there is push and pull between comedy and introspection that gives the everyday occurrences Buishas writes about a layer of absurdity. But there is also tension between the way he depicts beauty and mundanity that gives these lyrical situations their own surreal feeling, like being caught somewhere between a daydream and reality. It’s that feeling that makes World No. 2 feel so unique and so intimate.

“I like pointing to something and alluding to something else that maybe isn’t there. So maybe what would’ve been funnier is ‘World No. 3,’ because wait, what happened to ‘World No. 2?’ Or what are the confines of this world? What is ‘World No. 1?’” Buishas asked, explaining his thinking behind the album’s title. “I think it means a hundred different things depending on what point in the album I’m in, but basically just a different kind of Heaven that you think exists and then find out you’re already living in it.”

You can listen to World No. 2 out now as well as get it on cassette via Worm Records.
Virga are Living Like Weasels on New EP The Perfect Freedom of Single Necessity | Feature

January 19th, 2026

Written by Molly Friend | Photos by Sarah Franke

Last November, I called Faith Maddox of Virga to talk about their new EP The Perfect Freedom of Single Necessity. We spoke on Black Friday. “I can’t even go online right now because every ad feels like I’m being spiritually assaulted,” they lamented. Maddox, navigating the wake of a breakup and subsequent band restructuring, has been forced to reexamine their relationship to dependence, need, and desire. The transformation forced them to release their grasp on the scaffolding of the relationship they outgrew. This release became a new framework, one in which they could recognize the pitfalls of preoccupation – whether it be with a person, a substance, or retail.

The title of the record borrows a line from Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels,” a foundational text for Maddox during the creation of these songs. Laudably, Dillard’s weasel has no preoccupations. It does not concern itself with what it wants to buy, what bar it wants to visit, or who it wants to fuck. Instead, it remains focused only on the aspects of life that keep it alive, and all else falls by the wayside. “The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice,” writes Dillard. “A weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity,” she concludes. Like the titular weasel, who acts according to no being’s prerogatives other than its own, Maddox strives for clarity of purpose. The Perfect Freedom of Single Necessity embraces a kind of spiritual abstinence, and renounces that which does not sustain an attuned life. “All desires belie a spiritual deficit,” Maddox stated. “If you don’t stop and think about why you’re chasing what you’re chasing, you might not be actually pursuing what you truly want.”

Virga’s dedication to intentionality is audibly evident, too. Each track feels focused and determined, driven by to-the-point guitar riffs, crisp drum patterns, and full-throttle bass lines supplied by Maddox, Billy Orr, and Deegan Poores, respectively. Virga’s sound is clear-cut and polished off like a sun-bleached bone left long ago by some scavenger. Most distinct are Maddox’s up-close and deliberate vocals, sustaining notes in ways that make air feel like a non-renewable resource. It’s as if they’ve entered their lean season, not in the sense they don’t have enough to work with – rather, they’ve gotten rid of what they don’t absolutely need.

The band opens with unfettered energy on “Half Lie,” the EP’s first track that can only be described as a pre-breakup song. Poores and Orr push the rhythmic progression with an uneasy, twitchy momentum. “Isn’t it nice / to be desired?” the subject bays at the speaker, full of resentment. Maddox snarls this line with such bitterness that it’s hard to read the scene as anything other than a passive aggressive exchange that will precipitate a full blown fight. The song swims in the dullness and disquietude of a decaying relationship, of needs left unmet. Maddox belligerently pokes at the tension by unleashing a guitar solo shaped by harsh, unyielding intonation.

During our call, Maddox mentioned they picked up a cigarette habit on the road. “I allow myself one or two a week,” they said. “It feels powerful to have access to something, but only allow myself to have what I actually need.” It’s a self-disciplined tightrope walk of the line between desire and addiction, between need and want. I hear them waver: “I have asthma, I sing, I should not be smoking…I give a lot of them away,” they add.

Maybe I can hear this new habit in “Night Scene with Coyote.” Maddox opens the second and most audacious track with dusky, alluring delivery: “Do you hear it calling from deep inside? / Hollow, beneath the sternum, / open wide.” With more breath than voice, they conjure the familiar heartburn of fixation, and the temptation of answering that call, even if against your better judgement. They let the impulse carry them forward, like headlights feed your vision just a little at a time on a night drive down a deserted road.

Over a sludgy dirge, they warn, “It’s bottomless, that want / It’s bottomless, the urge,” sustaining the last word until they’ve pushed all the air out of their lungs and their voice creaks and expires.

It mirrors the emptying of the self that occurs in pursuit of something we’re convinced we can’t live without. Like shoulder angels dueling for influence, Maddox and Poores trade guitar and bass lines that propel the track into its climax, a realization. First, it is murmured: “I can’t get enough / of what I don’t need.” It’s a concise yet devastating maxim that illuminates the futility of pursuit. Things that aren’t necessary to your very being, to your soul’s existence, can never fully sate you, and will always leave you in the lurch of needing the next fix.

The climactic line comes from The Dry Season, a memoir by Melissa Febos that Maddox credits with completely changing their understanding of relationships. The memoir details Febos’s year of romantic abstinence and the self-possession she was ultimately able to reclaim as a result. “Celibacy as a method to understand desire is not an intuitive approach,” Maddox points out, but it is a revelatory one. How much of yourself will you empty in trying to fill a bottomless vessel? In this scene, we are the animal, living not in necessity, as the weasel, but in choice, as the proverbial coyote: emaciated, run ragged, risking life and limb to attain and devour our prey. There are other options available that might sustain us, but we insist on the roadrunner, the object of our obsession. We are beholden to a never-ending chase toward the mirage of satisfaction. Desire is a state of destitution.

Maddox repeats the line, this time letting it burst from their mouth. Their voice catches, and they are half pleading, half barking, reckless, frenzied. It’s the kind of ferality that surfaces when we reject the better angels of our nature and give over to the least honorable aspects of ourselves. “Leaning into the parts of myself that felt perverse or undesirable allowed me to make more honest and interesting art,” said Maddox. What is normally hidden, mired in shame, is allowed to break free, and the force is a powerful one.

Two summers ago, the band took a trip to Clark County, Kansas to visit a prairie preserve near the Oklahoma border. Maddox saw a patch of sorghum set against a murky pre-storm sky and snapped a photo. As the shutter clicked, a gust of wind blew them back onto unstable ground, and they lost their balance. They fell back into a ditch, and upon landing, heard a sickening crack as their ankle bent the wrong way. Being carried back to the car, they entirely lost their sense of sight and sound and had a seizure – a symptom of a lifelong neurological condition triggered by physical stress. “I kind of thought I had died. Not being able to hear or see was terrifying,” they told me. In this state of sensory deprivation, full of adrenaline, they became aware of an extrasensory presence, a kind of prairie spirit that stayed with them in their vulnerable state. When they came to, they saw a massive thunderhead coming over the horizon and smelled rain in the air. Maddox wrote “The Ditch” after this harrowing experience.

The whole scene is cinematic and transcendental. I can’t help but think of Christina’s World, the Andrew Wyeth painting of a woman dragging herself up a wheat covered hill without the use of her legs. Anna Christina Olson, the woman depicted in the painting, likely also suffered from a neurological condition that kept her from walking. It is a picture of disabled life both at the mercy of, and, in intimate communion with its natural environment. When we are cut off from our sensuous life, our desires are dwarfed, easily bowled over by a gale.

“Nothing can save you, / nothing cared,” they holler with a Gordonesque bellow, and begin to scratch at their guitar. Though it might sound nihilistic at first, “nothing” here is working as a subject, as in only in a state of nothingness can you be saved. If desires are indeed a symptom of a spiritual deficit, then deprivation must incite a spiritual influx. To detect and connect with a higher power, you must hold onto nothing, and allow the boundary between you and the vapor in the air before a storm to dissolve. When you are nothing once more, the land will take you back, not because it’s vindictive, not even because it wants to. It will swallow you whole because, like the weasel, that is its unthinking job in this world. There is salvation in the uncaring nature of the land. Reflecting on the event, Maddox said, “Some part of me did die that day, in a way that I think was positive.”

When we talked about the inspiration for the closing track, “Via Negativa,” Maddox said they wrote it while Poores was setting up a new pedal steel guitar, which lends the song a sweet reflectiveness that isn’t heard elsewhere on the EP. “I was feeling a lot that day,” they said. “Will I have both the creative success I feel is the primary purpose in my life – and – can I have love? You’re always sacrificing one for another especially if you’re in a relationship with a man,” they attested. They were haunted by the painful yet liberating nature of relinquishing the ideal of partnership.

They described their newfound solitude to me as being able to fully exhale for the first time. I don’t think I entirely understood what they meant until I was driving west out of Chicago. As I passed train yards and suburbs, the landscape flattened out, and I felt a sweet and familiar expansiveness return to me. Gazing out on flocks of geese balanced on frozen ponds, I was overcome with a sense of singularity that cannot exist when there is always someone right next to you. There was nothing before me except more road. It was a great field of possibility, and no matter how far I advanced, I found myself at the center of this field. Only in the middle of nowhere can you begin to understand your place in the world. This is via negativa, “the negative way,” a philosophical idea that you can define life, the Self, or God by what it is not.

“There’s nowhere to hide / when you’re out on the ice,” Maddox howls with lungfuls of air, with miles to go. With no distractions, no preoccupations, there is suddenly nothing left standing between you and your one, true, single necessity in this life. There is no destination except here and now, and no excuse not to be there. Here you stand in the wide open, in full awareness, with nothing. Well, not nothing. There’s you, the you that’s left when everything else is stripped away. “What would love feel like without an object at the center of it?” Maddox asks me.

I imagine it’s terrifying, being the only speck on the tundra, the prairie. Once you reach where you thought the oasis lay, only to realize you’re surrounded by thin air, fooled by an iceblink, it is devastating. But on the other hand, you can stop running.

You can listen to The Perfect Freedom of Single Necessity out everywhere January 30th. You can listen to the rest of Virga’s catalog now.
Dendrons Transform “Cosmic Purgatory” of Hometown into Triumph on Indiana | Interview

January 12th, 2026

Written by Joy Elizabeth | Photo by Vanessa Valadez

Chicago-based group Dendrons’ third full-length offering, Indiana, couldn’t be more of a product of its origins. The title track begins the album, calling listeners to “dissolve yourself,” a refrain cushioned between droning guitars and optimistic lead melodies. There is notable, intentional restraint in the composition, a precipice never quite summited. It makes the LP feel like a dream, somewhere between the grounded real world and the heady, psychedelic swoon of something otherworldly.

While lead singles “Tuck Me Under,” “Monsteras,” and “B4” invite the audience into this abstract sonic landscape, it is the shorter tracks that really complete the picture. “Liminal” and “Opening Play (Make Haste)” (all of 43 second and under 2 minutes, respectively), bridge the gap between heavier, fuzzier compositions and cleanse the palate for the main event.

I caught up with Jarvie to dive into the themes of Indiana, its “fractured” development, and how the group metamorphosizes restlessness into a punch.

Dendrons has been described as a collaboration of two childhood friends who reconnected later in life. With tracks like “B4” exploring the haunting nature of the past (memories stored in location), would you say that Indiana is an ode to home?

Dane Jarvie: I would say Indiana represents a lot of things to me personally. It is my origin in the sense that my grandparents on my mothers side came from there. For me it exists, partially, as a liminal space. A perpetual ground between loss and reinvention. A cosmic purgatory. A place that I find myself in throughout most of my life. I think there is a strange beauty to it that I find intoxicating. A lot of Indiana feels so familiar to me even though I had never grown up there.

On a physical level, it is probably one of the states that I have driven through more than any other. It is omnipresent.

Lead single “Tuck Me Under” nearly hits the 6 minute mark, cascading between lulls and frenetic breaks. What was the process like composing this?

DJ: The majority of songs on this album were written in fractions here, fractions there—piecemeal. Ableton demos that were pitched by members of the band were re-imagined, re-arranged and built back up as a unit—sometimes bearing little resemblance to the original tune. Then the songs would evolve again when we went to the studio. Everything was always in flux until literally the last moment.

“Tuck Me Under” was constructed in a similar fashion. It started as a short demo of some acoustic improvisations and electronic embellishments, and it was run through the grinder, going through many different shapes and shades.

The sprawling, acoustic, ethereal end section was pitched by Tony, our engineer and co-producer, as a concept, and I remember during the pre-production stage, we stayed up in a windowless basement till 4 or 5 am, hammering out chords on a nylon string guitar and singing melodies. That part was written in Normal, Illinois. The original demo for the end section had us putting violin bows over guitars, and we spent a long time creating hypnotic feedback.

We were so sleep deprived when we recorded these ideas that when we listened back to what we wrote, it felt like it came from someone else entirely. I think this all contributes to the overall feel. As far as how the vocals went for this album, melodies came first, and the lyrics were arranged at the very end of the writing process.

There is a restless energy that blankets the album, an eagerness to break through monotony felt particularly in “Monsteras.” Where does this come from, and have you found that channeling these thoughts into your work helps release them?

DJ: I think this album was created in a state of uncertainty. I think a lot of us were yearning for a reinvention creatively, but there was not a specific road map for how to get there. It was all new territory for us. There is an inherent tension with the tunes. There are a lot of heavy creative forces at play in these songs—Every member of this project has a different vision for how something could or should sound. A lot of compromise had to be made in order to make things fit. Sometimes the clashing ideas were left in the music and made as a creative choice, as a statement. I think those moments are important to represent in an honest way.

You’re credited as co-producers on the album with Tony Brant. Do you feel like having your hands on production keeps you in the driver’s seat of each project?

DJ: I think we all consider production, and the creative choices associated with tone and sonic palate, to be a large part of the artistry for us—a large part for the recipe that makes this band what it is. Taking ownership of this is emboldening.

Tony played a huge part in it too, keeping things moving and adding a coherence to things.He added a certain technical prowess that we really appreciate. Everything is mostly collaborative, though. We play specific instruments on the stage, but as far as writing goes, we are multi-instrumentalists in every sense. Sometimes I would write parts for another member, or they would write parts for me, or maybe entire sections with all instruments of one section were structured from one person’s Ableton demo beforehand. It didn’t matter who wrote what part. We tried to put egos aside as best we could. The most important thing was did the part sound good coming out of the speakers? It didn’t matter through what person (or avenue) it was achieved. This was the prevailing attitude while writing the record.

You’ve noted the Chicago DIY scene as pivotal in your career. How has it supported you and how does it fit into your story now?

DJ: Chicago is where the band was started and it is always gonna be the home base for most of us. We are a product of the environment we grew up in. I do, however, think a big part of our sound is also the product of us finding ourselves on the road, touring, and getting outside of our comfort zones—interacting with communities all across North America. We are very much a band that is informed by our experiences traveling, and I have always appreciated that aspect. I want to honor that.

You can listen to Indiana out everywhere now via Candlepin Records.
Dexter Webb Tries Not to Get Too Attached, Talks It’s All For Me | Interview

January 9th, 2026

Written by Shea | Photo by Charlie Boss

“I’m self obsessed / I think real hard and I do my best, to do my part,” Dexter Webb sings on the aforementioned “I’m Self Obsessed”, the second track off of his latest album It’s All For Me self-released this past September. You can often find Webb playing guitar in the touring band of Indigo De Souza or playing in various live musical configurations around North Carolina. But back in 2024, Webb shared So I Lost My Shot!, a debut album of lost sounds and ideas that took a long time to feel complete after its initial release. It’s All For Me had to be released cut and dry for both its own and Webb’s sake to move on to whatever’s next.

Throughout Webb’s figurative stylings, accumulating tinkerings with instinctive sonic fulfillment, It’s All For Me sounds like striking gold in the junk drawer; the lost forgotten treasures of yesteryear that now take on a new meaning. Action figures who peaked in high school, AAA batteries with a bit of juice left, old baseball cards where the players all seem to wink at you with profitable intents; each track runs fast and with harsh familiarity as Webb writes with such classic strains of pop hooks and instrumental progressions, yet still maintains to be fully and remarkably individual. “But that ain’t me / at least for now I still wanna be right off of the track / where I can’t hear the train and all of my friends are just doing their thing”, he continues on “I’m Self Obsessed”, lighthearted amongst the chimes of bells and glitching inputs. It’s All For Me does feel like it was written for an audience of one, and to its credit, that’s what makes it so special. It’s both confrontational and comforting, gripping tightly to the dichotomy between the act of making art and sharing art, as Webb continues to define pleasure, space, and voice in what he does.

We recently got to ask Webb some questions about the album, the struggles of working solo and his ever-shifting writing process.

It’s All For Me is your latest album to be shared with the world. How does it feel to have it out?

Feels positive to be out from under one thing and crawled up under another. It’s generally good for me to have less to consider, and I haven’t thought about those recordings much since that day I put it up. The process of making it felt important, but not sure how I feel or what it means otherwise.

You have participated in several other NC bands over the years, either offering guitar work or helping with recording services. When did you want to start releasing your own stuff? What did your time working with other artists bring to your own work, and what does it mean to have something entirely your own?

I always wanted to, but it can be psychologically complicated to be alone in that process. With friends, I can at least take comfort in the simple truth that playing music with people I love is GOOD. That’s more than enough a reason to do it. For whatever reason I have some elusive, ghostly shame around my own public creative existence.

Photo by Charlie Boss

Like you said, having these songs to sit on and to consider and to put out, does that feel like a chore or a task to complete for you? What makes you put out your own work despite the ghostly shame?

No, never a chore. I don’t want to force it. Feels like I can’t afford to let the good thing go sour. There’s always fun to be found in it, it’s just a matter of if I can let myself go there.

Your approach to releasing music on bandcamp is fairly loose, being comfortable making changes and trying new things. Did the making and releasing of It’s All For Me differ in the way you released So I Lost My Shot?

Two very different experiences. So I Lost My Shot! was a yearlong roll out of whatever I was finding on old tapes and my couple broken computers. I found myself looking around for something when I felt down and didn’t know why. Usually took one or two manic flurries for another batch of songs to get thrown up. I’d take it down when it felt weird, and every once in a while, throw it back up with another half hour or something. I’m far enough away from it now. It’s All for Me came from my first time not having a home recording setup and sitting around writing songs was my only option. As soon as I could plug shit in, I recorded them as fast as I could and put it up.

Do you think that initial reaction to write first and then quickly record and share all at once affected how this album came out in the end? Whether that be creatively speaking or the way you were able to put it out and let it be?

It did. I could’ve easily strangled it into something else, if I didn’t learn my lesson the first hundred times. More time with something usually allows more of those self-destructive thoughts to show face. Music I’ve made that I “loved” the most and spent the most time with had to be destroyed. Better for me not to get too attached, because I can and will. I have more creative self-trust now that I will just write more and keep doing what works. The shame doesn’t have much good to say, it’s just that part of the brain that if you listen too close it can push you to complete nonexistence, probably best to do the opposite of whatever it says

There seem to be instances of grappling with perception of self and the way you are perceived by others. Where were you writing from for this album? Were there any themes you found yourself writing to?

Mostly writing about confusion, my death, and trying to make myself laugh.

You also work a lot with video and animations. What is your relationship to visuals? Does it influence the way you approach making music at all?

Not so much anymore. I had fun while I was doing it. I think it came from being on tour all the time and editing video was something I could do in the van. I’ll probably play with clay again, but it takes a warm space for my hands, and I find myself currently bouncing from cold to colder.

You can listen to It’s All For Me out now.
runo plum Finds Healing Through Debut Album “patching” | Interview

January 5th, 2026

Written by Emily Moosbrugger | Featured Photo by Noa Francis

Last month Minneapolis-based songwriter runo plum released her debut album “patching,” after five years of self-releasing a series of singles and EPs. Joined by co-producer Lutalo and instrumentalist and girlfriend Noa Francis, runo recorded the album in two weeks in a cabin in rural Vermont. The resulting 12 songs were described by runo as “emotional fragments” of her healing process compiled into one project.

Rooted in the aftermath of a recent heartbreak, “patching” places its trust in life’s natural cycles. As early as the opening line, runo’s plainspoken, cool delivery echoes a calming sense of patience amidst her growing anxieties: “As long as it doesn’t mean it’s a big sickness/ Mighty fine with me, I’ve been already through this.” The record moves through the ebbs and flows of emotional reconstruction, drifting from daydreamed fantasies of sweeter times to soul-baring introspection. “There’s gotta be a way to get out from under the mud,” she sings on “Pond” with a yearning for clarity. It is moments like these that define “patching,” in which runo makes clear that even in her deepest melancholy, she is held together by a faith in her natural ability to be put together again.

Photo by Alexa Vicious

Congratulations on your first record release? How does it feel to have it out?

Hello! It’s surreal, and a big relief.

You described these songs as “emotional fragments” of your healing process patched together into one project. In addition to writing these songs, do you feel like sharing them with the world is part of your process of healing?

Absolutely, it feels like the final step in some way.

You mentioned you had written enough material for three records at the time of writing “patching” – how were you able to separate these songs from everything you wrote at that time?

The main two are split between the more “folk” ones and the heavier more “rock” ones. The third are just shitty sappy discarded songs that I will probably never use lol!

I read that you put out your first release through Bandcamp in 2020. You’ve been able to gather a community of listeners from around the world since then – has having a community like this impacted your relationship to music making?

Totally. It’s definitely kept me going during certain moments. It’s really touching to be able to make something that is meaningful to more than just myself.

Had you been writing music for a while before you started releasing your songs?

Never consistently. I would write occasionally since I was like 14 ish. Maybe like a dozen songs in total in my teen years. Then I really started writing in my 20s.

How do you feel your songwriting and recording process have changed from the time you started putting music out to now?

My songwriting especially has gotten a lot more meaningful to me. I’ve had a hard time being able to access that in the past, and being able to properly articulate how I was feeling. In the beginning I had a lot of songs where I wasn’t really saying anything, I was sort of just rambling about random things. I still write like that sometimes but generally it all feels more cohesive to me.

For recording, in the beginning I had no idea what I was doing. I taught myself how to produce and record for the first couple years, and then Phillip Brooks came along and helped me record the early stuff I have out. But we were really just both figuring it out as we went. A lot of the songs on ‘patching’ feel like the sound I was trying to get to for many years.

One of my favorites on the record is “the Quiet One” – You open with the line “how can I make this as vague as I possibly can?” – I love that because you touch on wanting to come off strong to your subjects yet your songwriting is so intimate and raw. How would you describe your relationship to vulnerability within songwriting?

Oh wow, yeah. That one is somewhat of a black sheep of the album that I made fit in. It’s funny because I started with that first line, and then it turned out to not be so vague. This song was a place for me to put my feelings about a short lived thing I had with someone. I never shared it with them, so having it out is definitely pretty vulnerable, but I think that is just a part of being an artist, and especially a writer. It is all just very human feelings and I know so many relate to this stuff so that makes it easier to share.

The outro stands out from the rest of the record both lyrically and instrumentally – can you tell me a little bit about that imagery and this song?

Yeah! This was originally a poem I wrote during a really beautiful walk I had last summer. It was one of those weird weather moments when it was slightly raining and also sunny. It felt very representative of the contrast I was feeling in my emotional world. At that point I was falling in love again after the breakup that was the catalyst for patching, and I had reached a level of beauty and peace that felt really unexpected.

You can listen to patching out everywhere now as well as grab it on vinyl, CD or cassette via Winspear. Catch runo plum on her first headlinging US tour starting in February.
Catching Up with MaryMary! | Interview

January 2nd, 2026

Interview by Ella Hardie | Photo Courtesy of Gren Bee 4/20/2025 at Empty Bottle.

The first time I saw MaryMary! perform live was in 2023 at a short-lived DIY venue in Avondale called “The Rabbit Hole,” with her nest of wires, synthesizers, and pedals set up on a couple of folding tables. This was among the first house shows I’d attended in Chicago, the very first electronic show I’d ever seen, and one of the first times I’d seen Mary, my coworker at the time, outside of work, though this wasn’t Mary’s show—it was MaryMary!’s show. Her backdrop could’ve just been the basement’s paint-chipped walls sparsely adorned with band stickers, sharpie’d declarations of love, and duct-taped fliers from shows past, but she turned the space into a spectacle: on her left, neon green lasers swirled on the wall and live camcorder footage of herself was projected on her right. These visuals and an epic cover of Big Thief’s then-unreleased “Vampire Empire” made for a night to remember (and be forever immortalized via blog).

A lot’s changed since: Mary and I haven’t worked together in a hot minute, she released two singles in October, and she just headlined Empty Bottle for the second time this year. MaryMary! is a Chicago-based experimental synth-pop artist, though using the term “experimental synth-pop” for her work feels a bit limiting. There are a lot of words you could use to describe MaryMary!’s music: intricate, delicate, heavy, staticky, glitchy, bubbly, jangly, industrial, innovative, super fucking awesome, etc. It’s hard not to cast a wide net when trying to pin down an artist whose personal mantra is “I CAN DO ANYTHING.” Maybe it’s better not to pin her down at all… In the years since that basement show, MaryMary! has cemented herself as a fervent advocate of DIY culture and a fixture of Chicago’s prolific electronic music scene. With her knack for elaborate, meticulously planned live shows, her inimitable stage presence, and a repertoire of covers ranging from Big Thief to Ween to obscure 1970s alt-disco artists who don’t even have Wikipedia pages, MaryMary! is a force to be reckoned with.

Photo from MaryMary!’s 4/20/2025 show at Empty Bottle by Noah Sebek.

10/26/2025: Celebrity DUI, WOOF, & MaryMary! @ Empty Bottle @ 8:30 pm.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mary finds me by the bar wearing a Celebrity DUI sweatshirt over her stage outfit with an Old Style in her hand. We scurry upstairs to Empty Bottle’s green room, which has less of a punk-rock vibe and more of a cozy millennial office vibe than I was expecting. Her friends and fellow performers—one of which is dressed up as a nun—sit on the couch while Mary and I take over the end of a large wooden table, sitting in swivel chairs. We chat for a few minutes before the “formal” interview begins, but we’re in a bit of a time crunch because the first act is on in a little over half an hour.

Overlapping chatter in the background. I move my phone on the table closer to Mary and start recording:

E: So… tonight is a big night…

M: It’s the MaryMary! Rock Show here at Empty Bottle! I’m very excited.

E: How long have you been sitting on this and planning this night?

M: This show in particular has been kind of a vague sketch of an idea for a few months, and only over the past few days has it fully materialized… I dunno, this is my second headlining show here at Empty Bottle, and the first one was a HUGE spectacle that I put, like, everything I had into—well, I’m certainly throwin’ a lot of myself into this one too—but that first one I did, pretty much every single detail was planned in advance. I had a lot of stage design and costume design and choreography and a five-piece band… Now there’s gonna be three of us onstage, it’s a little bit less going on… I took the remnants of the things I thought worked for that show and stripped it down a bit so it didn’t have to be a thing that took over my life for months. But it still has a degree of spectacle beyond just, like, a show that I just get thrown on, y’know?

[In classic Mary fashion, this show still had giant tentacled inflatables, flashing light sequences, and multiple tv screens onstage.]

E: Did you also put the bill together?

Mary nods and smiles.

E: Is it friends… or…?

M: Some friends… WOOF, who play before me, I don’t know them super well personally, but I saw them play at a friend’s house party a while ago and was really into them. I thought that they’d make for a great vibe. And then Celebrity DUI, who play before them, are dear friends of mine. Morrigan, who’s the singer and guitar player, played in my band back in April. All good people, great performers.

E: I’m curious about the “Rock Show” part specifically tonight, what’s different about this show? Is it the partial band aspect? The general vibe?

M: Partial band aspect, partial vibe… We’re really leaning into our more punk arrangements, just very grunge-y in vibes. We’re playing a lot of covers tonight, re-vamping a lot of songs, still with the “Mary Flair” —

E: With the Classic Mary Flair, of course—

M: Exactly. This is kinda my excuse to pick a lot of, like, rock songs that I’ve always thought I would love to either hear live or play live, and just do it, y’know? And those will be interspersed with some of my favorites of mine that are more guitar-centric.

E: Can you tell me what any of the covers are…? Or you could leave it a surprise, it’s up to you…

M: Yeah, I’ll do artists! I’m covering a song by Ween—

E: OH MY GOD, what song?

M: “Doctor Rock?” From “The Pod!”

E: YES! YES! I’ve gotten really into Ween in the past, like, month and a half—

M: They’re the best, they fuckin’ rock. All in on Ween.

E: You don’t even have to say any more, I’m sat—

[More chatting about Ween that I have to cut for time.]

M: Yeah, we’re opening the show with our Ween cover, we’re playing some Harry Nilsson, we’re covering this great song by Ingrid Mansfield Allman, who’s a great alt-disco artist of the 70s and 80s; she also just went by “Ingrid,” and she played in Ian Drury’s band, The Blockheads. There’s a song of hers I’ve been playing for a year at this point, pretty much at every one of my shows. It’s a cover—y’know, because I didn’t write it—but I kinda rearranged it from the ground up. It’s called “Stop Wasting Your Time, You Could be Wasting Mine,” and I dunno, it’s just one of my favorite songs. The original is more of a disco-funk, alternative synth-pop kind of thing and the way I arranged it is a more grunge-y, feedback-y, more post-punk-y situation.

E: Oh hell yeah. How do you pick a song to cover?

M: I’d say, more often than not, it’s a song that I hear and I think, “Oh, I think I could have a fun handle on this.”

E: More people need to think about covers that way…

M: 100%! The Harry Nilsson cover tonight [“Jump into the Fire”] is the first time I’ve ever approached a cover being like, “I just wanna play this straight.” I just want to play it how the song sounds, ‘cuz it’s a song I’ve seen LCD Soundsystem play a cover of before and that rocked my shit. They just kinda played it as it’s recorded on Nilsson Schmilsson, so I may as well just carry on that tradition.

E: Yeah, sometimes it’s more of a “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” situation.

M: Exactly, exactly. But then, I’m also playing a cover of one of my favorite songs, “The City,” by Dismemberment Plan, and that’s a song that I’ve been playing a cover of since… God, what year is it…? I’ve been playing that song for four years at this point… It was one of the first songs that I arranged when I first got into step-sequencers and drum machines. That song is a math-y emo song from the late 90s, and I rearranged it as a synthesizer-based dance pop song. That’s like, the closest I get to purely pop music tonight, but y’know, I figured I’m covering a grunge-y emo band, so I might as well loop it in there.

[I had no idea this song was a cover… I’ve been under the impression that “The City” was an unreleased MaryMary! original for years… ]

E: Are you planning to play either of your two newest singles?

M: Yes! I’m gonna be playing the B-Side to the single I just put out, “Self Love in the Time of HRT,” which is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. The song that’s the A-Side, “Never Ever Ever (kms)” is a song that I have a lot of fondness for, and I kinda put this show together thinking, like, “Well, I’m putting out these two singles, I’ll find a way to work them both into the set,” and then… I just didn’t really find a way to work in the A-Side…but I’m very excited to play “Self Love.”

E: Mary, that song is so beautiful! It starts so slow and lulls you into… I dunno if it’s necessarily a “false sense of security,” but the complete vibe-shift in the middle is SO disarming and awesome, I was just talking to Aphra about it today—

M: Yes! Aphra Jane, who is the best in the world and who, for the reader at home, masters my stuff. She’s a fucking creative genius—

[We spend the next couple minutes gushing over Aphra Jane and her work. I also have to cut this for time but WE LOVE HER.]

E: I want to talk more about those two recent releases, which are very timely in a number of ways, and this is a super general question—perhaps a bit of a loaded one—that you can take however you want to, but: What’s the story behind these songs?

M: “Self Love,” the song I’ll be playing tonight, has a little bit more of a longer history… That was a riff I was playing on the acoustic guitar for years before I worked it into a whole thing. I think this last November, especially post-election, I had a Crisis of Self where I was like, “What am I doing if I’m not making art about the fear that I feel in this moment, but also about the affirmations I need to give myself?” And “Never Ever Ever” is kind of an escalation of that. I wrote that over the course of, like, one day in February where the news was just getting worse and worse, specifically in regards to trans rights, and I was spiraling really hard. I kinda wrote that song as an affirmation of, “Well, they can fight as much as they want, I’m gonna stay alive, I’m gonna keep doing my thing and do a really good job at it.” And then I sat on it for a while and didn’t release it until earlier this month. I still have a lot of love for that song, but I feel the immediacy kinda left? When I wrote it in February and played it live for the first time the week after I wrote it, that was the best I’ll ever play that song. It was so fresh and I think the energy in the room was just really feeling it. While I definitely think it’s a song that I need and a song that will do good by people, I also think nothing will top the first week after having written it and playing it live. I released them as a dual-single ‘cuz they both celebrate similar—well, not “celebrate,” but they both explore similar themes while varying pretty greatly in tone and sonic style. “Never Ever” is more electronic pop-country—we’ve got a pedal-steel solo and the primary instrument’s the acoustic guitar on that one—while “Self Love” is more creepy synths and acoustic guitar that explode into a grunge thing…

She trails off to find the words:

M: It’s hard to explain that one, but, y’know…

E: Everyone should probably just go listen to it—

M: Yeah, it’s more acoustic… into grunge… with an electronic backbone. But I feel like the two songs are split sides of the same coin—

E: Spiritual sisters, if I may….
M: Yeah, definitely. I think “Self Love” is going to end up on my LP that I’m working on finishing right now, which I’m very excited for. I’m not sure about “Never Ever” yet, I’m still debating…

4/20/2025 at Empty Bottle.

E: You touched on this a little bit earlier, but in response to the fucking shit show that’s going on right now, you’re someone whose social media presence—and just in general, knowing you as a person—is so community-oriented and always boosting other people’s stuff. I feel like half the time you’re on Instagram like, “I’m doing this cool thing!” and the other half is, “Look at this cool thing my friend is doing!” Which I think is super awesome and you’ve put me onto a lot of things I never would’ve found on my own. To you, what’s the value of creative communities, going to live shows, and generally turning to art in the face of all the… awfulness, I guess, for lack of a better term?

M: I feel a lot of conflict with that. There are times where I kinda feel guilt and shame throwing so much energy into art while there’s so much targeting my community and so many other groups. Chicago as a whole is… kind of a mess right now, but being able to platform other queer people or trans people, or just anyone being targeted by this horrible administration, just feels very… It feels very great to know that we’re going to continue doing this and making this, and by doing so establishing that we’re all here for each other. The connections keep growing and the love keeps growing. I also sometimes worry that it’s a distraction, to an extent, and a big thing I’m trying to grapple with is how to be a little more politically minded about how I do this. I love elevating my fellow artists, but also I need to make sure that I’m not just, like, doing the plot of Cabaret, y’know?

This last line gets me good. Mary pauses while I chuckle.

M: Which is a thing that I think a fucking lot about, like, art spaces are very important in times like this, but also I can’t let this serve as a distraction of what’s going on outside of those art spaces.

E: That’s so true. Of course, there’s so much to be said about art being a grounding thing in these moments, but it’s only one part of a bigger thing that needs to happen and is happening—

M: Oh, absolutely! I don’t think we should all put away our instruments or whatever, I’m still putting on these shows, but I guess it’s more about refusing to ignore reality. Like, right now in Chicago, ICE is sweeping people off the streets—I almost said “indiscriminately,” but actually very discriminately… They’re doing nothing but selecting people based off the color of their skin to detain, kidnap, whatever verb you wanna use, and it’s hard not to feel extremely bogged down and scared every second of the day watching this happen—

Mary gets interrupted by A HUGE (obviously unrelated) wave of laughter rippling over the musicians sitting on the couch across the room. We all lose our trains of thought.

A beat.

M: I dunno… I don’t know where I’m going with that, but shit’s horrible right now and I just don’t want to forget the reality of what’s going on, even if I know there’s importance to making art at this time.

E: It’s a hard line to walk and, like, no one is doing it perfectly, and I think even the fact that you’re thinking about it this much and talking about it during an interview about yourself says a lot.

Mary sighs.

M: Well, thank you.

E: Thank you. And not to be super corny, but at the end of the day…we all have each other!

M: We’ve all got each other. So I guess another part of putting shows like this on is just being intentional about who I book and making sure it’s folks I can stand by. Not only their politics, but knowing I’m not taking the easy way out with who I platform. Like, I have a lot of friends who I could put on the stage with me and I want to make sure I’m venturing outside of who I hang out with on a daily basis.

E: That’s actually a perfect segue into my last question… Back in the day at the ol’ Trader Joe’s—

M: Yes, when we worked together at Trader Joe’s—

[2022-2023]

E: Yes, the things we bonded over immediately were, like, Big Thief and Adrianne Lenker, Talking Heads, a bunch of different movies, all those things. One of your tags on Letterboxd—which has a ton of movies on it, by the way—is your “dope and inspiring” tag…

Mary beams.

M: YES!

E: I just love that. And I associate that phrase with you so much—

M: That means the world to me! I love art that is dope and inspiring!

E: It’s just such a quintessential Mary phrase, and any time I’m stumped on what movie to watch I’m like, “lemme see what Mary liked…” I seriously reference that list all the time—

M: Ugh, that’s a dream, that makes me so happy to hear—

Now we’re both beaming.

E: So the question with that is, and I’m sure you can guess where this is going: Who are some artists you find dope and inspiring? It doesn’t have to just be Chicago, but—

M: I can stick to Chicago people! Some of the most dope and inspiring artists out there are, well, everyone on the bill with me tonight—not to play the politician—but WOOF and Celebrity DUI for sure. My dear friends Future Nest and Anne Helen Wells are incredible… Sulffffffur and her group Anti-Soul Organization…Sulffffffur spelled with six F’s, by the way—

E: Yes, yes, I remember her set from that show you played in [____]’s basement!

M: Yeah! Oh my God, wow…

E: That was a while ago—

M: But her work and her group’s work in particular is some of the most forward-thinking electronic music I’ve ever heard, like, fucking incredible stuff. It’s so felt, it’s so organic, but also it’s so well intentioned and articulated, stuff I could only dream of making. Bloodhype’s a great local duo who make very fun, dope and inspiring music… Let’s see…oh my gosh, so many people that I’m probably forgetting… Ishtar Sr! She’s not a Chicago person, she’s based in Philly, but her record, wifef*cker ultra, is some of the coolest shit in the fucking world. I bought it on a flashdrive when she came here on tour. Um… Yeah… And I also want to shout out the films of Edward Yang! He died years ago, but I’m not gonna stop shouting out A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi, some of the most dope and inspiring shit I’ve ever seen!

E: Hell yeah! Any last closing remarks…?

M: Fuck ICE, Free Palestine, and listen to music by trans people.

You can find MaryMary! anywhere you listen to music.