Category: Interview

103 Fever: “Is This Anything?” | Interview

July 2nd, 2026
Written by Ella Hardie | Photo “5/25/2026 at Empty Bottle” by Will Blakley

“LOOKING FOR A REASON?”

A reason to… what? To live? To believe? To dance? To laugh? To cry? Or maybe the better question is: What is the reason? Is music the reason? The joy of creation? The joy of friendship? Joy in general? Is it some kind of a Higher Power? What even is “A Reason” in the first place? A band like 103 Fever—whose sheer existence feels like nothing short of a cosmic miracle—somehow answers all of these questions and none of them.

After months of jamming and collaborating on each other’s solo projects, best friends Mary Jennifer (MaryMary!), Laura Cecelia (Future Nest), and Sage Irene (Friendship City Unlimited) teamed up to form 103 Fever, a self-described “DIY alt-country electronic jam band” that stretches and pokes holes in our conventional conception of country music like it’s Play-Doh. 103 Fever is a God-given testament to the idea of Musical Soulmates, a group of musicians who make ear candy you can suck on, chew on, or swallow whole. If you live in Chicago, you might’ve seen some variation of their “LOOKING FOR A REASON?” show flyers on social media or papered around town: you may remember the one with a drawing of three fish intertwined or the one with three white-snouted horses; maybe the one with a rather forlorn-looking cat; a stoic mutt; a Victorian child sipping a glass of milk. With such elusive, ominous, (forgive me) esoteric branding and no barrier to entry—after all, they were advertising an Empty Bottle Free Monday show—I can’t imagine you wouldn’t be at least a little bit curious.

103 Fever’s extra special debut show took place on May 25th, 2026, a triple-header for Mary, Laura, and Sage, who played exclusively in all three sets—in Mary’s words, “three bands, three girls, three releases, one night, zero dollars.” The lineup was bolstered by familiar names Future Nest and MaryMary! (both of whom have LPs set to release by the end of the year), in addition to the sale of new merch and same-day single releases from each project. Over the course of nearly three hours, Mary, Laura, and Sage only disembarked from the stage to jump into the moshpit with a tambourine, microphone, and cowbell (respectively), and to run up to the green room for quick-changes between sets. For MaryMary!’s closing performance, Sage and Laura reemerged wearing neon safety vests over their bras while Mary donned a white evening gown. When the lights eventually came up, the band shared sweat-soaked embraces to the tune of cheers from every corner of the room. I walked out of Empty Bottle that night with my ears ringing, a new MaryMary! t-shirt, and a big fat smile on my face; if you came in search of a reason, you probably left with several.

5/22/2026: 103 Fever @ [Their Studio]:

This interview features 103 Fever: Mary Jennifer (MaryMary!), Laura Cecelia (Future Nest), and Sage Irene (Friendship City Unlimited). It has been edited and condensed for clarity.

It’s Friday afternoon and the show is on Monday night. Mary greets me at the front door of an unassuming brick building in Pilsen and leads me up the echoey stairs—what once was an industrial building is now a buzzing hub where artists can be as loud and as weird as they want. Upon entering, I count four “LOOKING FOR A REASON?” flyers: in the stairwell, on the walls, on the door to 103 Fever’s studio. In refreshing contrast to the cavernous hallway, 103 Fever’s rehearsal space feels like your cool older cousin’s basement: warm wood paneled walls, shag carpet, a tufted Bart Simpson rug on display, a tv playing UFO 50 on mute, synthesizers, guitars, a drum-kit in the corner, string lights, old Future Nest and MaryMary! show flyers, mini stained glass hanging in the window. We all formally shake hands before sitting/laying on the floor like old friends at a sleepover. The following interview is—pun intended—an absolute fever dream.

I start recording mid-conversation:

ELLA HARDIE: Let’s just go around with some introductions… Maybe we should start with your solo stuff and then bring it together? Who are you, what kind of music do you make, who wants to go first?

SAGE IRENE: Mary should go first, she just announced her album today—

Mary smiles and clears her throat:

MARY JENNIFER: My name’s Mary Jennifer, I play music as MaryMary!, and I think I make synth-punk… mixed with post-punk-indie-rock… with an electronic edge to it… It’s kinda hard to specifically describe—y’know, it’s synth-punk music you can dance and have fun to. And these two lovely ladies play in my backing band. Sage plays the drums—

LAURA CECELIA: I do bass… and guitar… and synth… and sing…

MJ: And sing—

LC: I do it all… Except for drums, because—

SI: I got that handled, I got that on lock—

LC: Under the rug—

SI: Under the rug… I cut up the rug onstage… I got big ‘ol shears—

LC: We should start bringing scissors—like, a bunch of scissors, onstage.

SI: After the show we cut all the wires—

LC: “We’re gonna make sure this is the LAST SHOW that Empty Bottle ever plays—”

Laughter.

MJ: These two have been playing in the MaryMary! band since January… Laura for a little longer, since Dream Girl last April, which was a big show that we put together. I’ve been playing with Laura’s project, Future Nest, on-and-off since last July…

Laura nods.

MJ: For my solo stuff, I have an album coming out on July 3rd which I’m super excited about. I announced it, as of this interview, today, and it’s called I Love You I’m Glad I Exist, which I’ve been working on for the last two years now. I’m very, very, very psyched for it to finally be coming out—

SI & LC (in perfect sync): MaryMary!’s VeryVeryVery—

MJ: WHOA—

All of us crack up.

SI: Wavelength! These frequencies are amplifying.

MaryMary! 5/25/2026 by Will Blakley.

***

MJ: Shall we…?

EH: Laura, what kind of music do you make?

LC: I’m Laura Cecelia… I have a lot of music under my belt, but the primary project that I work on is Future Nest, which I would say is an industrial—

SI: It’s like… sex music—

MJ: Industrial sex music—

Laura starts laughing and concedes.

LC: Industrial sex music, I guess—

SI: Very wet … steamy…

MJ: Metallic—

SI: Metallic … like body-roll—

MJ: Cronenberg’s Crash—

LC: Blood… milk… skin… muscle… wire… metal…

SI: Future Nest makes music for people who: boutique fragrances…

MJ: And no deodorant. No deodorant ever. We’re a No Deodorant Band—

SI: Future Nest makes music for lickin’ sweat off your lover—

LC: For bottling the sweat off your lover—

SI: Bottling it up and saving it for later… Keepin’ it in your fridge, puttin’ ice cubes in it, givin’ it to your guests and not telling them about it—

At this point, we’re all in bits and Laura eventually goes:“Ew that’s GROSS!”

LC: And that’s what Future Nest sounds like!

She laughs.

LC: Future Nest is my main project, and I’m coming out with an album in the fall but I won’t announce a date for it yet… Sage is gonna to be mixing the whole record because she is a wizard. It’s going to be really, really exciting. It’s been, like, seven years in the making—

EH: Oh my God…? When did your last record come out?

LC: The last record came out in 2021, and this one includes remnants of the stuff I was working on at that time that didn’t make the cut, as well as what it’s evolved into. So it’s been about seven years in the process. In Future Nest I sing and perform—most of what I do is just performance. I am very kinetic and very…

SI: It’s a very visceral performance—

LC: 50% of the show, in vocal delivery and body movement, is improvised.

SI: 50% improv, 50% epic. A million percent epic, though. It’s good shit—

LC: Mary’s played in the band a couple times, she’s done synth and aux-percussion, but on Monday she’s doing…

MJ: Synth and guitar, and some samples—

LC: And Sage is gonna do…

SI: The drums.

EH: Damn, you’re holding it down—

SI: Pretty much. I’m like Animal, I’m uncaged—

MJ: You’re also bright red and fuzzy—

SI: I’m red and fuzzy! Yeah, people say I kinda look like Animal when I drum. Which is cool.

MJ: You’ve got that Muppet bounce—

LC: You’re being puppeted. You’re a vessel for a Greater Power.

MJ: The Power of Rhythm.

Future Nest 5/25/2026 by Will Blakley.

***

SI: Well, I’m Sage Irene… I make solo music sometimes as Friendship City Unlimited, but recently I’ve been in MaryMary! and Future Nest, and then they asked me to join 103 Fever and I kinda just took over it—

Mary and Laura shrug and nod.

SI: It was gonna be, like, disco…?

LC: It was gonna be, like, minimalist techno—

SI: And then I was like: Nahhhh… We’re doin’ country music.

LC: We’re gettin’ our reeds and whackin’ our heels and stuff… And that’s not a joke.

MJ: I’m makin’ horse noises—

SI: It worked well, we all mesh very well. I met Laura a couple months ago but she’s like an old friend to me, we’re very tight like that. I think they all just get the vibe. I met Mary at [a record store] a little while ago…

EH: Yeah, I guess we should backtrack a little bit… I want to talk about 103 Fever’s origin story specifically—

Mary turns to Sage:

MJ: We met at a record store.

SI: We met on Hinge.

MJ: No we did not!

Laughter.

MJ: The earnest story is that you were on a date with somebody who I was also seeing at the time, and she brought you to My Place of Work to be like: “Y’all should meet!”

EH: Well… She was lowkey right….

A beat. Sage furrows her brows.

SI: Why did she bring me there…?

MJ: I don’t know!!

SI: She also rolled a joint and didn’t let me hit any of it when she said bye to me. Swear to God.

Laughter.

SI: But then I met Mary and it was cool.

Mary smiles. I turn to Laura:

LC: Well, [Mary and I] were separated at birth through time and space. We’re twins—

MJ: There is a three year difference between the separation at birth but we’re still twins, which whisked her to Texas and me to Washington State.

LC: It was rough. It was a weird couple of years that I had to live without my twin, but then we found each other… I was planning to move up to Chicago on January 1st of 2025, but I came to visit in November of 2024 and I thought, “Well, Future Nest is very mobile,” so I brought my stuff and I was gonna play a show. I found out about Mary’s music because I was looking for artists in Chicago and I saw a video of her performing and I thought it was super cool, so I reached out and asked if she wanted to play a show on “this date” at “a venue.” But I needed help booking it because I didn’t know any of the venues in the area, and she was like, “Don’t play this one, play this one, this is the best one, this is my favorite spot,” and she said Cole’s Bar, and I was like, “Cool!” So I started setting it up and she was like, “Hey, actually I can’t play this show, I’m working a wedding that night—”

MJ: A horrible straight wedding—

LC: And I was like, “Ok!” then Mary was like, “Wait, I might not be working this wedding, can you put me on the guest list?” And I was like, “Yeah, absolutely!” And then she didn’t show up.

Laughter.

LC: But it was for the best because everyone got COVID.

We all go “Oh!”

LC: Mary introduced me to Zoey of Shinespark and Anne of Anne Helen Welles and Avery of AAAYYYAAA—

SI & MJ: Shoutout—

LC: And the show was played with AAAYYYAAA and Shinespark and this band called Drake & The Beatles that was fronted by a friend of mine from Texas named Gren—

The band name “Drake & The Beatles” makes me snort.

LC: But Mary didn’t come to that show and we didn’t meet, but then I moved up here and we hung out and then we were best friends. We were like: “Oh, that’s who was separated from me at at birth—”

MJ: We found out ‘cuz we both have separate halves of the same locket, and when we put them together it glowed and did, like, a perfect note and then withered away—

Mary and Laura proceed to match each other’s pitch in “Ahhh”’s.

EH: I can’t wait for this scene in the biopic—

LC: I miss that locket. It was a really good outfit piece too, so I’m a little peeved—

MJ: No, me too! It tied every one of my outfits together—

SI: And it exploded?

LC: It did this kinda weird little burst and then it just crumpled up—

SI: And then you took a deep breath in and you sucked in the dust and then both of your voices became the same. And then you swapped bodies…

MJ: That was the crazy thing, we swapped bodies—

LC: We swapped back, it was only for seven hours—

MJ: Yeah, it was only seven hours. We Freaky Friday’d but it was a Tuesday.

SI: “Freaky Friday’d on a Tuesday…” That’s a Brockhampton bar—

Laughter. Mary looks at me:

MJ: We’re very inspired by Brockh—

She stops herself.

LC: You can’t even say it out loud!

Sage on drums 5/25/2026 by Will Blakley.

EH: I didn’t realize how recent this was! Did you start making music together pretty much immediately?

LC: It was really funny because Mary and I, when we first hung out, she showed me a song of hers and I was like, “Damn, she’s really good.” It was “Week Goes On and On,” which is technically the first but also the second track off her upcoming record—

MJ: Or, technically second but kinda first—

LC: Kinda first. It’s like squares and circles, one’s the other and the other’s not—

Laughter.

LC: But she said something like, “It’s hard for me to want to work with someone on music immediately because I feel like I have my way that I go about creating, I feel like it usually doesn’t mesh,” which I agreed with too, but then we started working on MaryMary!’s set for Dream Girl together and we found out that we actually click very well… We started hanging out multiple times every week playing music, working on music, coming up with stuff. This was last summer…?

MJ: Laura and I realized really quickly that we make very good music together. And then with Sage, it was the type of thing where when we got to know each other we realized that a lot of our musical philosophies aligned, so I asked her to play a couple shows in the MaryMary! Band, and I feel like the three of us, as a unit, clicked very well. I remember Laura and I were planning 103 Fever as a duo thing, and we were leaving a show and talking and we were like… “What if we just asked Sage to be in the band? And it’s like… ‘We’re a band?” So now we’re a band.

EH: When you say your musical philosophies are aligned, what are your musical philosophies? How did you end up discovering that you had those things in common?

MJ: I think just, like, the joy of creation—

SI: I’m crazy about music. It’s kinda all I talk about—

MJ: All we think about, a little bit—

SI: The first few times I hung out with Mary, all I would do was talk to her about music, which was cool, ‘cuz she works at a record store and I could be like, “Oh, you know this band?” “Can I tell you about this?” I dunno, I just get super excited to talk about music and it’s cool to have friends to talk about it with all the time.

MJ: I feel like we’re also all of a very similar mindset—

SI: Of the ilk—

MJ: Yes, of a similar ilk. Girls of a similar ilk—

We all laugh.

SI: Girls sipping similar milk—

MJ: Girls of a similar milk—

LC: “Girls sipping similar milk”

SI: Ok, write that down! That’s a good lyric!

LC: Is anybody writing this down?

EH: I actually did write that down.

MJ: Y’know, creating for the sake of it—

SI: Just making a bunch of shit all the time—

MJ: Making a bunch of shit all the time and not necessarily being beholden to what gear we have, but working with our limitations and not letting that stop us from making whatever we want to make. Sage in particular is really into tape and lo-fi recording and at-home studio tricks… I feel like you’re one of the best audio engineers I’ve ever met.

LC: Certainly. Without a doubt.

SI: Thank you, I try! I love tape machines, I love my Tascam 488… I think we just like to have fun. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun… I think that’s all people need to know about this band, it’s gonna be a fun time—

MJ: I mean, I don’t know how else you could describe 103 Fever besides, like, alt-country electronic jam band—

LC: I would describe it as interesting… curious music… it’s fascinating—

MJ: A Queer Trio of Frauds.

LC: That’s true, we are frauds. Nothing we’re saying in this interview is true, by the way—

SI: I heard the new Geese record and I said: “I could do better than that.”

Laughter.

Mary hands me an EXCLUSIVE piece of 103 Fever merch that now resides on my fridge: a sticker that says “A QUEER TRIO OF FRAUDS. SOME VERY PECULIAR ABILITIES, 103 FEVER.” She smirks.

MJ: You can keep that.

***

Via @103fevertheband.

EH: I wrote this down in my notes when I was prepping, but the entire time I’ve known my roommate she’s been saying that before she starts a band she needs to find her “Musical Soulmate,” an almost mystical, otherworldly kind of connection she’s looking for… but it seems like you’ve all actually found that…

LC: It’s kinda like when Noah heard the word of God—

MJ: Why are you getting religious…

SI: I had a good story! Can I tell my good story? I had a sincere moment I would like to share—

MJ: Well, this is one of the best stories—

EH: Famously…

It’s at this moment that I notice Sage’s yellow baseball cap says: “ I ❤ JESUS” and jot down a note about it.

LC: Noah kinda had to take faith into his own hands, and he didn’t know if it was gonna be real or not because he was just hearing voices that told him to build the Ark, y’know? And then built it, and the flood happened, and I bet he felt so good that the flood happened. ‘Cuz he was right! Anyway, what’s your stupid story, Sage?

We all start DYING laughing.

MJ: Ella, I need to know what you just wrote down—

EH: I wrote down: “Sage wearing ‘I Heart Jesus Hat’ parenthesis yellow parenthesis Noah.”

MJ: Well, take note of the second part of what the hat says…

I look at Sage’s hat again and realize that it, in fact, reads: “I ❤ JESUS etc.”

EH: Oh my God. It’s a fucking Wilco hat—

SI: It’s worse!

LC: Sage, what’s your story?

SI: It was when we played the Burlington in March for Mary’s Birthday Show. We’d just gotten this practice space, we were here a ton and we were starting to sound really good, and that show I felt so confident in—

MJ: We felt very tight and, like, harmonious—

SI: We were so happy and giddy the whole time, and we had so many people come up to us after and be like, “I love seeing bands have fun like that.” Laura is always smiling so hard while we play, and there are so many moments in Mary’s songs where we have to do a crazy big hit all at once and it just blows the speakers out, and it’s so rewarding to look over at both of them and think: “I am so happy to be up here with y’all. I’m so happy I found y’all.” I just moved up to the city from the suburbs too, like, in August. I’ve always wanted to live in Chicago, and being in this music scene is kinda all I’ve ever wanted to do. I had a cousin who was in the music scene when I was growing up and I was so inspired by him; I was just like, “I want to be a part of that so bad.” I was, like, thirteen going to all the local shows and wanting to be so engrossed in it. It took me a couple years, but this is awesome. I actually did it. I have bandmates to go onstage with and play shows at these venues I used to go to as a kid… This is the actual dream. We don’t need anything more than this—I have my best friends, so it’s sweet.

MJ: There are ways for the comment, “You look like you’re having so much fun onstage,” to be treated as a back-handed thing, but I do feel like it’s earnest. Especially in the way people were talking about the last string of shows we’ve played, I think that’s what made the music so Magical and Good, it’s how much fun we’re having with one another and how comfortable we are with each other.

EH: That’s what I’m always so struck by when I see your shows. It is one of those things where you leave and you feel so alive and it’s just so affirming of, like, The Power of Music and Friendship… Which feels cringe when you say it out loud but it’s true.

SI: We’re gonna kill cringe with this band. It’s gonna be ok to love your friends, everybody’s gonna start hugging their friends goodbye after our shows—

LC: Every friend gets a hug—

SI: You can text your friend “Good Morning…” Tell your friends you love them every day—

LC: In 103 World, we love our friends…

SI: We’re gonna create a new type of “woke.”

MJ: We’re gonna create a new “woke” that’s all about respecting our friends and lifting them up and where all friends share a bed every night.

LC: Exactly. It’s all about faith. It’s all about the deliverance of faith… Have you ever heard the story of Noah?

***

SI: Who is our music for?

I laugh.

EH: That’s a good question, who does 103 Fever make music for?

SI: We came up with the answers—

Sage, Mary, and Laura all rapid-fire:
- Friends
- Lesbians
- Girls Who Don’t Wear Deodorant
- Masochists
- Sadists
- Girls Who Used To Be Horse Girls
- Gamblers
- Healthy Gamblers
- People Who Buy One Dollar Scratch-Offs
- People Who Buy HUGE Gambling Pools But Take Good Care Of Their Bodies
- Gamblers Who Also Run Every Once in a While
- Gamblers Who Jog and Eat Salads
- Inflation Fetishists
- Sneakerheads
- Hi-Fi Enthusiasts
- People Who Still Make Vine Compilations on YouTube
- People Who Were Really Affected By The Blueberry Scene in Willy Wonka
- Trans Folk-Punk Artists Who Were Once Vine Stars (“I can’t name any but if they’re out there, this is for you”)
- Construction Workers
- People Who Aren’t in Unions
- People Who Are in Unions
- People Who Wear Sandals
- People Who Don’t Wear Sandals
- People With A Little Bit of Sand on Them From The Beach Still
- People Who Have Sand in Their Teeth Still
- People Who Like Sand in Their Meat
- People Who Like Toasting Their Buns
- People Who Like Toasting Their Buns and Sand in Their Teeth
MJ: What was your question?

***

EH: How do you know when a song is for your solo project or when it’s a 103 Fever song? How are those processes different?

SI: We’ve only ever written songs all together, we’re not allowed to do solo stuff. It’s almost all born out of jams… or saying something funny to make each other laugh and then just repeating it over and over again—

MJ: And then literally being like: “Wait, that could be a song…” We have a song called “Beat It—”

SI: We wrote that song in, like, 30 seconds—

LC: And the song is only about… 30 seconds…

MJ: I feel like our song, “Like a Horse,” started from [Sage] doing joke rap bars that we were like… Wait… those are actually really good lyrics… And then we spun it into, like, an alt-country song—

LC: We were doing Weezer—

MJ: We were doing Weezer?

LC: It was some Weezer song and we just sang what we thought the lyrics should be—

MJ: We have a tendency to jam for an hour uninterrupted and just kinda jump into other ideas and grooves from one another. We could be rockin’ an idea for ten minutes straight and then immediately someone starts playing something else and we all take a step back and jump into that. And that kinda spins into what become our actual songs.

LC: We’re very good at dynamic listening with each other, which is really helpful. Like, if someone does something different, we’ll all kinda pivot and be like, “Ok, this is where we need to follow at this point.” Which I think is just good jamming in general—like, good musicianship—but we’re all of a similar sensibility in what we’re trying to create… When someone does something different, it’s like, “How can we continue this in a way that expands it from what it is, but also kinda feels in line with ourselves?”

SI: We like to ask: “Is this anything?”

MJ: “Is this anything” is the big thing, yeah—

LC: A lot of times, the answer is NO—

SI: It’s good, we keep ourselves in check! We can make a lotta bullshit—

MJ: One of the rules here is: “Don’t Gas Each Other’s Flops.”

SI: “Don’t gas my flops—”

LC: “Don’t gas my flop…”

MJ: There have been times, point-blank, when I’ve been like, “Ok, what about this?” and the response is, earnestly, “That’s nothing.” And I’m like, “Cool.”

LC: We record almost everything we do, so it’s fun to look back on.

MJ: We have countless hour long voice-memos—

LC: We’ve only had this place since March—

SI: But we kinda don’t leave it…

LC: My phone is almost completely out of storage now because of all the voice-memos that I’ve taken, like gigabytes and gigabytes worth of voice-memos… and voice-memos don’t take up a lot of storage at all—

SI: The archives will go crazy…

MJ: Also, it’s worth noting that for a lot of these jams, we go into it with fully no intention of it ever being a song we play onstage, but just stuff that we do to make each other laugh, “Hey There Laura” being an example… That won’t make any sense to anyone reading this…

Sage and Laura sing a line from their (currently unreleased) song,“Hey There Laura:”

LC & SI: “Hey there Laura / Whaddaya say?”

MJ: But the voice-memo for “Hey There Laura” is, like, 35 minutes long! And there are ideas present in it that I think could be spun into a song that we’ll play onstage or record sometime.

SI: I like the little magic moments in music where you’re, like “Oh, that fuckin’ hit.” I’m a Song Girl—like, I like albums, but I like to play a song 20 times in a row until I’m satisfied, and usually it’s just to hear a quick one-second part of it, that magic part. In the one recorded song we have, there’s, like, one little millisecond where the bass pokes out from the guitar, and we played it on loop a couple times and we were like: “That’s cool as fuck.”

MJ: Just ear candy—short bursts or very long bursts of ear candy. We’re trying to be a very singles and songs oriented band…That could change down the line, but I feel like for MaryMary! stuff and Future Nest stuff, both of us have been chipping away at our albums for so long. It’s a very fulfilling experience, but it can be frustrating to be working on this one project for months if not years. The idea of 103 Fever being a band that can get together, record, and release a song within a week is very exciting to me.

EH: How do you decide when a song is done?

MJ: Mmmm… that’s a great question…

SI: We haven’t done that yet—

Laughter.

SI: It’s a very live band… It’s fun to do 8 minute jams and stuff, but I don’t expect people to listen to 8 minutes of noise-garage-rock recorded… So maybe it’ll be a little different when we finalize something, but—

MJ: I also anticipate that even the songs—the way that we’re gonna be playing them onstage at our show this Monday—at a future show they’re probably going to sound completely different. I’m also sure that down the line we could play a more garage-rock set or an acoustic country set or a more electronic set… The show on Monday is gonna be entirely electronic with some guitar and bass, but I also feel like we’ve got a few shows lined up for this summer—which is a crazy feeling because no one has heard anything—

LC: I think we have, like four shows booked already, total? And we don’t have a single song out and we’ve never played live… We’re nothing so far!

EH: You’re just, like, a cool Instagram flyer, a cool flyer around town—

LC: Sage designed the poster, she’s a genius for that… The voice of God spoke through her for that one. Much like the Biblical Noah.

MJ: Much like the Biblical Noah when he built the Ark—

SI: Much like the burning bush…

MJ: I hate to say it, but I was one of the deniers… I thought it looked great from the jump, but every time I was like, “Should we include a little more information…?” Sage was like—

SI: I was like, “Fuck no, Mary.”

LC & MJ: And you were right for that—

Laughter.

MJ: We’re not even kidding—

SI: No, I’m rude… I’m Rude Fever… Laura’s… Hairy Fever—

LC: I’m Hairy Fever…?

SI: Mary’s Mary Fever.

MJ: Mary Fever? That’s good—

SI: Mary Fever, Hairy Fever, and Rude Fever.

MJ: Or Scary Fever…

SI: And I’d be Scary Fever… If we were the Spice Girls.

LC: Am I hairy…?

SI: You just have, like… cool hair.

103 Fever flyers spotted in Avondale. Boots on the ground journalism… Technically clogs* on the ground journalism.

***

I check my phone and see that we’ve been talking for nearly an hour.

EH: Alright, this is officially the longest interview I’ve ever done…

SI: Do you think we’ll make it? Do you think we have it?

EH: I think things are boding extremely well. I think you have it… I think I have it… I think I caught a fever… Who has a thermometer…?

Laughter.

EH: But let’s wrap it up! Plug your shit, shout out some of your favs… “Dope and Inspiring,” if I may…

(That was a cheeky callback to Mary and I’s interview from this past winter…)

MJ: Hell yeah. We’re all releasing singles on May 25th, 103 Fever, Future Nest, and MaryMary! “Small Price to Pay” by Future Nest, “how2b” by MaryMary!, and “Good Advice (new game+)” by 103 Fever. “how2b” is gonna be the lead single off my upcoming album, I Love You I’m Glad I Exist, and it’s about learning how to be. It’s a dance-punk song and I’m releasing a single-edit so it’ll be a shortened version, only five minutes, while the album version’ll be about seven and a half. It’s groovy but you can cry to it.

LC: And Future Nest’s single, “Small Price to Pay,” is—

SI: “Get Your Condoms Ready.” That’s the tagline… It’s sexy, the bass is loud, the bass’ll get you movin’ —

LC: It’s a song about lighting fires at people’s feet and having a very complicated relationship with desire—

Laughter. A beat.

LC: I feel like I didn’t get to say what I wanted to say about “Small Price to Pay…”

EH: Say it! Please!

LC: Ummm… Get your condoms ready.

We all crack up.

SI: The 103 Fever Song, “Good Advice (new game+)—”

LC: What’s it about, Sage?

SI: I dunno… I haven’t really written the lyrics yet…

LC: The song comes out on Monday, by the way—

SI: It’s kinda like…noise, mumble-core, garage rock… It’s cool.

MJ: A short burst of ear candy.

SI: Two great minutes of ear candy. I’d say listen to it about four or five times, then you’ll get it.

LC: Mary, what music is inspiring you right now?

SI: Bassvictim—

MJ: Yes! Bassvictim, straight up. And World Peace DMT! Kreayshawn! D’Angelo! And in the local scene, Anne Helen Wells, Anti-Soul Organization, Celebrity DUI, Shinespark, OTM, Crisis Actress… Those aren’t all of the people who inspire me, but those are the people who are inspiring me in this exact moment.

LC: I echo. Prefab Sprout too—

SI: Shoutout Marcy the Baptist, she’s goated. Shoutout Massachusetts in general—

MJ: I did an interview recently where I had a whole list of local artists I really wanted to shout out, but the two people I ended up shouting out during the interview were Soft Cell and Kendrick Lamar.

SI: They’re really grateful for that, too—

MJ: Had to give ‘em the MaryMary! bump—

Laughter.

***

MJ: Do we have, like, a final message?

SI: Yeah we do…

They all start giggling.

MJ: In unison…?

Sage and Laura nod.

103 FEVER: CHANGE THE WORLD. MY FINAL MESSAGE.

I stop recording.

Listen to 103 Fever’s debut single, “Good Advice (new game +),” Future Nest’s “Small Price to Pay,” & MaryMary!’s “how2b” (and while you’re at it, presave her album “I Love You I’m Glad I Exist,” which comes out on July 3rd.)
Mildred Just Wants to Hang Out, Talk Friendship and Fenceline | Interview

June 30th, 2026

Written by Shea Roney | Photos Courtesy of Mildred

From the start, Mildred wasn’t going to be a band band. Back in 2020, Henry Easton Koehler (vocals, guitar), Jack Schrott (vocals, guitar) and Matt Palmquist (vocals, bass, woodwinds) would find time to jam in their shared residence of the Ward St. house in Berkeley. It was a means to spend time together when dinner was wrapped up and the dishes done. Every once in a while, Will Fortna (drums, production) would be in town and join in on the sessions. But as songs started to fall into place, each mate putting their weight of inspiration into motion, the Oakland-based band has found themselves with their debut LP, Fenceline, out in the world.

Although these songs stick to your bones with ease, the flavors most worth savoring are derived from a slow simmer. With conversational guitars enjoying a backyard shoot-the-shit and jerry-esque jubilations galore, Mildred create a rich environment of organic patterns, sonic distortions and wholehearted harmonies that meld together so effectively. The beauty of this record is set by each member’s unique use of language. Whether that be of observational wit, natural wordplay, or their vivid musical instincts, Mildred is a group of four friends trying to write the best possible song they can.

Fenceline sets its pace with “UPS Brown”, a song tempting its own fate with inherent expectations. And it’s in that sentiment which has made Mildred such a good band. Like a cat sitting on the windowsill, Fenceline takes it all in. It’s not a race from boredom, but rather an implementation of it all; the stories caught between ambition and abandonment, the hearty and the hungover, the present and the perceived of our very normal day-to-days. They are the stories worth telling, and the songs we always return to.

We recently got to chat with Mildred about the band’s place in their lives, friendship and where they can go next.

You have received a lot of really positive press and acknowledgment for Fenceline so far, even being referred to as the ‘indie sleeper of 2026’. How have you been feeling as you let your debut LP sit out in the world? Did you have any anticipations for the record prior to its release?

Will Fortna: We put it out with very little in the way of expectations, but it’s felt really good to see it slowly but surely seep out into the world. It’s still incredibly surreal to see a stranger talking about our music online, or to have people come to our shows and know the music. We’ve had some musicians we really love and respect reach out or say nice things about it, which – again – feels really good and really surreal.

Matt Palmquist: I remember listening to the final mix, and being really pleased with the album sound. I think it is rare for me to feel that the space between the thought of the thing and the thing itself is so small; usually that translation disappoints, but in the case of fenceline, it surprised and delighted.

Henry Easton Koehler: Feels good. I wasn’t expecting anything really. I’m kinda surprised at how proud I am of the album, so it’s nice to share it, and wild that a few people are responding to it and coming to shows who aren’t my friends.

Jack Schrott: It’s been surreal. I liked the album a lot when we finished it, but I had no sense that people would react so positively to it. Having some space from actively working on it and seeing the response has let me return to the songs with new ears and a renewed sense of pride.

Mildred operates on a “no lead writer” system. What about each other’s writing chops do you admire the most? What do you think plays off well with your individual skills and observations to make the best song you can?

WF: Jack’s songs are so catchy and the vocal melodies so good that I often gloss over the lyrics at first, but then I’ll see them written down or a line will jump out at me as I’m drumming along and I realize what a fucking poet he is. The way he delivers the lines can be so matter of fact or deadpan that it often hides amazing turns of phrase, profound/weird ideas, or just really funny imagery.

MP: The band in a way is like a meta-instrument, like a really special ancient violin that makes some crazy resonant sound so it sounds way different even though you’re playing the same notes as you usually do, so that certain tones and textures become a product of unexpected combinations rather than precise arranging. I like bringing an idea into the room, and walking out with something completely different, better, and something I would as an individual never think of. I love that, and I have a lot of respect for, trust in, and admiration for the rest of the band.

HEK: What Matt said. Getting excited about everyone else’s ideas and songs is what keeps this thing going. I think we’re all still getting better as songwriters/ musicians/arrangers in a way that feels exciting. I also love having the opportunity to think of myself as a guitar player. That’s not something I’ve ever really identified with.

JS: Yeah, I’m constantly surprised/inspired by everyone’s evolving songwriting. A lot of ideas still come from people working on things in isolation, but the best part of playing together is picking up instruments without a plan, wandering around, and winding up somewhere interesting. It feels like the more we play together, the more often we wind up in interesting places. I think the goal is to let the wellsprings of individual songwriting and the wellspring of weird things that emerge from playing as a band flow into the same river.

You all have very different day jobs, but Mildred has become a chance for you all to structure your life around music together. With no prior intentions on starting a band, where does Mildred fall into your lives? Does this release influence where you see Mildred headed in the future?

WF: Mildred is definitely taking on an increasingly large, perhaps disruptive, role in our lives. We’re trying to figure out what the future holds, but I know we all want to make more music and see where things take us.

MP: On my dads side, my grandmother was a church organist, her dad came to the US with a clarinet, and her son was a supper club singer. For me music has always felt like an inevitability, though not a guarantee as the rest of my family was always very against me living a music life (themes that plague the liner notes like poverty, late nights, alcoholism, depression) . It’s taken some time and creativity to wrestle Mildred into existence (for the better), so I hold that space preciously.

HEK: What Matt and Will said. I would like for us to make more records and to tour as much as we can without completely upending our lives. It feels good to be hustling a little bit, though it definitely comes with some sacrifice. I’m hopeful we will continue to figure out what feels good.

JS: Lots of new opportunities before the band that we were not thinking about a couple months ago! Figuring it out. Like everyone else, I’m very excited about making more music.

Living with each other, noting that your bond as artists came naturally with hanging out and playing music after dinner, what do you guys like to do together outside of music?

WF: A lot of hanging out involves music, whether that’s listening to it, talking about it, going to shows, etc. But outside of that? Cooking meals, playing football, playing Botticelli.

MP: Cooking meals, talking about art, life stuff, stuff you do with friends.

HEK: We had some great $9 martinis the other night at Saul’s.

JS: I wish Matt and I would start playing racquetball at the Berkeley rec center again.

The cover of Fenceline is a painting by Jack that depicts the rooftop of your old place you used to live at. Why was this image and sentiment fitting for the album cover? What did it mean to have that space? Have you been able to find a similar place since?

MP: I lived in the attic of that big Victorian house. To shower I would kneel under the eaves, like I was praying. I spent a lot of mornings there on the roof, petting jones the cat and drinking coffee while Henry played basketball against our friend Nick in the driveway. We could see both the hills and bell tower of Berkeley and the city skyline flanked by dark redwoods, and there was a funny mural on the back of a building that said that the moral arc of history was bent. I feel the band’s songs are photographs in time, and this one is pretty emblematic of that period in our lives.

HEK: We play music at Matt’s house, which feels like HQ now.

JS: I think Will and Henry had the vision for a golden hour/sunset depiction of a landmark in the East Bay. At some point I remembered this postcard I painted of the rooftop of our old house in Berkeley for our friend/former housemate Nick Roberts (Nick made the music video for Fish Sticks). We basically remade that postcard at sundown for the album cover. The rhythm of our practices/time together comes from habits formed while living together, so it feels fitting that the cover gives a nod to that era. We’re dispersed now but we still get to hang out quite a bit.

You can listen to Fenceline out now! Snag it on vinyl or CD via Memorials of Destinction.
Secret Address Take You Exploring | Interview

June 24th, 2026

Written by Sarah Mueller | Photo Courtesy of Secret Address

Since the mid-April release of their debut EP, A Typical Day…, Philadelphia’s Secret Address has quickly risen to become one of the indiepop bands that I’m most excited about. On the self-proclaimed “noise twee” band’s debut, the duo of Emerson Bright and Will Vani mixes the fuzzier side of C86-style indie with 60s surf pop to arrive at a sound that immediately stands out in the genre.

Earlier this month, Secret Address played their first show; afterwards, I reached out to talk to them about their place in the Philadelphia scene, future plans for the band, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Sarah Mueller: Would y’all like to introduce yourselves to people who don’t know who Secret Address is?

Emerson Bright: I’m Emerson Bright, I play guitar, drums, keys, and I sing the songs for Secret Address.

Will Vani: I’m Will, I play bass and a little guitar, and I write some of the songs, but Emerson does most of the songwriting and instruments and arrangements. I also did all the art direction for the band.

SM: First off, y’all had your first show last week; how did that go?

EB: I was really nervous about it, because we were playing with a bunch of bands that we love. Like, Ringtone is kind of like a power pop band that has a lot of deconstructionist emo influences. They’re all really great musicians on a technical level and scene veterans, so it was cool to be on a bill with them. It’s all people that I know and have admired for a while in Philly. And then Lightheaded and Laughing Chimes are not local, but they’re huge influences; they made my favorite record of last year. With Laughing Chimes, we’re both from the Midwest so it’s awesome to see a band that great coming out of Ohio. We’re playing with all these bands that are huge for us, and I was nervous, but I think we locked in.

WV: I thought it went really well. And the guy from Lightheaded bought two tapes; one of the things about the show is that we made handmade tapes. We had 20, and we sold out at the first show, which was really cool for us.

EB: We were really pleasantly surprised by being able to play with people we look up to and it resonating with that audience and the other bands. It meant a lot to us. Also, shoutout to the other four people who are in our live band.

WV: They’re so good at every instrument they play.

EB: Andy, Jackson, Kelly, and Blake round out the live band. We do all this stuff on the record that’s like overdubbing and lots of space-y reverb and wall of sound. To replicate that live takes a lot of good chemistry between the players and a big band, and they’re the best musicians I know. They really stepped up, and it was phenomenal to get to play with them.

SM: Was this both of your first times performing overall, or have there been other bands before this, together or separately?

WV: Kind of a long story.

EB: We met, actually, while playing in a previous band. And then some of the other people in the live band are from a different band I used to be in.

WV: I was a big fan of that band, called Roseheath. They made more traditional chamber pop, more similar to Jellyfish. But Emerson and one other person had creative differences.

EB: I really wanted to make more lo-fi music that was inspired by the C86 and Elephant 6 stuff that I loved, or Pet Sounds. And I wanted to work on tape, with physical instruments. My main songwriting partner in Roseheath wanted more polish and industry standard production on what we were making. He still plays in the Secret Address live band, and I still play in another band with him called Ghostship Dreamland that’s more of what he wanted. We still work together and we’re still friends, but being creative partners was not going to work out. Will and I used to play in a band called Dumb Angel, and it was very 60s-inspired rock and roll stuff. The story of that band is a bit crazy; we’d be here all day.

WV: It was a good experience to grow with each other, though. I’m happy where I am with this band, because we’re both making music we want to make.

EB: I agree, we took what we learned from both of those bands into Secret Address as an example of “what were the problems with these experiences, and what do we want the new project to feel like?” I think we learned a lot from the other bands we’ve been in.

SM: I’ve heard a lot about the Philadelphia scene from others, but not so much about the twee side of it. Could you tell me a bit about that?

EB: It’s interesting in that the Philadelphia scene is at a transitional point right now. In 2022 and 2023, there was a lot of hype around TAGABOW and the whole Julia’s War shoegaze scene. That was the sound of Philly for a while, and the hype and the innovation in that space seems to me to have died down. But no one is exactly sure what’s going to replace it yet.

WV: We’re just big fans of jangle pop; a lot of New Jersey bands lean that way. Lightheaded is a good example of the jangly side; jangle pop and power pop are adjacent to twee.

EB: That’s the thing in Philly. We got interviewed by a local zine that told us that we were the only twee band in Philadelphia right now.

WV: It’s kind of true, though there’s other similar bands.

EB: The New Jersey scene, right next door, has amazing bands that play in the city all the time. I saw a band called Shampoo the other night, they just put out a 7”. It’s incredible stuff, like Dolly Mixture or Margo Guryan, the sunshine-y, 60s influenced side of the genre.

WV: There’s a shoegaze band, Mary’s Laser Beam, that makes more traditional TAGABOW-esque stuff, and now they’re trying to lean more into twee, from what I’ve heard. My roommate is mixing it for them, and they cited Secret Address as an influence.

EB: I was flattered by that too, when I heard about it. I’m excited to hear what they come up with.

WV: I don’t know if Philly knows what twee is yet, and we’re just trying to make them aware that you can make music like this.

SM: Now that you’ve recorded music and released music, what’s the main difference between the two acts? Is it just the number of people on stage, or is there more to it than that?

WV: We’re louder!

EB: In the studio, we dial back the noise. Our noise pop in the studio comes mostly from working on tape machines or using effects pedals in unconventional ways, as opposed to straight-ahead distortion. We love shoegaze and noise pop, and we lean into the side of us that’s influenced by Lilys or Blue Rev live. It’s more of a loud, crunchy guitar band. Shoutout to our second keyboard player, Andy, who has a box of effects pedals that he’s twisting during the show.

WV: We got plywood from Home Depot and made a board.

EB: We spent all night building it for him, and he has good intuition about where to put those atonal parts. We’re very inspired by the Olivia Tremor Control and Animal Collective like that. It’s weird, because I associate those two with being studio bands, but for us it comes out more in live performance because we have a guy whose job is to do it.

SM: On the subject of A Typical Day itself, everyone I’ve talked to thinks your vocals stand out, Emerson, and particularly the falsetto. I think for me it seems unconventional, because I associate twee vocals with almost more of a flatter affect, like the Alvvays self-titled, or Cub, which you don’t. Could you talk a bit more about how you came across your choices vocally?

EB: It’s funny, because it’s not actually falsetto. I just have a very bright, high voice; I’m not singing in falsetto. It’s just the way I sound. There was a time that I wasn’t leaning into that as much in melody writing, but in my last couple bands I’ve been leaning into having an androgynous voice. I don’t make too many conscious choices about my vocals, I just sing in a way that feels right. The Alvvays debut is a record I love; I don’t hear Molly [Rankin] as having a flat affect on that record at all. She sings in a very earnest, cloying way. I love all of those vocal performances, though my formative influences are from the 60s: Colin Blunstone from the Zombies, or Brian Wilson, obviously. It’s not really a choice for me to sing in that high register, it’s just where my voice sits, but it’s a choice for me to lean into it as much as I do. And I do that because it’s what my favorite singers did. There’s a quality of longing to it, when you’re softer and quieter in such a high register, that I like to express in my music. I’m glad people like the singing; I recently went through a vocal injury that put me out of commission for a year. I’m still not sure if I sound the way I did before, so it’s good to know that people still enjoy my performances.

SM: I was relistening to A Typical Day recently, and I noticed a buried spoken-word bit in “Let’s Go Exploring!”, could you tell me what that is?

WV: It’s a really good story. The title of “Let’s Go Exploring!” is a reference to the final Calvin and Hobbes strip; we’re big Calvin and Hobbes fans. We actually found a video on Youtube of a little kid reading it aloud, and we thought, “Wow! This is perfect,” and it just fit perfectly within the song. We just put it to the microphone and played it out, and it adds a childlike nature to that section that I really enjoyed. It was intentionally buried, because we didn’t want to make it too obvious, but it adds to that section.

EB: I’m surprised it turned out as well as it did in the mix, because it’s played out of phone speakers into a pretty bad microphone fed into a tape machine, so it’s band-passed twelve ways to Sunday.

WV: That’s the story. It only has 200 views, but you can find it.

EB: If you look up “final Calvin and Hobbes strip”, you’ll find the video we sampled.

SM: On Bandcamp, you give thanks to “the raccoon that fell through the ceiling”, who I assume graces the cover. I’d love to know more about the raccoon!

EB: I lived in this absolutely terrible apartment; if anyone who reads this is moving to Philadelphia, do not rent an apartment from Madison Park! They’ll let raccoons fall through your ceiling! I moved in, and in the first week I heard scuttling noises from my ceiling; I kept calling the landlord about how there’s an animal up there, but he kept saying there’s nothing he could do about it. Eventually, I started seeing light fixtures get dislodged and little raccoon hands reaching out. I kept calling him like “man, there are raccoons in my ceiling and you’ve got to get them out”, and he kept saying he can’t do anything about it. Eventually, I woke up one morning and I heard a crashing noise and little yelps in the bathroom. I went in, and this raccoon was standing in my sink and turned on the faucet and started bathing in it. I closed the door, and I called my landlord, and I said “you’re going to have hell to pay for this”. Then I called animal control, and this lady showed up with a raccoon cage. She goes into the bathroom, and takes this little guy out of the sink, and puts him in his box. You know what? He was really polite, and I liked him a lot. He was sweet, like a little cat. They took him to a shelter and he was raised there to be released back into the wild. I hope he’s out there alive and well and rummaging through somebody’s trash.

SM: And not their ceiling?

EB: And not in their ceiling! I really hope he’s not in somebody else’s ceiling!

SM: What does a typical day look like for Secret Address?

EB: It’s been a while since we’ve had one, because we’ve been so busy.

WV: I just graduated a couple days ago. We haven’t been recording as much lately because we’ve been busy.

EB: In the next week, we’re going to start recording a lot again.

WV: The thing that’s stayed the same is that we live at this house that’s walkable to everyone, so we stay up until 4 am talking the entire night, and it’s awesome.

EB: We play music and watch silly videos, we see each other every day and there’s a whole group that congregates around this house. We’re all great friends. It’s funny, we haven’t had any of the days I wrote about on this record in a while because we’ve been so busy being in the band. We spend less time idly wandering around than we used to, mostly because it’s 100 degrees all the time now.

WV: Yeah, it’s really hot here.

EB: At this point, a typical day for us is mostly making music and then just hanging out here, noodling on acoustic guitars and watching Youtube videos.

SM: What are both of your desert island picks, your choice of songs or albums?

WV: Pet Sounds, for both of us.

EB: Are we giving one list as a band, or both of us as individuals?

SM: However you prefer.

WV: We both have the Alvvays debut on there.

EB: Do we both have an Olivia Tremor Control record?

WV: Yeah, it would be Black Foliage as a band. We’re both really into the Motifs, they’re this twee group from Australia. They’re just amazing, it’s unreal!

EB: Oh gosh, yes, I’m the One You Love!

WV: We both love Animal Collective, a lot of shoegaze.

EB: Which Animal Collective record?

WV: You like Sung Tongs, and I love that one too. I just love all their music.

EB: We’re on enough of the same page that we could do one as a band. How many picks do we get?

SM: I think we’re on five now. A six-CD changer?

EB: Do you like that Lilys mini-album [ed. note: A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns] enough? I think that one’s great.

WV: I probably have a different shoegaze album.

EB: How about The Pains of Being Pure at Heart?

WV: I think that’s pretty similar to what we’re doing with noisy twee pop.

EB: Maybe I’m just picking it because it’s close to that Airport Girl song, but we can’t desert island pick their only song.

WV: Oh! Prefab Sprout! I’d put Steve McQueen in there.

EB: Yeah, it’s got to be. My honorable mention that Will wouldn’t pick is The Last Match by the Aislers Set.

SM: You talked about starting to record again next week. Is it going to be in line with A Typical Day, or more like your live performance, or more of a stylistic left-turn?

EB: I don’t think I’d call it a “left turn”, but it’s going to be its own thing. We did A Typical Day on a four-track, so it’s in true mono, and it’s very limited. Now we have an eight-track, and we’re bouncing back and forth between the two, so you can expect a stereo image on our future work, and slightly better fidelity. We recently got a Casio SK-5 sampling keyboard from the 80s, and a tape machine with a varispeed knob that you can do loops in. We’re going to be more influenced on the next EP by Elephant 6, like Olivia Tremor Control or of Montreal. It’ll be a bit like laptop twee, but without the laptop, seeing how far we can push cassettes as a medium to make experimental soundscapes. At its base, it’ll still be the bright poppy melodies of the first EP, but we’re trying to expand the palette a bit.

We’ve got a full length after that, and it’ll be more similar to A Typical Day with better fidelity and a bigger scope, and more influence from Pet Sounds and Brill Building stuff, that can get more delicate and orchestral. We’ve got a lot of sounds we want to explore. Particularly with twee pop and shoegaze, there’s this situation where they were originally derisive terms for bands that considered themselves just “indie pop” bands, making the sounds they wanted to. I think the issue, at least with shoegaze, is when they start a band now they’ll say “we’re a shoegaze band, and that means we need to have octave fuzz and reverse reverb on everything”, whereas the original bands were just doing whatever they wanted, which is what put them outside the box. We just want to do the sounds in our heads, just whatever is exciting to us at the time is what we’ll make.

SM: Is there anything else that you think readers might like to know?

EB: We just wanted to say that we love your website [Indiepop Atlas]; I go on there and read about new bands all the time. I think you do excellent work for the indiepop community; I like that you’re very honest about how you feel about everything. It’s not just a catalog of bands that you do or don’t like, you give these excellent incisive thoughts on everything.

WV: We loved your review of A Typical Day, because it was critical but positive.

EB: I felt like it was exactly the kind of review I wanted. We just wanted to say we appreciate your work as well: we’re big fans. Otherwise, we’d love to play anywhere. Reader, if you book shows, reach out to us! We love playing and we love driving around to new places! It was good to talk to you!

You can listen to A Typical Day out now!
Jake Barczak Opens Up on Rainbow Autel | Interview

June 18th, 2026

Written by Shea Roney | Photo Courtesy of Jake Barczak

Back in May, Jake Barczak released Rainbow Autel, a record built on “reckless infatuation” and a knack for sound melodies. For as minimal as they are, the subtlety of these songs does not get lost in the weeds. Strikingly different when compared to Barczak’s other project, Bullseye, Rainbow Autel comes off the heels of their self-titled debut LP. exchanging the jangly guitars and robust dynamics that have made a name for the New York-based band, Barczak now plays from the marrow of each song, the simple and worn in, knowing how far to lean back in the old porch chair before it’s too late.

They say history is always written by the winners; but who can even afford the materials these days? Rainbow Autel is easy to identify. Its range of love, loss, and bind to American exceptionalism comes nicely with the wooly instrumentations of robust acoustic guitars and jangled banjo. But whether it’s in the withering heartland orchestral of “The Living Body”, the epic tell-tale of neglected service on “Jackie”, or the lost infatuation of “Look At My Tongue Now”, it’s an album written for the losers of the everyday. For our relentless epiphanies.

We recently got to chat with Barczak about the project, storytelling, and the Midwest.

You recently released a solo record, Rainbow Autel, which notably follows the debut LP from your other band Bullseye. Where do these songs fit in the timeline of these two projects?

As a whole, the songs on the solo record are a lot more recent–the Bullseye stuff has songs on it that are as old as 2020. Rainbow Autel is all from the past two years.

Leaning a shoulder into classic folk structures and stripped back production, what made these songs discernible to this project compared to anything you were writing for Bullseye?

Probably the most obvious distinction during the songwriting process is that all the RA stuff was written on an acoustic guitar… Also I think in the last couple years I’ve been (re)-listening to a lot of folky acoustically-oriented stuff so that played a role too. Some of the songs are fingerpicked/have travis picking… so for those it was never really a question of whether Bullseye could play ‘em, I feel they were only suited for the solo set-up. I think it’s definitely related to writing with an acoustic guitar in hand, as opposed to an electric, even one that’s not plugged in… but the vocal stuff that came out seemed further away from rock music than the direction Bullseye has taken, so that made it feel further appropriate to make it its own thing ya know.

“Relentless Epiphanies”; what inspirations influenced Rainbow Autel? What stories lent themselves to these songs? Were any unpredictable in the grand scheme of these songs?

Hmm.. that phrase is some nonsense (meaningful to me lol) that I jotted down a while ago–like the burden of meaningful realizations is funny as a burden. I suppose that’s growth. But sometimes it’s like comically concentrated, ya know. The stories that lent themselves to the songs were largely pretty classic I guess– some important periods of love, travel. And in some cases digging a little deeper (?) or maybe older… and recalling some existential/loss questions in my life and vicariously through others’. I think “Jackie” was slightly unpredictable. I did not expect to write that song, and it came out in sort of a flash. Haha people keep clocking one of the very direct influences on that song… it’s certainly clockable 😉

You lead with a poem on the album’s bandcamp page, ending with the line “You have a power”. Where do those thoughts of surrender and infatuation feel most consequential in your life? Has it always been obvious?

Man, I guess I’ve learned in my life thus far that there’s quite a lot of relinquishing, and yeah, surrender that ought to go into a relation between people. I think perhaps when we’re younger, or maybe just my neurotic ass, there’s blindness or ignorance around the type of interpersonal peace this can afford– just letting it/them be. Uh… I guess “you have a power” resonates to me now in this way. I’d say it hasn’t always been obviously this type of surrender. I suppose that an earlier version of this would be feeling like you’re at the mercy of love or some other relationship haha. But that shifts to a more… yeah maybe like reckless infatuation -> peaceful surrender actually. TMI!

Now based in New York, you came from Minneapolis. Do you still have a kinship to the Midwest? Does it at all have an influence on what you create or the stories you tell?

Yeah I love the midwest. I’ve been reconnecting with friends in Minneapolis recently and making a lot of new ones in the broader Midwest. I definitely feel a strong connection to all these folks. And yeah… I think, famously, there’s a certain sort of humility and kindness that’s midwestern. I don’t know if it shows up in my songs, but I’d like to think they have a bit of that in them. Or at least that I do lol. There’s also the Dylan thing of course, though he like eschewed his Minnesotanhood or whatever… That said acoustic guitar music broadly speaking to me feels super at home in the Midwest. I’m actually working on a song right now for a second solo tape, hopefully out later this year, that’s a pretty blathering ode to the midwest (also coded as a love song, of course). Hah it’s silly, but I try to be more lenient with my silly tendencies these days.

Listen to Rainbow Autel out now as well as snag it on cassette.
Pew Pew Wants You to Blackmail Yourself | Interview

June 11th, 2026

Written by Lexi Howard | Photo by Cameron Garrison

M sits leaned back in his chair, dressed casually in all black. He’s got on a pair of trousers that even a JNCO wearing zoomer would admit are baggy. Deep in thought, he watches strangers walk by through the coffee shop window as late afternoon sun pours in. He looks at me and picks up where he left off. “You always know what you should be doing, what you have to do. You know in the moment; you’re not stupid. Anything else is an excuse. And still we toe the line and sometimes cross it,” he says as a matter of fact. That’s the ethos behind Purgatory, the debut EP from Boston-based project Pew Pew, a release that touches on themes around humility and guilt over six churning, beautifully dissonant post-punk tracks. Or as M put it, “the dissonance between what should have been and what is.”

Sonically, M described Purgatory as being “very tight with repetition that degrades and then disintegrates.” But through the middle stretches there’s always a nice melody. “Every song has to have one thing that I go, yes, that,” he says pointing emphatically. “If the song doesn’t have that, then there’s no point.” Take the title track, for example, which first lays a pattern with M’s vocals mixing melodically with bassist Tanya’s over 90 seconds before establishing a new, darker set of riffs and harsher vocals. Finally, a synthesis emerges as Tanya’s sweet vocals return and the two previous melodies, guitar riffs, and drum parts merge imperfectly and teeter on a razor’s edge before falling off.

Photo by Cameron Garrison

Pew Pew started over 2 years ago after an impromptu jam session when drummer Eamonn Burke showed up to a cancelled practice that was scheduled for Boston omnichord rock band Ohio State Fair, on which he also plays with M. The duo played a couple of riffs together and “that’s pretty much when the band started.”

Through community, M knew that Night Moth and Squitch bassist Kit Malmberg might be available as the latter project wound down. “I think I asked them if they like Protomartyr or something like that.” They were down. “And then I wanted another guitar player and Kit was like, I know this guy, Jon.” Jon Wallis, of Jonny Tex and Hereboy. The four-piece worked out a handful of songs together, led by M. “I write the skeletons of the songs but I am hesitant to call them mine,” said M. “A lot of the most productive stuff was when we were getting tired of each other. We were like, let’s just swap instruments. Kit would grab a guitar. And then, ‘oh, that’s what we needed’,” M said of Kit’s contribution to the outro on one of their early tracks, “Cheers”.

That summer, less than six months after forming, the group got in the studio to record. The group released a couple of tracks from those sessions — “Cheers” and “Gank” — but M felt that some of the songs weren’t quite ready to release. “It was just maybe a little early to record.” So the group sat on those songs. Then Kit moved to New York, and M connected with Ohio State Fair and Dino Gala bassist Tanya Orlova to fill the vacancy.

After almost a year of performing together, the reconfigured group got a last minute studio spot. “Little Nice Studio posted that they had a last minute cancellation and said someone can take it for cheap.” The group played a 5 band bill in Boston, then got up the next morning and drove to Rhode Island with recording engineer Nate Scaringi. “That [it was last minute] was honestly good because I probably would have kept over thinking it otherwise,” said M.

The four-piece recorded the EP in its entirety live in about 9 hours. “We just went in the room. No fancy stuff. One amp each,” said M, noting that they recorded vocals separately in their practice space and during mixing sessions. “I wanted it to sound grittier than the first stuff that we put out, which was more high fi. I think [recording it live] added to how the whole thing sounds because it’s very raw.” The EP was mixed by Ian Norris, who M was excited to work with. “Ian has written some of my favorite music of all time with his band Taurus Judge, and he has a great ear. He’s a great engineer. It felt good to have someone very excited about this style of music.”

Purgatory is made up of songs that the group came up with after Tanya joined, plus one that they re-recorded. M noted that his bandmates each bring a unique element to the songs. “Practice is where we flesh the songs out. Each of them has something that someone else came up with that made the song. Like the drum part on ‘Purgatory’. Eamonn came up with it, and it’s incredible. I love it.” said M.

M added that the group takes melodic inspiration from Tanya’s vocals. “Even the guitar parts often come from the harmonies that Tanya [came up with]. [On the song ‘Purgatory’] I think all of Jon’s guitar part and the whole ending came from Tanya singing the chords that they wanted to hear,” said M. He added, “It was stuff that we weren’t hearing ourselves, but they have the ear for that. They’re trained, they’re a musician,” he said. “We both missed Kit and we were also happy that Tanya got to take over that spot.” M also noted that Jon has come up with a guitar tone that gives the band a unique sound: “Jon has figured out this kind of odd, distorted guitar. It can be very harsh and sound off when sound checking alone, but then with the band, it works. It’s those little things like that. I couldn’t imagine coming up with a song and then not having those tools at our disposal.”

M said that his experience touring with Brooklyn-via-Boston slowcore/shoegaze band Joyer and Alexander, the project of Boston songwriter turned poet Alex Fatato, helped build connections that turned to friendships in the DIY scene across the northeast and midwest. “I met people years ago that are helping us book our debut tour now [in the Northeast] and in Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh. They remember me and they’re like, ‘I’ve heard you’re in this band. We should help you out.’ It was a godsend to start a project of my own after already having some experience in other people’s projects.” He added, “I mean, it’s a little corny, but it does speak to the value of this whole DIY network, this community. I wouldn’t have had that same luck [booking this tour] otherwise.”

He went on about how so many folks in the local scene have gotten Pew Pew exposure despite having little recorded music. “In terms of the local scene, getting to meet Jason [Trefts] from Illegally Blind [has been impactful]. That guy believes in us. It’s great to have him help us out, put us on his own cool shows. We got to play with [Western, MA-based] Landowner and [Philadelphia bands] Eraser and Mesh before we had music out. It felt crazy,” said M. “Ian [McGregor] who books Deep Cuts, [under the moniker] Eye Design, he’s also brought us some good bills. We opened for FACS, a Chicago band. Jon kept joking, ’This is like opening for The Foo Fighters for us’. That’s kind of how it felt.”

Maybe it is corny, but from the beginning, the story of Pew Pew is one of community. “It’s kind of shown that it ultimately just matters to meet the right people,” said M. “It doesn’t have to be the right people in an industry sense, just someone who has good taste by your own definition. That connection can align you with others who share your taste.”

M leans back again. “I sent you the art, right?,” he asks. I pull it up on my laptop. “That’s my grandma in the middle, with the red flower. It’s a picture of the contestants of Miss International, Long Beach, California, in 1964, and my grandma participated as Miss Peru. It was a newspaper cutout or something. My grandma does this thing with all her black and white pictures, she’ll be like, ‘It didn’t look like that. Let me color it.’ And then she colored it, and it just looked perfect.” Who said purgatory couldn’t be sweet.

You can listen to Purgatory out now.
palefire brings a heart full of artistic liberation to debut LP

June 9th, 2026

Written by Joy Freeman | Photo Courtesy of palefire

In true DIY fashion, my interview with palefire hits a connection snag on Zoom five minutes in. From a bedroom in Denton, Texas, Jacqui Torres re-materializes on my screen. “The best part of DIY is that it comes from real people,” she enthuses. There is an art to the imperfection here.

Torres’ debut LP as palefire, full heart, big empty eyes, is entirely self-made, apart from a mix /master and drums from her partner, Echo Goza. I shouldn’t be surprised when she tells me the stunning strings are played in-house too. She’s a classically trained cellist.

After twelve years of playing and time spent in Boston studying the instrument professionally, she shares, “When I write a song, I hear it before I even start playing anything. So I definitely just heard the strings.” Elliott Smith’s XO is cited as a primary influence.

The intimacy in palefire shines through from the intro track, the lo-fi “hello world!!!!” It sounds like a phone call with a friend, an invitation into the whimsical vulnerability of the record. This recording is a departure from her previous two singles, a lean into a slightly poppier sound and a splicing down of 7-8 minute demos into digestible snippets.

When I tell her that the scope of the album leans from Clairo-reminiscent to Kimya Dawson, she laughs. Elliott Smith stands out as a focal inspiration yet again. “Within the last two weeks of writing the album, I was listening to a lot of more twee indie pop people. Touch Girl Apple Blossom, Brittle Stars, The Sundays.” Torres leans into this aesthetic, designing her own album cover with pastel color palettes and light-leaked photos.

Songs like “Sweet as a yankee” play into Torres’ home state. Her response to my mention of Texas is initially a hesitant, “bleh.” Then, she pivots. “I feel like being in Texas motivates me musically. As I’m writing and as I’m recording or playing shows, I’m just like, ‘Okay, I just need to finish this, and then maybe I’ll get booked on a tour, and I can get out of here’…but I’ll probably stay here forever. I love my friends.”

“My Peace” is another favorite of hers, and her most vulnerable on the album. “I definitely just wanted to paint a certain scene or ambiance of cuteness, but also, kinda sad and sweet. Bittersweet.”

I ask how she honed her production skills independently after leaving school as a classical musician.

“I dropped out, and I was like, ‘Okay, let’s rebuild this foundation. Why do I do music in the first place?’ And I got to talk to a lot of my friends, and a lot of them were producers. I got into Logic, and I made my first song. It’s still on SoundCloud. I don’t know how to freaking get into that account and take it down,” she jokes. After she met Echo playing lead guitar for his band, she learned how to mix. “You can make something catchy. You can make something heartfelt. You can make something simple. You could use a four-track. I feel like depending on the atmosphere I wanna create, I can just do it now. It is so nice to have that artistic liberation, you know, not just with the songwriting, but with the production.”

Initially, palefire was a shoegaze project, but after a few months Torres decided to pivot.

“Everything will always be changing, but everything will always be me, because I am the person who writes and produces it.”

Full heart, big empty eyes is available now on bandcamp. The album will be available on all streaming on July 13th.
Touch Girl Apple Blossom are Sounding Like Themselves on Graceful | Interview & Guest List vol. 108

May 28th, 2026

Written by Emily Moosbrugger | Photo Courtesy of Touch Girl Apple Blossom

Every week, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by the Austin-based band, Touch Girl Apple Blossom. Emily also got to chat with the band after a March gig in Asheville, in which they discussed their new record Graceful, released earlier this month via K records.

About their playlist, the band shared;

“Music.. the acceleration of the heart-situation. A bird’s feather floating in the wind could land anywhere, but it landed right here in my hair. Nothing makes me feel more lucky. I call my baby on the telephone when I’m down and he sings a song to me. Nothing makes me feel more lucky.”

Listen to their playlist HERE!

The trip Olivia Garner sings about on “Vacation” the third song on Touch Girl Apple Blossom’s Graceful is nothing like the album’s title suggests. Springy riffs twirl around jangly, bouncing guitars setting the bubbly indie-pop backdrop for nasty sunburns, fighting in public and long nights staying up worrying. Garner’s saccharine vocals float through the thick layers with a fluttery lightheartedness as the dreadful scenes unfurl, before she sings: “Well I tried/ Couldn’t find out/ Just how to be Graceful.” Her cool delivery holds a hint of giddiness, making what would be a casual shrug feel more like a quiet triumph.

Touch Girl Apple Blossom is a four piece band based in Austin, who recently shared their first full-length album Graceful. They formed after Garner visited El Paso for a show where she met drummer Charles Powell, who she joined that same night for a karaoke performance of “Drive” by the Cars. The pair parted ways for another several years after that, and in the meantime Garner was getting to know bassist Dustin Pilkington through events he organized in the Austin scene.

One of the recurring shows he hosts features bills composed entirely of bands playing their first-ever gig – for a while, every time he put one of these together he messaged Garner to ask when she was planning to finally start a band of her own. So when Garner decided to start reaching out to potential bandmates, she knew just where to look. “He was the obvious answer,” Garner said of Pilkington. Soon after, Garner, Powell, Pilkington and guitarist John Morales all convened in-person for the first time at the first Touch Girl Apple Blossom practice.

In their earlier days, the songs were mostly written solo by Garner and Morales in their homes and then taken to the other members to be filled out and polished. Since the release of their EP in 2023, their process has become much more collaborative; members will share loose snippets of ideas in their group chat to be brought to practice and pieced into full songs as a group. “When we wrote the EP it was kind of just John and I, and they helped us bring it to life, and then the record was like our actual project together,” Garner said.

Similar to Garner’s revelation on “Vacation,” the band found letting go of expectation would push them into new, more earnest territory. “We wanted to be a certain kind of band, and then with this album, it’s kind of like we wanted to write Touch Girl songs,” said Powell. On “Heart-Go”, the first song the band wrote post-EP, and their most unabashed, heavy-rocking to-date, stuttering feedback and the fast-paced rumble of Powell’s drums lay the groundwork for an opening line that encapsulates the band’s growth in a new direction. “The pen got tired of writing down these things to say to you/ Scratching out, scribbling around the truth.”

In their shows, an imperfection is never treated as a limitation, but a chance to play with the energy in the room – an opportunity approached with a charm and excitement similar to bringing a newly broken bone to school and letting your friends cover your cast in doodles. “I’ve started

to scream when I get nervous because people will just call and respond. You know, people will just do it back, which is sort of a perfect distraction from the song. People will just fixate on that and before you know it the song’s over and you got through it,” Garner said. In a similar way, the band opens the song “Dream From an Eyelash” with a chorus of ‘ahs,’ a tactic they newly established as a way to make that part of their set more comfortable. “That’s a song that I didn’t want to play for a long time because it’s hard for me to hit that note right off the bat,” Garner said. “So they generously have started to just sing it so we can sort of practice before we have to start.”

Throughout Graceful, the band’s first release in which lead vocals are traded between songs, each songwriter’s distinct, sentimental voices complement one another, stitched together like devotional pieces of patchwork. On “The Springtime Reminds Me Of…” Garner swirls in and out of a daydream, bouncing from one starry-eyed musing to the next before slipping away cunningly, leaving us to spiral into the dreaminess ourselves: “I must go, I can’t say no/ The world keeps turning/ The springtime reminds me of…” But where Garner leaves room to fill in the gaps, her bandmates draw us in a little closer, sketching their memories in the adoring details; a clock ticking at the pace of a heartbeat, the extra space left in a lover’s coffee for cream. On “Back ‘N Forth, Garner’s hopeful chants and swooning “la’s,” are sprinkled throughout a nostalgic picture of “the back and forth of a tireswing,” dancing around the lines with the weightless rise and fall of the image they describe.

On many of these songs, these wistful imaginative spells are the narrators’ greatest strengths in the face of uncertainty. The song “Tell” opens with the line, “Make enough to eat/ Most importantly I still have those same dreams,” opening the album with the fearless spirit that is carried throughout. The energy on Graceful, an album brimming with brisk, dancey pop is sustained by an unflinching optimism, a belief in holding onto those dreams and letting go of the rest. The dreaming comes to a head on the penultimate track, “I’m Lucky I Found You,” a slower outlier on the album expressing a deep gratitude for a long-anticipated love over a sweet bed of acoustic riffs and warm cello accompaniment. The verses recount a long series of changing seasons and unanswered questions that dissolve at the euphoric exclamation: “love is back and it’s in my arms!” It’s a revelation bringing fresh clarity, sung with the gushiness and giddy confidence of someone who knows that whatever comes next, they won’t be facing it alone.

You can listen to Graceful out now, as well as snag a copy on vinyl or CD via K Records.
Jonny Tex Took the Long Road | Premiere

May 28th, 2026

Written by Lexi Howard | Photo by Lena Warnke

This past April, on a cold, rainy afternoon at an outdoor market in Somerville, MA, I met up with guitarist, bassist, and vocalist Jon Wallis to talk about the debut release from his project Jonny Tex. “I needed to prove that I can make simple rock music,” said Wallis about Mark of Cain, the four track alt-western and indie rock EP about characters inspired by his time in Austin, Texas, where he spent most of his life before moving to Boston in his 20s. The debut is a long time coming for Wallis, who says he’s always wanted to have a rock project of his own. But it took leaving Texas and his Southern Baptist church behind, getting fired from a music residency at a local bar in Boston, and losing a laptop with over 400 demos to get here.

It’s not easy to stand out in 2026 as an indie rock band, but from my first Jonny Tex set last fall, I was hooked. Drawing from a broad array of sonic inspiration, Wallis certainly has a way of writing catchy, full sounding rock music. On Mark of Cain, the guitarist focused on his lyricism, and it shows. The four tracks feature parables and vignettes that touch on “an inherent absurdity or sinfulness that everyone has.” Said Wallis, “It’s a motif found in everything.” Hence Mark of Cain.

But Wallis brings this Christian motif to his music through humor and self awareness. “I’ve always been more inspired by the western caricature than country music,” said Wallis. “I like the silliness of it,” he said, before describing how the second track — “Bill” — is about his neighbor from growing up, a “frumpy Texas single guy”, who “says his life is awesome but it really sucks, which is a thing that a lot of southern men do,” he adds.

Wallis, for his part, grew up in a Southern Baptist church, leading worship music nights as a teenager who had previously spent time playing music with friends. “[The church] kept being like, oh you can be a youth leader,” said Wallis. “It was all bullshit.” Wallis decided to leave the megachurch and ultimately left Texas in 2021. “I realized anywhere I moved in Texas, my entire community would be people I [knew from the church].” He opted for Boston despite not knowing a single person who lived there. “It paid off. I love Boston.”

Photo by Lena Warnke

After arriving in Boston, Wallis spent time “gigging around,” including playing with Philly-via-Boston group Hereboy and post-rock/noise band Pew Pew. Along the way, Wallis managed to get a residency at a local bar, covering “beer country songs from the 90s” under the moniker “Jonny Tex and the Lone Stars”. Said Wallis, “I would get my friends to play with me [often on instruments that were not their first instruments]. One day they were like, you guys get so hammered on stage, you play too long, and nobody’s really enjoying this except y’all.” And thus was the end of the residency. “We stopped, and then I was like, okay, we’ll be an originals band.”

To his credit, by this point Wallis already had a laptop with over 400 demos that he had written and recorded over the years. That is, until the laptop crashed. Instead of devastating him, Wallis said this freed him up to start releasing music with “songs that I kind of just remembered writing that I was excited about” or new songs that he’s written since. “So that was like 3 years of practice pretty much.” I asked if he ever tried to get the laptop fixed, to which he responded, “I still have it. I just… I cannot. It feels kind of nice.”

Last year, Wallis released a double A-side via Happen Twice — Heifer/Cherubhead — with songs that he wrote after he decided to focus on originals. Within five months of getting fired, he was in the studio with his buddy Marshall Pruitt, recording four songs. The duo chose two that they felt were good enough to release. “It felt really important to record in Texas, those songs about Texas,” said Wallis. Wallis noted that on everything he’s recorded, he’s played nearly every part aside from a couple keyboard parts on the singles, and drums — played by Kyle Duggar of Virginia Creeper on the singles and Corey Camara of Spirit Ghost on the EP. He emphasized how important it is for him to make the recording sound as much like what is in his head.

Jonny Tex in full band format. From left: Charles Peterson (keys), Harley Spring (guitar), Corey Camara (drums), Holly Foster (bass), Jon Wallis (guitar, vocals). Photo by Lizzy McEleney.

Wallis spoke glowingly about his producer, Pruitt, whom he has admired since high school from his work with Austin bands Close By and Duncan Fellows. Wallis shared about how Pruitt has pushed his songwriting. “He’s pushed me to make songs to be more clear… It’s forced me to think about selling a song rather than a vibe… It’s been encouraging to work with someone who’s like ‘We can’t bury the vocals. We have to make a good sounding record.’”

For Mark of Cain, Wallis brought Pruitt up to Little Nice in Lincoln, RI last July to record songs that he started working on just 6 months prior. “I wanted to just try to make straight rock music that sounds good so I could prove that I could do it,” said Wallis. “Two guitars, bass and drums, and just me singing.”Mark of Cain might be the debut from Jonny Tex, but don’t expect this EP to define his sound. “I think the singles [“Heifer/Cherubhead”] kind of indicate that I have an ambitious mind.” Indeed, “Heifer” with its odd, whirling startup sounds that persist throughout; “Cherubhead” with its drum machine sounding kick and high hat and overdubbed guitars that sound like a large dying animal. Wallis mentioned that after Mark of Cain, we can expect some “weird ass shit” from him. “I go into every song with no mission. I think that’s something I value so much is really letting the weird sounds in my brain translate to pop music. I want the music I make to be singularly me.”

You can listen to Mark of Cain by Johnny Tex premiering here on the ugly hug.
Joe Glass is Back from Tour (Again) | Interview

May 26th, 2026

Written by Ella Hardie | Photo by Linnea Cheng

Joe Glass is a bonafide first-and-last-namer. Two syllables, boom boom. Besides having a hard name to forget, he’s never needed a persona or re-brand for his solo project. His music tells us exactly who he is. Back in January when he announced the release of his first album in four years, Snakewards, he described it as “13 scrap-rock sketches straight from the heart to the gut,” before posing the rhetorical question: “Maybe we can keep rock’n’roll alive for one more day?” I don’t think rock’n’roll is anywhere near kicking the bucket, and Snakewards—which, in 2026, sold out on cassette tape almost immediately—proves that we have nothing to worry about. Snakewards possesses a sense of urgency, spontaneity, and sincerity nonetheless: each track clocks in at three minutes or, more often than not, less. This no-filler, no-frills, (dare I say no-skip?) album is a jubilant reintroduction to Joe’s songwriting skills and good taste. He isn’t trying to bare his soul or convince you of anything, he’s just trying to make music that he would want to listen to. His lack of inhibition and general air of confidence make his “sketches” of situations and characters, like “Oscar’s Midnight Ride” or “The Man Who Lost His Diamond,” feel like they were drawn in pen instead of pencil on scratch paper singed by a Bic lighter.

In pursuit of “keeping rock’n’roll alive for one more day,” Glass has assembled a live band made up of some of Chicago’s finest, who happen to be his longtime friends, guitarist Joaquin Cervantes (Soaps), bassist Cormick Costello (Intoner, Plug Three), and his younger brother, Warren Glass (Receiver) on drums. I imagine it’s hard to find the right people to help you execute your creative vision as a solo artist—it surely takes a lot of trial, error, and trust—but Joe Glass has definitely struck gold.

2/26/2026: Joe Glass, Glass-Beagle, and Cash Langdon @ Gman Tavern

With a song or two left in Glass-Beagle’s (kickass) set, Joe and I pull on our coats and head out the back door. We decide to talk on the Racine Avenue side of the venue as opposed to the Clark Street side because it’s 10 p.m. on a Thursday in Wrigleyville and there’s already a line down the block for Jeff Mills at Smartbar. Before the door even closes behind us, we rummage through our respective pockets/purse for our cigarettes. We’re both smoking Marlboro Golds. I start recording and the first 30 seconds of the audio—which I have to cut for time—consist of me rambling about my postgrad-quasi-existential-crisis. (I have no recollection of how we got on this topic. Sorry Joe.)

JOE GLASS: I dunno, a lot of people are doing wayyyy less cool shit.

I sigh. I pivot:

ELLA HARDIE: Well, you’re doing a lot of cool shit…in the scheme of things… Like, you just got back from touring in Europe [with Sharp Pins] a day and a half ago.

(I probably should’ve mentioned this in the intro, but Joe Glass also plays guitar in Sharp Pins, Kai Slater (of Lifeguard)’s solo project. He’s booked and busy!)

JG: Yeah…

EH: I really want to hear about that, but I’ll start with the same question I start every interview with: How would you rate your set tonight out of ten?

JG: Tonight…? Honestly, tonight’s like an eight and a half, nine? I just felt good about it. It was a thirty minute thing, so… Sometimes when you have to play, like, an hour, you may delve into territory that you’re not, like, super psyched about—even if it’s good or whatever, it’s just not fresh to you—but we only had thirty minutes. We opened with two new songs—like, very new—and then we played some old songs from previous years… Yeah, no, I felt really good tonight.

EH: Do you like Gman? Have you played here before?

JG: Yeah, I played a Minivan show here once a long time ago—

(I used to see Minivan stickers all over the place—the one I saw most often was one in the Big n’ Little’s (RIP) bathroom on Belmont. The first (and only?) time I saw Minivan play live was at Old Bookclub back in 2023, where they played a cover of “The Man in Me” by Bob Dylan as their encore. I remember approaching the stage after their set and saying: “THAT WAS AWESOME I LOVE BOB DYLAN” and Joe replying with: “He’s a poet.”)

EH: Damn, rest in fuckin’ peace.

JG: I dunno, I think Gman is an underrated space because hipsters are pretty adverse to going to Wrigleyville to see music, but I think the sound is really good, the room is really good, there’s two bars, it’s, like, a clean place, it’s kinda unpretentious—

EH: Yeah, the Wrigleyville of it all…

JG: Yeah, but it’s next to the Metro and it’s historic and really nice… I had actually just booked my own show here in about a month and then I got put on this bill. I mean, I’m glad to do it! I think the Gman Era is beginning…

EH: Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say, you’re kinda bookending your tour here. Like, you just got back from tour, you just played a show here, and you’re about to go on another tour that ends here… How do you feel about touring?

JG: I mean, I love touring. It’s a total manifestation of my childhood dreams, basically. I think touring—once I started doing it, like, kinda seriously—it’s just like all experiences that you think you’d enjoy, then you get to experience it… It’s not that I don’t enjoy doing it, I really love doing it, it’s just—

Anddddd unfortunately this is as far as I got into transcribing this (insightful and wonderful and 40 MINUTE LONG) interview before it decided to never play ever again.

3/7/2026 (via Instagram):

@ellahardiee: So I have terrible news

Our interview was pronounced Legally Dead at the Apple Store yesterday

(The audio file got corrupted)

@j0eglass: Wow

That sucks lol

Just have to do another one!

JOE GLASS (BAND) TAKE TWO:

This interview features Joe Glass (guitar/vocals), Warren Glass (drums), Joaquin Cervantes (guitar/vocals), Cormick Costello (bass), my beloved friends Cordia Ritz and Linnea Cheng, and local legend Jason Shapiro (for a second toward the end). It has been edited and condensed for clarity.

3/21/2026: Jason Shapiro, Alga, Barreleye, & Joe Glass @ Gman Tavern:

The show’s over and Joe’s manning the merch table while I try to rally the rest of the troops. Warren, Joaquin, and Cormick are all smoking outside, inadvertently commingling with the crowd in line for Boots’ 4th Birthday Party at Metro next door. At some point, Joaquin notices their finger bleeding and goes inside to deal with it. In the meantime, I run to grab Joe from the back and we walk out the door onto Racine Ave away from the noise of Clark Street. It’s a remarkably familiar situation: once again, within the first ten seconds of stepping into the warm, false-spring air, we both light up Marlboro Golds. We get halfway through our cigarettes before everyone eventually gathers in a circle on the sidewalk. We’ve finally arrived at a moment of redemption and the stakes feel weirdly high…

ELLA HARDIE: God willing, this will be normal—

Everybody starts laughing. The stakes no longer feel high.

EH: Hey guys…

JOE GLASS: Hello…

EH: We’re back…

JG: Again…

EH: Indeed… How is everybody feeling?

Joe, Cormick, Warren, and Joaquin all respond with their own version of: “Good!” “It was a good show!” “It was a good set!”

EH: How would everyone rate it out of 10…? We can go in a circle—

WARREN GLASS: 7, I’d say.

JOAQUIN CERVANTES: 7, really?

JG: It’s like, an individual thing—

JC: Ohhh—

JG: I felt like we sounded really good—

WG: Ok, maybe 7.5 actually—

JG: Back-pedaling!

WG: I am back-pedaling! Because I realized I did good today!

JG: Yeah! I think so!

JC: I was gonna give it like a high 8 or something… I just nailed most of my parts…

JG: I would say, like, a 7.86…?

CORMICK COSTELLO: I like whole numbers, so I’m rounding up with the 8.

JC: Me and Corm were off on the left side rockin’ out, it was fun.

EH: Have you guys had a 10 recently? This is the last stop of your tour, was there a 10 while you were gone?

EVERYONE: St. Louis—

JC: St. Louis was a 9—

CC: Yeah, St. Louis was the best one—

EH: What was special about St. Louis?

JG: Well… it was, like, a pretty small room, and there weren’t that many people there but they were excited, and it seemed like there were more people because of the size. And it was at a place called CBGB, which is hilarious—

EH: In St. Louis, Missouri?

CC: Don’t worry, even the people in St. Louis are confused about it—

Laughter.

JC: Real friendly, salt of the earth people there too. I talked to so many random people—

JG: Unlimited liquor n’ booze—

WG: “Unlimited liquor and booze…”

JG: Wait, unlimited liquor and beer, so… maybe that was part of the excitement…

EH: How does it feel to be back in Chicago after being on tour?

JG: Very good! I love Chicago, it definitely still wins out as The Best City in America to me. I really liked Cincinnati though, I could move there someday… but it feels very good to be back! I’m excited for it to be warm enough to swim, that’s kinda where I’m at.

CC: Yeah, being on tour just really made me appreciate the people here and how into everything they are. Like, we saw some stone-faces at some of these places and I don’t think you really get that in Chicago.

JG: Yeah, agree.

Joaquin nods.

JC: It’s definitely the Real America…

JG: …Chicago?

JC: No, the rest of America—

EH: What kind of venues were you playing? Was it house shows, bars, proper clubs?

JG: One house show—to, like, a bunch of fake goth kids at U of I in Urbana—and the rest of them were clubs but, like, maybe more DIY? One of them got canceled because the toilet overflowed—

EH: Is that why…? I saw that on Instagram and I was wondering what happened…

JG: Well, I just said it was because of plumbing, but I’ve been learning recently that a lot of my Instagram stories, people are like… “I don’t know what you meant by that—”

Laughter.

JG: Like, I made a post about this Nashville guitarist that we were watching on my birthday, who’s just a honky-tonk guy that plays seven days a week or something, and he was literally the best guitar player I’ve ever seen. But I posted this one video of him that was just, like… soooo mediocre that people were like “Is this a joke…?” Even my mom was like, “Ok…? How many guitar players have you seen? This guy is not that good.” But I was just like, “This guy is amazing!!!!”

Everyone cracks up.

JG: And then we paid a guy to do a rap about me for my birthday—

EH: Oh, happy belated! When was your birthday?

JG: March 17th.

EH: St. Patty’s Day! Ok! Twenty…four?

JG: Twenty four… oldhead…

I turn to Cordia.

EH: That’s gonna be you soon…

CR: I don’t know if I can do it… Is it ok? Will I be fine?

Joe shrugs.

JG: I do feel better than when I turned twenty three—

CR: That’s all I can really ask for—

JG: But yeah, we asked this guy for a rap for a dollar—that’s his thing—and then he started the rap and he’s like, “We need a beat!” and he started playing his guitar, and then he came in with the hook, which was “IT’S JOEEE’S BIRTHDAYYY” —

(I wish I could embed the audio for this part:)

JG & JC & WG & CC: “OH YEAH, YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH”

JG: And then he starts freestyling and we’re all like: “This guy is a genius.”

Laughter.

JC: He’s like: “[guitar noise that would be impossible for me to write out]”

JG: Just like, this white guy with a backwards baseball cap—

EH: How old was he…?

JG: He was probably like 29—

Warren, Joaquin, and Cormick all concur. Cordia, Linnea, and I all go:“Ohhhhhhh.”

EH: I thought you were gonna say, like, 56—

JG: So then this other guy comes up, and I’m kinda sitting there like, “Woah, that was so sick.”

CC: We were all jammin’ out—

JG: But this guy comes up, and he’s like, “Hey, let me get next,” and we were like, “Ok, let’s see what he’s got—”

CC: He goes, “My name’s Smoke—”

WG: No, it was just “Smoe!”

“Smoe” gets us good.

JG: And we’re all like, “Smoe… Okayyyy…” And then he starts playing and he’s like, “IT’S SMOOEE’S BIRTHDAYYY—”

JG & JC & WG & CC (same tune as before): “NANA-NANA-NANA-NANA”

JG: It was, like, the exact same thing. And then we left. So that made me feel slightly less special… He did the exact same hook for a guy with the same name as me… almost.

Everyone dies laughing.

JC: Smoe…

EH: Alright, how did this band form, as it stands right now?

JG: Well, I’ve been through a lot of iterations… four bassists and three drummers now… Joaquin’s the only other guitarist I’ve had, and for a little bit I had a guy playing piano—

JC: You did?

JG: Yeah, but really for a very small amount of time. ‘Cuz I was trying to sound like Wilco—

Laughter.

JG: I was doing solo stuff for a long time and then my friend Brennan from back home lived above Cole’s Bar, so you could make a lot of noise because they were making so much noise, and that’s where we’d practice. So he was my drummer, and then Tyler from Soaps [and Poolish] became my bassist, but then Tyler moved back to The Valley for the summer and I needed to find a new bassist… And then my friend Kevin actually played bass for one show… and then I just asked Cormick to do it—do you remember when that was?

CC: It was some Attic show—

JG: Yeah, it was kind of a while ago, but I was just like, “Do you wanna do this?” and you said yeah, and then I wanted one of my shows to be really good, so I asked Joaquin to play, and they played, and then the crowd’s reaction to your double-tele-thing made me be like, “Yeah, that should be what it is from now on.”

JC: Yeah, that was punk.

EH: And then your brother, of course—

JG: Oh, sorry—

Laughter.

JG: In my head I’d already said it! But Warren’s just my brother and he’s one of the best musicians I know, so it was kind of natural. I just asked him to play and he said yes. He’s been the best drummer. We have a specific brotherly connection that I think yields to a really good live show. He’s also in Receiver, which is a really good band.

EH: What were some of your favorite bands growing up? I assume you two were raised on the same stuff…? And the same question goes to all of you, honestly—

CC: Why are we answering this? He’s writing the music!

(Cormick makes a good point here: this isn’t a typical “band” interview, seeing as this is Joe’s solo project, but it’s still a group interview…)

EH: I guess that’s true, but I’m still curious! I mean, Joe wants you all here for a reason, you’re all friends and you’re all very compatible musicians, some of that has to come from similar backgrounds and similar tastes, y’know?

CC: Yeah, fair enough.

JG: I dunno, it changes a lot when you’re little… When I was really little, I definitely really liked The Beatles and The White Stripes and Nirvana. And then as I got older, y’know, I got into Television and Buzzcocks and all that stuff… and Wilco…

EH: Are your parents into Wilco? I feel like everyone’s parents are into Wilco around here—

JG: I mean, my dad lived in Chicago for a while so he liked Wilco… He was good at exposing us to stuff that he was just checking out, whether or not he was super into it—

EH: Like, more of a “form your own opinion” kinda thing and less of a “this is the greatest band ever and should be your favorite band ever” kinda thing?

JG: Depends… Some of the bands he was really into I was like… I don’t know if I’m really into this… But also he was a college kid in the ‘80s so he really liked The Replacements, and I love The Replacements. He definitely showed me some really cool stuff.

I turn to Warren, who’s literally wearing a Replacements shirt:

WG: I had an interesting pipeline… My first fixation was Michael Jackson—

CC: That’s awesome.

WG: And then it was, like, Daft Punk. And then like, new-wave to Mac DeMarco, as it goes—

EH: Classic situation…

WG: Then toward the end of high school I started getting a little more into Chicago music specifically, a lot of stuff that everybody here is interested in, and I gave it a chance and I loved it.

The wind picks up and I pass Joaquin my phone so their voice can be decipherable:

JC: The first music I remember listening to was stuff my dad showed me, like Elvis Costello and U2 and The Clash… it was their version of “I Fought the Law,” and the Elvis Costello “Pump It Up” video… I mean everything just comes out of that. And I have to mention U2, I just fuckin’ like it now, who gives a fuck?

Laughter.

JC: I like hooky guitar parts, and I like punk, and I like—

JG: Country music—

JC: Country music, yeah! It’s more like… you just find what you like in everything. Like, it could be commercials or Katy Perry or Sun Ra.

JG: Agreed. Definitely.

JC: And jazz…like, the hooky kind, like Coltrane—

WG: I was into a lot of Japanese-jazz fusion in high school—

CC: Like ‘bop and cool shit, that’s what you were into—

JC: Like ‘80s Chet Baker—

CC: I listened to a lot of jazz in high school as well… but like, rock-music-wise, I got, like, obsessively into Talking Heads and The Smiths. Those are two bands I could probably sing every lyric to any of their songs. Now I’m into the weird pop side-projects of punk bands, like Big Audio Dynamite or The Style Council, which are from The Clash and The Jam, respectively.

JC: I feel like we have to say, like, all American music, like, the garage bands of the ‘60s—

CC: I just named two British things, but sure…

Laughter.

JC: No, but like, the ‘50s songwriters, everybody that was writing hooks of all kinds and then putting weird production over it. That’s what early country music was like too—

JG: Yeah, because all that music is way more…. it’s formulaic, but at the time was a little bit more mind-boggling than it is now. Because it wasn’t pastiche, y’know? It was traditional, but like, the Burrito Brothers or something, they were doing things that were more subtle maybe than now… Now it’s a lot of two-chord music, so it leads to it seeming more ambiguous because there’s less resolution. Like, the chord progression doesn’t really complete itself a lot of the time—in a traditional way, at least. But back then, a lot of them were better at the classic way of writing something. Y’know what I mean?

CC: Yeah.

JG: I like both though.

CC: I feel like I have a good, formulated idea on, like, your most recent music—

EH: Do tell…

CC: Ok, it sounds silly, but his most recent record, Snakewards—really good, I love playing it—and I feel like what Joe’s going for, to me, it’s like a study in genre, and what can you do with the tried-and-true tropes of all rock music and work it into one… coalition.

A beat. We all nod. I think we all agree.

I turn to Joe:

EH: Do you feel like you were doing that? Consciously? Subconsciously?

Everybody starts laughing.

JC: “How much of a Genius are you?”

More laughter.

JG: Umm… Yeah, well, I don’t like to—

(He’s humble.)

CC: In a slacked out way—

JC: Like a tattered flag—

JG: Well… I would agree, sort of—

CC: I’m not saying this in a really scholarly way—

JG: No, but I’d agree, I was definitely trying to make a mixture… Some of the songs I thought I did something that was its own thing, a little bit not done, but I was more trying to rely on my own songwriting voice and trying not to overthink making it so unique.

EH: I actually just noticed this today—maybe I’m totally missing something—but Slither [2022] and Snakewards [2026]… Do you consider them spiritual sisters…? What’s going on with the reptilian imagery? Why is that calling to you?

JG: Well, my brother, my dad, and I used to go catch a lot of small animals, like geckos when you’re down south, or frogs and turtles and snakes, so I think I just kinda like little animals, I dunno. But I wasn’t thinking about Slither from a snake perspective, I was just like… Well, that was my Emotional Album and I just felt like that word was fitting… it’s kind of an emotional word? And Snakewards was just a lyric I came up with and I didn’t know what to call the album for a while, and I just thought it was cool because it’s not a real word.

EH: It is now…

JG: Right… But then I realized they were both snakes and I had, like, a panic attack, like: “I do not necessarily want to be The Snake Guy—”

Laughter.

JG: But sometimes you’re just gonna do something and you’re not sure if it’s cringey or not, but it’s cooler to just do it regardless. And if you own it, I think it’s better than if you’re being too calculated about just being as cool as possible. So I just stuck with it—

Joe gets interrupted when Jason Shapiro comes around the corner!

JASON SHAPIRO: You guys were awesome!

Joe, Warren, Cormick, and Joaquin all say “thank you!” and “you too, man!”

JS: Thanks for havin’ me, it was fun—

JG: We’ll do it again soon—

JS: For sure—

JG: That was probably my favorite Jason Shapiro set. That banter tonight? Really, really good, your timing was genius—

JS: Thanks man! I played so many shows this month that I learned some stuff…

JG: You’re dialed—

JS: I’m a little bit dialed in, believe it or not—

JG: I believe it!

He walks away. Everyone says goodbye.

EH: Ummmm—

JG: We’re comin’ off the snakes question… and that’s all I have to say about that! I don’t know why it happened but it did!

CC: Is he gonna hat-trick it or is he not?

CR: One more snake!!!

JG: “Diamondback…”

JC: “Bellycrawler!”

CR: “Snake Eyes…”

JG: “Lucifer…”

Laughter. Joe nods.

JG: It is weird to have two as a theme and then like… I don’t know what the next one’s gonna be called—

JC: Just pick another critter, man.

.

***

EH: Ok, now here’s a classic topic that I’m sure all of you were expecting in some capacity, but let’s talk about the Chicago DIY scene. How did you get into it, how could other people get into it, how have you seen it change over the years?

JG & JC: You just have to go to shows! That’s all!

JG: And just be receptive to other people and what they’re doing—what you think is better than what you’re doing—without losing your ego 100%. Just be willing to recognize that you’re in the third biggest metropolitan area in the U.S. and there’s gonna be people that know what they’re doing more than you. Getting a big head about what you’re doing isn’t any better than just looking around and being like, “Ok, I’m gonna be myself but also acknowledge the correct way to achieve what you want to achieve,” y’know what I mean? It’s hard to be like, “I’m not really good enough yet” in music and beyond…

JC: I think the really interesting part of the question is how we’ve noticed things change, and I think—for me at least—before, it was all DePaul bands and it was friends-based, like, “we’re just all gonna do our own thing together,” and I don’t think people really want to do that as much… I think now we’re at the age where everyone has to get serious about their—OH MY GOD I’m still fucking bleeding everywhere—

We all look at their finger. Yep. It’s still fucking bleeding everywhere.

Overlapping exclamations of concern, disgust, and amusement:

JG: Did you cut it on the string…?

JC: Yeah, I did—

JG: That’s badass.

Jaoquin laughs. We move on:

EH: Obviously I’m looking at this as someone who’s been in the periphery of this for years and not someone really in it, playing shows, like you guys are… But I do feel like bands getting bigger, Bookclub going more Legit—and on the opposite end, other DIY venues like The Attic and The Society not throwing shows anymore—kinda changed the landscape for me, like the places I started going to in the first place are gone now… But a ton of new venues and bands are always popping up? I dunno, I guess I’m just curious how you’ve observed it.

JG: It’s a hard question—

EH: Sorry, it’s barely a question—

CC: It is a hard question… I think the Bookclub thing just made people think about their future differently, maybe… I mean, we all loved going there—we’ve definitely talked about this before—and maybe it’s literal or maybe it’s metaphorical, but us using that place as some, like, kid college scene, and it becoming something completely different from what we were interested in kinda forces you to grow up a little bit, and forces you to think about what to do with the music scene differently. But I also think we’ve all broadened our scope a little bit in terms of who we play with and what kind of shows… I dunno, I go to way different shows now than I did when I was in college.

EH: So I guess it’s all just a product of getting older more than anything else… We were ultimately all underage when we started going to shows, so the DIY spots were all we really had…

I sigh.

EH: And now we’re kinda old…

(Mind you, we’re all 20-24.)

JC: I just kinda feel like now people are into a lot of different things, so you can do whatever you want and people will usually show up for you. I’ve had a really simple experience in that way, I think. You go to shows, people are nice and you like all the same stuff, and then you go and make stuff together, y’know? It’s a tale as old as time. It’s beautiful. It’s fuckin’ beautiful.

EH: It is beautiful.

I turn to Warren.

EH: Well, you’re younger, right?

WG: I’m 20! I just got here!

EH: So you have a different perspective, for sure—

WG: I do! I mean, I saw my brother go from, like, college-indie-bands to getting involved with Lifeguard and Kai [Slater] and Horsegirl and stuff. I think it’s how it was for everybody, you can’t help but be a little inspired by it and a little intimidated by it.

EH: Do you feel like the goalpost has shifted at all?

WG: Yeah, a little bit—

CC: Warren, you’re definitely hanging out with a good group of people right now.

WG: Yeah! I dunno, I started going to shows that Joe would play and that’s how I met my bandmates from Receiver and I’m good friends with the people in Current Union too. There’s different subgroups of people but they’re all part of the same thing.

***

EH: Alright, we’re pushing 30 minutes…

JG: Yeah, let’s do one or two more, we still have to load out—

EH: Oh shit, you do! We can also wrap it up—

JG: No, no, we’re good—

EH: Ok, if you say so… Be honest, would it be super lame of me to be like, “What’s a question you wish you were asked?” You don’t even have to answer it, I could just put it in my pocket for something down the line…

A beat.

EH: You can say yes, it would be super lame—

JG: I don’t know… it’s not a bad question necessarily—

JC: I think the essence of it is, like, a final word thing—

EH: That’s kinda what I was going for…?

JG: Well, sometimes I feel like music journalism is pretty referential, like, a lot of comparison-based stuff, which makes sense because it’s the quickest way to describe something that already exists—which is totally fair—but I think it’s refreshing to be asked what you personally really like about music and what you take away from it and what inspires you, broader than just other bands… ‘Cuz I like a lot of other bands but I really like my own music, I’m trying to make stuff that I like.

EH: Like, “I wish this already existed so I’m going to make it exist—”

JG: Yeah. And you fall short sometimes, but that’s kinda the whole pursuit. You just keep going and keep trying to find newer sounds, and how you do it is always gonna be different from somebody else, so it’s, like, constantly entertaining. Usually it just starts with guitar, or maybe a lyric, but I’m at the point right now where I’m just trying to write good songs. I think in my next album I’m gonna try more guitar-layering stuff again and use some different production elements… like, get a piano on it—

Laughter. Nice piano callback.

***

EH: Alright, closing notes? Things you’re looking forward to? Bands you want to shout out?

CC: Thanks to Barreleye for hangin’ out with us for a week—

JG: Barreleye’s the best, they’re really great guys and fantastic musicians, put them on. They can’t play that much because Joe, the bass-guitar guy, he lives in London, so it’s hard for them to do shows—

JC: Current Union is great—

JG: Alga… Jason Shapiro… Oh, Sects! They just put out an album that’s really good, it’s, like, mathy-emo… Memory Card’s good too!

JC: Poolish—

JG: Answering Machines…We played with Glass-Beagle here last time, I thought they were really good, they deserve to be put on more—

JC: Opossums in Memphis! They were fuckin’ great!

EH: Thank you guys! This was fun! But I have to pee so badly—

I stop recording. They end up loading out an hour later than they were supposed to.

I told everyone to “LOOK LEFT!” Photo by Linnea Cheng ❤

You can listen to Snakewards everywhere, and you can catch Joe on tour with Sharp Pins (again) this June.
Out of the Weeds, It’s Badger Hunt | Interview

April 28th, 2026

Written by Shea Roney | Photo by Shannon McMahon

Instigating that old New York draw, once southern now NY-based Badger Hunt are a natural concoction of punk rock dirt and pop-soaked nourishments. Started as a solo project for Miles Lee Ellisor to collect songs on an old 4track, their debut LP Bullseyes & other Lucky Stuff was released back in 2025. Since then, Badger Hunt has gone through scenic routes of shifting genres, filling out a full country band to the latest two-piece power incantation with drummer Jamie McCarthy. Badger Hunt returned earlier this year with Full Moon in My Pocket, a performance of some old back pocket magic that bleeds with both sincerity and grit.

Full Moon was recorded last summer in Chicago with the help of friends Grace Bader Conrad & Kai Slater. After these songs were recorded, the album was set on the back burner as Lee Ellisor went off to Madrid to study for a semester. But what’s rooted with sharp pronunciations of formative noise and kinship obsessions, Badger Hunt leads with a gnarly bite. The sweet, lucid melodies that the duo invest their time in belly up to the choppy guitars and percussive movements of a punchy tambourine and potent refrains, allowing the excitement to linger long after its discovery. Full Moon in My Pocket never feels indebted to the bounds of its lo-fi tracking or the brevity of its pacing, but finds the duo pushing at the seams of their creative collaboration.

We got to ask Badger Hunt some questions about the project, putting the album on hold, music videos and the practice of archiving.

Badge Hunt consists of you two, Miles and Jamie, but this is only the latest configuration of the project’s journey. Starting as Miles’ solo project, then a four piece country band to the rock n roll duo we are talking to, tell me about the significance of the shifts this band has taken.

Miles: Okay, so the origins of Badger Hunt actually started around this time in late 2024 when I was feeling really stressed out with another band, and I wanted a little escape for myself to make songs and just have fun in doing so. It was just for me and I could write as short or silly or simple stuff as I wanted! At this time, I was also trying to get better at acoustic guitar and I began to learn about the wonders of stuff like the twelve-bar blues and John Fahey’s finger-plucking.

Jamie: It’s worth noting that at the time, early last year in 2025, both of our main bands actually broke up within a week of each other.

M: It was around then I learned about Bandcamp, and then I started hearing about this thing called a 4-track, and Jamie taught me how to use one. And then I was gifted one over winter break, thank you to my mother! The week before spring semester 2025, I recorded a bunch of songs, and it was really fun. I was releasing it solely for myself and I really felt very free in that. And then it was very natural that Jamie got involved, because he helped me with the 4-track, our old bands were always playing shows together, and Jamie was also always staying in my dorm because he was and is Shannon’s girlfriend! After releasing the record, I wanted to play a show with a full band so it kind of just turned into a country band. And Jamie, as the wonderful drummer he is, just ended up playing in it. What did you think about the country band part?

J: My band had broken up, and I had no other gigs. *Both laughing* It was natural. When you were like, “Oh, do you want to do this?” I was like, “Yes, yes, of course.” The country format was cool. I don’t think it fully got to mature in that form–we played like two shows, right?

M: Yeah, we played one in February 2025 for the release of the album and that was super fun, but it was scrappy for sure. And then we played one in April 2025 in Riverside Park for our Barnard friends of the Poetrees sphere, Ana Sofia and Penny. That was also super fun, but I definitely don’t think it did get to fully mature. We were still very much figuring it out. We ended up becoming the rock and roll thing we are now, because two of our members, who were freshmen, went home for the summer, and so it was just us two. I remember we were actually considering maybe becoming a punk band with our friend Rafer, we were talking a lot about Snõõper. But then I was like, “What if we just, you know, became two-piece with the songs we have now?” And then we did, and it’s been super fun. I think now the Badger Hunt duo is sort of matured, but I am sort of sometimes curious what it would have been like if we really have gotten our shit together with the country mode of it.

J: I mean, I don’t know, if we ever get sick of this, we could!

M: Bro, we can be like The Byrds, you know, when they released ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo’, and all of the sudden got super country. And it was because that guy Gram Parsons joined for just that album and then left. Afterwards they mostly stopped being as country… But yeah anyway, now we’re fully rock, punk, roll, stuff.

You recently released your latest album titled Full Moon in My Pocket. How did you two want to approach this album as a newly solidified force? What sort of things did you each bring to the table? Did you challenge each other at all in the process?

J: You brought pretty much all the songs, save one, to the table. I remember when we got together and started turning them into rock n roll songs, it came pretty naturally.

M: Yeah, it was surprisingly easier than I thought to take the songs from acoustic folk to punk/rock n roll/loud and fast. I think there’s that same sort of ethos between the two ends that makes it easy to translate the bones of the songs from one to the other. It’s all about the spirit!

J: Yeah, folk is like three chords and soft, and rock and roll is those three chords but hard.

M: And then we started doing a lot of little jam stuff during practice, especially as we were trying to get more comfortable playing with each other one-on-one. A lot of those jams ended up going on to the album, because we finished our other songs a lot faster than we thought we would when we were in Chicago recording them. So we’re like, “Fuck it. Let’s just add more!” Also, it’s so important to say that if I tried to record this album on my own, it would have sounded completely different. Jamie, in his drumming style, brought something special or maybe just crazy to the table.

J: When it’s just two people, weirdly, you have to do more and less at the same time as a drummer. You have to write more hooks as a drum part, but they can’t be so crazy that you forget to hold the beat down. You have to find a way to keep the beat, but also write a catchy part.

M: I feel like we have to think about that balance a lot. We were just trying to play ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’’ and at the end, with that little lick they play, if I were just to play it clean, it would completely gut the sound of the whole thing, and it would sound very empty because we’re working with just one guitar and no bass. So it’s definitely a balance where neither of us can get too crazy. A lot of times, simplicity really is best.

J: I remember when we were recording ‘Bullet’, there was a middle section where I was trying to be all jazzy and tripletty. And then I remember, I looked at Kai–

M: He was like scrolling on reels on his phone!

J: Yeah he was just curled up on the couch on his phone, only half present, and I asked him, “What do you think about this part?” And he just locked in. He said, “One of you has to hold it down.” I think about that sometimes. That was a good way to put it.

M: He made a reference to, um, was it The Gories?

J: Yeah!

M: Oh wait, um, did we challenge each other? I think yes.

J: I believe so.

M: I believe we challenged each other.

You put out some very unique and fun videos to correspond with this album, including the music video for “Be Yr Man”, shot 50% in Madrid and 50% in NYC, as well as the full album video. First, about “Be Yr Man”, Miles, you were studying abroad at that time in Madrid. What was that like for you, keeping that connection to the band across the ocean? Jamie, what sort of things from home in NYC did you make sure to include in the video?

M: We decided to really put everything on pause when I went to Madrid, especially because I’m a very busy bee sort of person who always has too much on their plate. So when I went to Madrid, I really tried to just chill. We recorded the album in August 2025 and initially I wanted to put it out in the fall, but Jamie convinced me to wait till the spring so we could have a proper release, which I’m glad we did.

J: I think that was the right call, but it was also hard or just awkward to grind all summer and finally come out the other end with fifteen recorded songs and then wait six months to release them.

M: I wouldn’t say the connection itself was too hard, we were just going about doing our own things. The hardest thing was just figuring out the song mixes with the four of us being in different time zones.

J: Yeah Miles in Madrid, me in New York, and Grace and Kai in Chicago.

M: Crazy! And we’re all very busy people all the time. So we that was difficult, but it all worked out in the end.

J: Shoutout Grace and Kai.

M: Yeah, major shouts. But yeah, by the time I got back to New York in December, I was just really feral for an amp and drums. I was really excited to pick it all back up and start going again.

J: As for the New York video, our friend Darlene did the New York part. We just got some friends together and hung out and walked around and did silly things and we pulled up on Silas Five at his work to film him hopping around.

M: We tried to make a plan before–

J: The plan was just vaguely like–

M: Go get pizza, go find flowers–

J: Oh yeah we wanted to alternate between each city with the lyrics.

M: We made a storyboard, it was actually a couple pages long! And it was just like, “You get these shots, I get these shots, and then we both just get miscellaneous hanging out and dancing and partying.” Some of the transitions worked really well, and then some of them, well, made no sense. And it was just kind of funny, because it was like, “What the hell are we watching?” Also Jake Henkel and Zoe Avraamides filmed the Madrid part.

As for the full album video, I feel it’s the perfect visual for Full Moon in My Pocket. Did you put any plan into what you wanted to do, or was it just camera rolling? Was it hard to keep moving for that long?

M: I had an idea, and I told Shannon and Jamie something like, “Guys, instead of just putting the album on YouTube, we should totally just have a camera rolling and play the album, and dance for 30 minutes straight.” And they were just like, “Okay… Sure…”

J: It should be noted that that video was filmed after midnight, and it was my worst day ever, and it was the day before we needed to have everything ready for the release.

M: Yeah it was crazy. I remember I was so tired and brain dead, and then I ate Cane’s and I was like “OK. I’m ready to dance.” And at the same time, we had friends in the other room helping make our buttons for us, which was really kind. But anyway, Shannon brought her camera and we just set it up in my room. We actually didn’t have any plan for what we would do–

J: And I think you can tell. *laughing* But it was really fun.

M: It was hard to keep moving for that long, but it was also just hard to think of stuff to do. I ended up just looking around and finding objects to pick up and play with, like the Cane’s arnold palmer, umbrella, hats, acoustic guitar, books, Walkman, a whole lantern. We were just messing around. And it really was a one take thing. The only reason why there’s a stop in the middle is because Shannon wanted to stop the camera so we didn’t accidentally lose footage. So she just stopped it and started it again immediately.

J: It was just very like, “Alright, we’re gonna do this thing,” and then we did it. And then it was like, “Alright, we did the thing.” Lol.

M: We were just having a giggle fest the whole time. I don’t think there was much time I wasn’t laughing or talking in that video. I think it was because we were sleep deprived.

J: Yeah there was an element of hysteria in there…

Miles, in the past, you have put together two compilations called Free Noise, which were recordings from open mic events that you helped put together that featured performances by trans, queer & non-binary artists. Tell me about these events and what they mean to you as an artist, a documentor and a fan of music and community in general.

M: Well, I volunteer at the Interference Archive, which is a horizontally-organized, all-volunteer, open-stacks archive in Park Slope. It’s full of donated print material from all around the world going decades and decades back, and it’s all related to social movements and generally radical organizing. The volunteers also put on events, and what I put on is Free Noise. And we actually just had the third one, and that was a great time. But just with all the disheartening, horrible things going on in this country, especially all the incessant political attacks against trans people, it feels important to have somewhere where we can just have fun and enjoy each other’s presence and art and community for an evening. There’s something so beautiful about that. When there’s a bunch of people that are going through the same struggles all sitting in a room together and sharing things that bring them joy, it’s very uplifting. There’s always so much warmth in the room when we do these open mics, it feels like a respite, a relief, a little sanctuary for the time being. And actually Jamie played one.

J: I played the first one and it was the first time I played guitar in front of people. It was fun!

M: Yes! And doing the open mics is good practice for design, organizing, music tech, all sorts of things. Archiving is really important to me too, so I make sure to record all of them so that they go on Bandcamp afterward for free. It serves as a document that trans people will always exist forever and ever, as will their art. And here it is, and it’s so beautiful!!! Alright that’s all. Ready?

J: Yeah.

M: We’re Badger Hunt. Badger like the–

J: Animal.

M: Hunt like the–

J: Gun.

M: Rock n roll baby freedom of speech!

You can listen to Full Moon in My Pocket out now.