the ugly hug

Winter on Love, Lore, and the Art of Growing Up | Interview

October 17th, 2025
Samira Winter has always had a gift for turning daydreams into soundtracks, but on ‘Adult Romantix’ she sharpens her focus.

Now touring in support of the record, Winter’s live performances extend the record into something tangible, charged, and alive with feeling.

We caught up with the Brazilian-born, now NY-based artist to step into the album’s glow and talk about heartbreak, transformation, and how ‘Adult Romantix’ captures the strange, beautiful tension between falling in love and letting go.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Lucie Day (The Ugly Hug): This album is about a lot of different things – about leaving LA, about love, about walking away from something and how that’s good for you yet sad. I was really interested in the way in which you created kind of a mini movie out of all of these characters and all of this lore. How much of it is autobiographical versus fictionalized? Do you see yourself in these characters, or do they exist separate from you?

Samira Winter: I’d say in general with Winter, it is kind of an extension of me but it’s something beyond me. I do feel like with this album, there’s an interplay – even with the whole movie idea – of “what is fiction”? What’s stemming from a raw emotion or something that in my real life has happened, but then became something bigger through a song? Sometimes it’s just a very subtle thing that then gets expanded on. A lot of this album, I think, was a time capsule. I pulled a lot from the over a decade that I lived in LA. So there’s also a little bit of the fictional side too, I’d say, incorporating these people that I’ve met, these characters, this energy.

LD: Archetypes of people that you meet?

Samira Winter: There’s the LA “California slacker-stoner” character that’s a surfer, and this type of shoegaze that was very Californian. Years of just seeing bands and going to shows. I think it’s a mix of both, but I would say some of it is actually not biographical. Some of it is truly just incorporating different characters and playing them out.

LD: Pulling the parts that are you and the parts that play off of what is you and what’s not.

Samira Winter: Yeah, I would say it’s a very nuanced thing and it’s hard to really say this is this, and this is this, but I’d say it’s a mix of both and it’s kind of an interplay too. With the lore and the characters, when I was recording the album I had it as one of my goals to explore different voices. When the album finished – I used to have a harder time when I had to talk about the record or explain “What am I gonna write in my bio? What am I gonna tell people?” And so I preemptively, when this album finished, sat down in my house in Brazil over the holidays and wrote an essay. I wrote themes and motifs and a treatment of what a movie would be for the album. I just kind of kept writing and writing and writing, and that was a huge part of the process that ended up informing all of my decisions when it came to creating the visual world. And so in that essay I would be like, okay, there’s the friend group in “Misery”, there’s the couple from the album. It’s all these characters that all belong to this world. It feels really good to have been able to make that all happen in a visual sense as well.

LD: Love is clearly such a large presence within the record. Was that something you think that you were consciously experiencing during the making of the album? Or did making the album bring that to the surface? Did you set out to make a record that was so filled with love?

Samira Winter: I would say with the way I make records, I’m not really setting out. I’m very much subconsciously just making a lot of stuff over a long period of time. I like taking a couple of years to make an album and writing and recording at different times. I think for me it did kind of happen, but yeah. I went through a breakup, and then after the breakup had all sorts of nostalgic feelings. There’s definitely also a level of the album that is a bit darker. There is a doom to it.

LD: I know you’ve talked a lot about gothic influences on the record.

Samira Winter: There’s that side of it, but I think at the end of the day it just felt like when I was packing up and being a nomad I was capturing all the different feelings and things that were happening. When I started writing songs it was kind of as if it was a diary, so I think there’s a level to life experience that ends up inspiring me. But I definitely didn’t set out to make it about love. When we finished the record, I started piecing together the dots that connected and the throughline. I liked the idea of adult romantics and pondering these things because I grew up in the 90s. Watching so many rom-coms and having so many fantasies ingrained in my head and taking everything with a grain of salt. Being like: What is fantasy? How far can you go with a crush? What are these different bounds of the platonic and the romantic?

LD: The album does feel like there’s a light and a dark- falling in love while saying goodbye, leaving something behind to move forward. In that context, do you see the album more as a record about transition or about acceptance?

Samira Winter: I’d say it’s both.

LD: I know that’s a really hard question!

Samira Winter: I wrote it in a transitory state.

LD: So that colors it.

Samira Winter: Yeah, that definitely colored it. But I think in a way, finishing it and releasing it into the world led to an acceptance because I felt like after releasing this album I’d been fully able to close the door to the past of my LA life. I’m a believer that it’s important to release music that you feel really crazy about, and that you feel really excited about. It’s important to release it because it completes the cycle. I think releasing the actual album, you know how people say it’s not mine anymore? You release it to the ether. So I feel like I’ve been truly, truly able to let go.

LD: You’ve said that writing these songs and then thinking about performing them was scary, because they were so vulnerable and intense. Now that you’ve been actually performing them, how has that been?

Samira Winter: I think it’s been getting easier now. The very first practice where I had to play “Just Like A Flower”, I had so many butterflies in my stomach. With all the songs. We’ve been on tour for about two weeks now, I think now it’s just an excitement. And yeah, it’s been really fun to play the new songs.

LD: I love that line in “Just Like a Flower”: “all a girl could want is a girl friend”.

Samira Winter: I love that line too! It’s true, and it’s really not talked about enough. All of the songs that I’ve written that have a girl theme or a girl character like “Just Like A Flower”, “The Lonely Girl”, and “Sunday”, I still get chills when I play them. It just touches my soul. It hits in like a… I don’t know. I think it’s something that people can really identify with.

LD: Speaking of throughlines, Portuguese has always been a throughline in your work. Do you think that there are other things in addition to that that have stayed consistent through all the work that you’ve made and things that you find comfort within as anchors within the making of something new?

Samira Winter: Yeah, I think with Winter I’ve been able to explore different things and some of those things I’ve explored I’ve kept in my palette. I’d say a lot of the throughline is this girl character that’s an extension of me, and it’s like seeing the world through the lens of a dream language. I think there’s definitely a lot of the daydreamer archetype in Winter, of this act of trying to stay in touch with a sense of purity and a certain type of innocence. I’m always kind of in search of streamlining and perfecting the dream pop, shoegaze – I don’t want to add a ton of genres, but the language of Winter and finding the unique way that I can keep moving it forward.

LD: You’ve talked about all of these movies as your inspiration. Out of all the ones (10 Things I Hate About You, Kids, Gregg Araki films), what movie do you think that Winter as a character would fit the best in?

Samira Winter: The thing is, every record that is Winter is a slightly different character. I think I’ve really gotten better at honing in my concepts and finding that clarity. For ‘What Kind of Blue’, that character is this French girl named Juliet Blue. ‘Adult Romantix’ is this couple. There isn’t actually a movie that exists that’s perfectly ‘Adult Romantix’, which I guess makes sense because I created it. Yeah, that’s a cool thing for me to kind of chew on- where it fits in. If I had more resources, time, and money, I would make the movie. You never know- in 20 years, who knows what’s gonna happen? [The process] is really for me. It’s way more satisfying than it just being me. I love having this thing beyond myself as a muse, you know? When it becomes more than you in a project. I think art is beyond you. Maybe not at first, but it becomes its own being. I do think it’s like something in the ether that comes through you, and you are the filter.

Check out more photos of Winter live in Salt Lake City.
You can listen to Adult Romantix anywhere you find your music as well as on vinyl, CD and cassette via Winspear.

Photos and Interview by Lucile Day
Talulah’s Tape by Good Flying Birds |Album Review

October 16th, 2025

‘Talulah’s Tape’ is a swirling tapestry of trebly pop demos that conjures the best of Midwestern suburbia and its bubble gum-tinted memories of adolescence. It sounds like recess fourth downs—where strategy boils down to “Go out long,” like little fingers caked in loamy dirt searching for roly-polies, like popped driveway tar bubbles, and dreadful school hot lunches. It’s a record that hisses, shakes, and nervously asks to dance. It is the sound of youth; it is the sound of the youth beat.

The Indianapolis music collective formerly known as ‘Talulah God’ offers forty-five minutes of beautiful twee pop songs on their debut record. The record, ‘Talulah’s Tape,’ is a collection of sixteen warm 4-track demos recorded by the band over a four-year period (2021-2024). Despite the record finding its origins in scattered demos, it never feels desultory. Every song and every non-sequitur feels perfectly necessary and is sewn in a way that simply makes sense. Each part fits the technicolor whole; it exists as a series of frames that, when run together, create a coherent and honest picture.

The record begins with ‘Down on Me,’ a charming gem of a pop song fit for a tween coming-of-age film. The guitar is jangly, and the harmonies and melody are delicate. The lyrics are fragile and earnest, projecting a distinct sense of longing—a theme throughout the record. Despite this, the instrumentation and melody draw warmth; it sounds like the first breath of sun coloring the sky’s uniform of TV-grey. ‘Wallace,’ another standout track, finds the Good Flying Birds turning the gain up on their amps for a fuzzy, driving number that demands attention. ‘Every Day Is Another’ is a beautifully delicate love song that separates itself from the rest of the tape by featuring a drum machine as opposed to acoustic drums. This works beautifully for such a fragile number that elicits the more anxious moments and pitfalls of coming of age. The lyrics read like a diary entry, or the words you’d wish you could write in your crush’s yearbook.

In between the earnest tracks exist many sound bites, which keep the listener on their toes and give the record a distinctly fresh and modern edge. “Bruh,” Spongebob clips, and various other comedic sound bites read like a Gen-Z brain-rotted Robert Pollard, and I’m absolutely certain that the listener, like I, will be 100% here for it. The songs dance between echoes of ‘Guided by Voices’ in the catchy choruses and treble, the candy-coated shimmer of ‘The Pastels,’ and Glasgow’s twee pop scene.

‘Talulah’s Tape’ is a beautifully earnest and well-crafted record. It sounds like the soundtrack to a tween coming-of-age film you watch and love, then forget about for twenty years until a rainy afternoon matinee with your family reminds you of just how good that soundtrack was. If this is the future of the Indiana music scene, it makes me not so hesitant to want to come home on breaks. The young vignettes that I’ve assigned to the candy-colored melodies are ones I wish I could live in forever—little popped tar bubbles I’d gladly occupy. I adore this record, I adore ‘The Good Flying Birds,’ and I cannot wait to see what they do next.

Talulah’s Tape was originally released on Rotten Apple in 2025. It is set to be reissued October 17. You can preorder Talulah’s Tape now one vinyl, CD and cassette.

Written by Jack Massucci
bloodsports: A Conversation About Conversational Music | Interview

October 16th, 2025

I met the members of Bloodsports at a Williamsburg bar last week in close proximity to their practice space – a location I am told is laced with band lore. I have no doubt that that’s true, nor do I doubt they could accrue lore at just about any bar they visit more than once. Five minutes and two mild french fry custody disputes into our conversation, I attempted to piece together the origins of their friendships, swimming in fragmented context and references to time spent in Denver and attending High School in Texas. I ultimately ask, but how they met and how long they have known each other is more or less fluff to what was the most crucial takeaway from our conversation. Whether the four piece are praising one another’s life altering music recommendations or rehashing heated contentions surrounding the use of an organ, the interpersonal relationships fostered by the members of bloodsports are well beyond the minimum threshold of closeness required to play instruments in sync.

Beyond being an endearing thing to witness as someone sitting in on pre-practice beers, the comfortability that exists within bloodsports is fundamental to what makes their music so compelling. It may seem melodramatic for me to ramble about trust in a piece about an indie band – as if they are engaging in an activity as high stakes as their namesake might suggest, but it is through this trust that their debut record manages such an emotional toil. You can point to moments of sheer chaos and total ‘pots and pans’ banging levels of corrosive noise, and you can attempt to credit them for the intensity of their music. The truth is, these bouts would be nothing without the band’s disciplined and drawn out moments of sonic austerity. They put equal emphasis on wielding the grace of four ballerinas as they do the raucous commotion of some early 2000’s scramz band. Whichever extreme they are in, or not in, they do so in sync – teasing tranquility only to decay it moments later and leaving their listener hooked in a space of liminal unease.

I heard bloodsports live before I heard their recorded music. They had been opening for MX Lonely sometime late last year – a time when I was still fleshing out some sort of understanding of Brooklyn’s bottomless supply of bands and often found myself lurking in the right back corner of Trans-Pecos with absolutely no context. And while I admittedly harbor a soft spot for bands found blindly, cherishing the “oh so retro” nature of discovering something before my Instagram algorithm shoved it down my throat, bloodsports remains one of the most seizing sets I have ever experienced this way. It was beautiful and chilling, the kind of music that knocks the air out of you and quiets your brain, even if just for thirty minutes. When it feels like the only states a mind can exist in today are gross overstimulation and jaded apathy, those thirty minutes are worth a hell of a lot.

The bloodsports I saw last fall, and the bloodsports you will hear on Anything Can Be a Hammer, is Sam Murphy (guitar/vocals), Jeremy Mock (Guitar), Liv Eriksen (bass/vocals) and Scott Hale (drums). I mentioned that interpersonal context was less crucial than the weight of their relationships, but I will offer a Sparknotes version to the best of my ability. Liv and Jeremy have been friends (and creative collaborators) the longest – the two went to high school in Texas together, where they wrote a song about yearning for an ex partner to rear in their marijuana habit and performed it at Monkey Nest Coffee House (home to the best chocolate muffins in Austin). Jeremy met Sam whilst they were both attending college in Denver – the same city he briefly met Wesley Wolffe, (a founder of Good English, the indie label putting out Anything Can Be A Hammer) who showed the earliest rendition of bloodsports to his then drummer, Scott. Scott was hooked, so hooked he managed to learn the earliest bloodsports songs on drums – which proved convenient when Jeremy and Sam moved to New York on a whim and decided to recruit members via Instagram Story. Liv and Scott more or less joined simultaneously (who actually joined first was a conversation left unsettled that night), and these additions occurred around the same time Sam and Jeremy’s Wayfair couch ruined Liv’s life.

The purpose of my prior anecdotal retreat was to emphasize the experiential ethos of bloodsports, which is just as present on Anything Can Be A Hammer as it has been every time the band gets on stage. It is the kind of record that seizes you wherever you choose to listen. It can raise hairs on your arm amidst sweltering temperatures on a crowded J train mid July, and it can trigger those tears you have been warding off for weeks while you search for Honey Nut Cheerios in a poorly lit Key Foods. Whatever reaction it might illicit for you is certainly not haphazard, given each track must pass a sort of poignancy litmus test; “I personally try to get into the headspace in practice where if I don’t feel something hitting me, then it probably is not going to hit live to an audience,” Sam explains of his approach to writing.

While Anything Can Be A Hammer bridges gaps between bloodsports’ current iteration and their available recorded discography, the band views the album (and the experience of recording it) as somewhat of a turning point for the project. “When we were putting this album together, we didn’t really know what we were going for. I think it feels like a jumping off point. I think what we are working on now and what we’re moving towards feels a lot bigger and more realized.” Jeremy says.

“I think the pressure and the whole ordeal of recording pushed us in the direction we are going now, which is definitely in the record,” Sam adds. “Especially the title track, which came together almost entirely in the studio. We are honing a lot more of a frenetic and crazy energy that still feels controlled, and I think we have found a place where we are all very comfortable collaboratively writing and putting things together.”

We recently sat down with bloodsports to discuss dynamics, the secrets to writing “edging music”, and Anything Can Be A Hammer, out tomorrow via Good English Records.

Manon: Tell me about your biggest individual influences

Scott: I’m kind of like all over the place. In terms of my drumming inspiration, I started out just learning classic rock songs. I loved John Bonham. But I think as I was becoming a real drummer, I was doing a lot of jazz and then also started playing in punk bands. Musically, my biggest inspirations are a lot of nineties post-hardcore bands, like Unwound. And just a lot of emo / post-hardcore drumming.

Jeremy: I think for this album, it kind of changed a bit. I was really into Swans’ Soundtracks for the Blind, and I wanted to throw that into the pot. I was really into Glenn Branca. Also, Women and Iceage are two of my all time favorite bands that I grew up listening to, and I think both of them made their way into my influences for this album. I feel like I have always worked with a lot of constraints when I made music – growing up I was really into Steve Albini and that whole approach of “oh, you just record something and then it’s live and then you don’t change it cause that’s inauthentic.” But with this album, there were a lot of third and fourth and fifth guitar parts, it was just a lot bigger. And I really tried to lean into that. It was also the first album that I have recorded in a proper studio, and that helped a lot.

Sam: Unwound is probably one of my favorite bands ever. That was definitely a reference point for me, especially vocally with a lot of the heavier sections and the screaming parts. I was listening to a lot of slowcore when writing the album. I love Women – Jeremy put me onto Women and it changed my life. Also a lot of post-punk

Liv: I guess early on, you know when you’re a kid and you just kinda listen to what your parents listen to and it takes a while to explore your own thing. I remember Bedhead was a really big record – my friend Reed showed me and I was like “oh, not everything is just Euro-pop like my mom likes”. So that was my first guitar music, and then he also put me on to (lint). I remember I had talked to Jeremy about that briefly in high school. The strokes were my end all be all then. Later, when I was in college, I got really into French Psych – where a lot of crazy bass lines come in. I didn’t play bass at all at that point, but that was the first time I actually noticed bass lines, because I had always been someone who focused more on vocals and melody. I had a friend who pushed me to pick up the bass when we would listen to that together. And definitely the classic 2000’s garage rock. That has always been my biggest influence and what I love the most. And then Jeremy and Sam put me onto Swans and Women and that was an absolute game changer – I was like “this is maybe the coolest music I have heard in my life.” Soundtracks for the Blind is easily one of my top three favorite albums of all time.

Manon: Anything Can Be A Hammer is heavier than your EP. I think one thing you do really well on this record is how you approach a more abrasive sound – you have a lot of great buildups, and then some tracks that are a bit more immediate. Can you tell me about how you honed that on this record, and perhaps how a prior bloodsports sound influenced it?

Sam: I think we wanted to focus a lot on dynamics rather than fitting as much as you can or how complex we can make the tracks. A lot of our builds are the same thing, just with dynamic ranges, which I think is really cool personally. With the heavier stuff, I think I wanted to have these slowcore-ish riffs, and just ruin them.

Liv: We do a lot of ruining. But in an intentional way.

Jeremy: Since the nineties, there has been a pretty solid relationship between slowcore and noise rock. Bands like Slint and Unwound. They are kind of one in the same.

Scott: Spiderland is one of my favorite records

Jeremy: Yeah I think an album like Spiderland, and a lot of the stuff I grew up listening to, still holds up today. I have always wanted to make music like that cause there is just so much possibility in it.

Scott: Having a push and pull keeps things interesting. I keep thinking about that one Hum song

(Liv and Sam): “Stars”

Scott: “Stars”. It starts out so fucking quiet and then it just goes

(Scott, Liv, Sam): *guitar shredding onomatopoeia*

Liv: I feel like that music sounds so much more conversational and human. It’s not just one complete thought, it stops and flows and there are things that add onto or take away from each other. I think all these guys do that really well when they’re writing parts – it sounds very conversational. I feel like I can speak for the band, maybe I can’t, but I enjoy listening to music that has that push and pull between heavy and soft, and I want to play in a band where the music is interesting rather than just riffing on one thought or idea for three minutes.

Jeremy: I also think what I like and what I want to do more of is music that just makes you wait for it for a little bit.

Sam: It’s edging music

Liv: Redact that

Sam: No keep that

Scott: Edging indie rock

Jeremy: Not get all meta about it or whatever, but we are in this age of short form everything. So I like making people wait a little bit more. Not that we don’t all consume vast amounts of brain rot daily.

Liv: Speak for yourself, kid.

Jeremy: We don’t even do it that crazy. A band like Swans will make you wait half an hour. We make you wait three minutes.

Liv: If even.

Jeremy: Yeah, if even. So it’s not really on the same level, but that is definitely where we draw inspiration from. Music that is not so immediate.

Liv: I also feel like a lot of it is written with performance in mind. You have to tap into the slow parts, and then you get so much more in the headspace for the louder release.

Scott: I like listening to everybody, the jazz drummer in me feels a requirement to listen to everything that is being played. But being able to be really dynamic, and have Liv make big eyes at me when I am playing a little too loud during practice. But that rocks, because it means we are all listening to each other.

Liv: That is also part of what makes it more conversational. When we play we really do face each other and interact with one another and I think that adds a lot.

Manon: I know Liv mentioned a lot of these songs being written with performance in mind. Were you able to also play a lot of these tracks prior to recording them? And if so, did that further shape them at all?

Liv: All of them, except the title track

Scott: We were basically playing the album for a year before we recorded it

Sam: I do think they have changed a lot. Just from playing them live, and then they changed a lot after we recorded them. With writing them with performance in mind, I personally try to get into the headspace in practice where if I don’t feel something hitting me, then it probably is not going to hit live to an audience.

Liv: I think we never shy away from making adjustments like, just ’cause the song’s finalized in the record. If you feel something can be added to like, why would we let that constrain moving forward?

Manon: Where did ‘Anything Can Be A Hammer’ come from?

Sam: The title predates the lyrics and the songs, I just walked past a sign in Soho that said ‘anything can be a hammer’ in a shop or something, and it really stuck with me for some reason. I was thinking about it for weeks, and I was like, “what does that mean?” But once you think about something for that long, it kind of takes on its own meaning, which I felt was similar to a lot of how I wrote the lyrics on the record. I write a lot without really having an idea in mind, then as I am writing I look at it and start to understand what I am trying to say.

Manon: You are putting this record out on Good English Records, which is a new label. I would love to hear about that decision and your experience with them.

Sam: Nick and Wesley came to us, well Wesley just texted me one day and said “I have a proposition for you.” And he explained they were starting a label and wanted to put out the record. We met with them and we were like “this is awesome, I want to put out a record with my friends.” They have been really great, it has been so much fun and they’ve been killing it.

Scott: As a whole, they’re both just super active in the scene, even outside of music – they’re good at building relationships and being good homies to everybody

Sam: and they have so many more friends than we do

Liv: They are genuine music fans, like it’s their lifeline. They love it so much.

Jeremy: They pooled money together to build it. Any really great indie label is built on a labor of love, and you’re doing it cause you are just stoked on what your friends are doing.

Scott: Who else would I want in my corner, pushing my band’s record, than my friends who came up to me after I played a show to like, 20 people and said “that shit was so good” or “that sounded better than the last time I saw you.” That whole team, Kenzie and Miles and everybody believes in the records they’re putting out. They believe in us. That shit rocks.

Jeremy: I play in Wesley’s band and I’ve known Wesley forever, it just feels very much like a partnership.

Scott: I’ve known Wesley since I was buying him beers and getting him into my college campus to practice. I’ll trust him with anything.

Written by Manon Bushong | Photo by Luke Ivanovich
Hill View #73 x ugly hug | Guest List vol. 79

October 15th, 2025

Every Wednesday, 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 Atlanta-based artist Awsaf Halim of the project Hill View #73.

There’s an odd moment, a newfound perspective when you lay down on your bedroom floor for the first time in a while, that opens the room up to new angles and possibilities. You might catch yourself thinking of those dust bunnies that live under your dresser forming an awesome jangle pop band, or finally noticing the fraying rug that’s caught your weight in crumbs over the years. The music that Awsaf writes under Hill View #73 is a safe space to revel in the entitlement of growing pains, holding on to those last bits of fallback daydreams as you play into these newfound angles. Hill View’s trajectory as a project, going from their sincerely raw and melodically tangible debut, Songs I Wrote Skipping Classes to 2024’s lush and dynamic night time is the grace period, offers a standout collection of bedroom tunes and found audio, a treasure trove of joy, love, fear and anxieties, the trials of fatigue and forgiveness, as Awsaf fills these tunes with grace and a voice of confidence that knows you’re not going to get it right all the time.

About the playlist, Awsaf shares;

These are songs I’ve been listening to for the past month or so. I tend to listen to a lot of music when I’m driving long commutes to school because it helps my mind wander outside of daily monotonous thinking. I love these songs in particular because to me, they’re all mostly “rock” songs which secretly have awesome songwriting. I also like when music is repetitive and leaves long spaces intentionally. It probes my brain and makes my mind happy.

Listen to the playlist HERE!

Watch this incredible Trash Tape summer tour compilation to the tune of “Apology” by Hill View #73. Video Edited by Eilee Centeno.

You can listen to Hill View #73 anywhere you find your music. You can also order a cassette of night time is the grace period from Trash Tape Records.

Written by Shea Roney | Photo Courtesy of Hill View #73
Slow Rock by Deadharrie | Album Review

October 13th, 2025

As Summer wrings out its final moments of heat, allowing for the subtleties of Fall to appear, Deadharrie introduces Slow Rock, one of two albums released just this year alone, on September 9th. William Harries, the name orchestrating the sound and image of Deadharrie, assembles a concept so candidly raw. Throughout the album, you’ll feel their disheveled demeanor peak through whichever digital veil you stream from. Enhanced by unsettling nostalgia and exciting experimentation, the Florida based artist offers a cohesive, yet daring, addition to their discography.

Hidden in the third slot of the track order is the album’s shining jewel: “New Creep.” We’re taken out of the stumbling rhythm found in the surrounding numbers, and pushed into a confrontation with the aggressive melody. Eventually overpowering the senses, “New Creep” uses its outstanding guitar solo and full volume to keep you under its influence. Where other areas of the album ease the listener, Deadharrie takes the liberty to feed a flame of rage and confusion in this piece.

“Nightshade” allows for a more introspective look, with lines like Beat to submission / Impatient mind / Lean on my family / When times are tough / Will love resolve me / Am I enough? The five minutes allotted to “Nightshade” paints Deadharrie to be the guide through a psychedelic night filled with reflection, regret, and curiosity. The hallucinogenic feeling rises as Deadharrie’s percussion shows the fun in freedom. Our trip is safely brought down by a shimmering lullaby-esque strum.

Introducing the album is “Alibi” in all its slow rock glory. Deadharrie sets the tone of the album with an intimate and relaxed voice–-the artist renders a space for the listener to feel clued in on something only they’re aware of. The secrecy behind the interaction between Deadharrie and the listener secures trust and comfortability. Immediately we’re familiar with the gentility of the soft pace, but eager to explore different sides of the artist. Which is shown in the contrasting track, “Fumble.” Electric strings instantly permeate your hearing and vision. All you see and feel is the effect of Deadharrie’s relationship with music. If “Alibi” is an introduction to their work, “Fumble” can be considered an introduction to the reason behind their work.

Harries approaches each track with creativity emboldened by reflective lyricism. On Deadharrie’s website, Harries mentions, “I really puke this stuff out in the best way. Songwriting feels a lot like throwing up.” Deadharrie’s alluring music production can be accredited to their unfiltered methods. Creating without thinking. Living without guessing. As precise and honest as the title itself, Slow Rock, Deadharrie exemplifies the transparency needed in music today.

You can listen to Slow Rock now anywhere you find your music.

Written by Milkomee Addisu
If You Can Hear Her, You Should Fear Her: “One of the Guys” by Zoë Pete Ford | Album Review

October 9th, 2025

Listeners may recognize Zoë Pete Ford from some such illuminated, genuinely killer acts as Friendly Company (drums and vocals) and Big Garden (drums, guitar, keys), both based in Brooklyn, NY. If so, forget that. “One of the Guys” is a sound entirely Ford’s own.

Fans of Suzi Quatro will quickly find that Ford blows straight past Suzi Cinco and turns up the VU knob to a blistering Suzi Diez. Which is not to say that “One of the Guys” is a faithful reimagination of any existing work. But that Ford picks up where The Anemic Boyfriends and Linda Manz in “Out of the Blue” left off and keeps the good work going – labor that demands strong shoulders. She’s got ‘em.

“One of the Guys” brims with songs about debauched bootleggers and cars with bad gas mileage. Ford arrives at some strange, sacred intersection that is at once playful and deadly serious. In return, listeners on the other side of the exchange are left drenched in cowboy perfume and desperate to believe that we are more than the sum of our urges. Assemble your most world-ragged friends, or a coupla wayfarers on a Wednesday – this one’s for audiences who are ideologically opposed to the nutrient shake. Ford has done the impossible by forging identity and tipping the scales in under an hour.

Any attempt to pigeonhole “One of the Guys” is to betray a dewy-eyed misunderstanding (or inability to understand) what the record is about. Zoë Pete Ford sings with a voice polite but not friendly. She has not come lightly to the wax. This is evidenced immediately by “Mint Juleps,” the opening track (and your reporter’s favorite on the record): “If you were a place you’d be a shopping mall. So scared to ever say a plain thing, wind up saying nothing at all. I might be Humphrey Bogart, but baby, you’re no Lauren Bacall. I wish I had a Ford Ranchero, wish I sang like Nat King Cole, wish I had a little money in my wallet. Sweatin this job that’s suckin my soul. I wanna drink mint juleps. I wanna play the leading role.” Our Holy Orator bites into every lyric with teeth like a waxy-eyed zen koan on speed. Ford has penned the breathless antidote to 2025’s influx of reactionary chickenshit fad muzak, dullsville and flabby (which, alack, has infiltrated even “the cool scenes” of America’s major cities). No modern bloat here, officer.

For the uninitiated, songs like Ford’s “Backseat Beauty Queen” may act as a guide into some altered way of living. (Your reporter has been lucky enough to walk the subterranean rock beside our Hero.) After a guitar lick straight out of “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” the tale begins, “Adam and Eve were seventeen. He was dealing coke and weed, she was his customer and backseat beauty queen […] on weeknights underneath the oak tree, the smoke and shadows of sex and nosebleeds.” Ford isn’t just an unassailably Cool Girl, she’s also a Master Storyteller – and, indeed, storytelling songs are sorely missing from today’s radio. Ford spins macabre yarns that the kids can dance to.

The record shines brightest in the moments where its authorial voice is at once man and woman, driver and passenger. “Over the Line” paints, “She’s equal parts ventriloquist, sorceress, and alchemist. She buys you drinks when you see her at the bar. Then she makes you hesitate when she racks the shots and makes you wait for the dozen other people she’s got in her pocket that night.” Caught your breath yet? “Saturn” confronts us with another American Gothic vignette: “He drives a hatchback Saturn, she doesn’t have a license. She told me, ‘Oh, he doesn’t mind driving me around town all the time. And besides, why would I get a license with Saturn by my side?’” The sense of becoming a victim of someone else’s fantasy. Once you get over it (or find some way to cope with it), nod tough and light a shag rollie (I checked and that’s what Zoë smokes. She also used to smoke Marlboros, if you can’t roll your own. I can’t). This writer dares you to put on “Mean Reds” (track seven) when your feet first hit the floor in the morning and watch how your internal ecosystem sharpens throughout the day, An off-balance but no-less-nourishing breakfast.

With “One of the Guys,” it takes Zoë Pete Ford just 29 minutes to convince listeners that “acting like you’ve never broken a pact before” is no way to live. How long does it take you?

You can listen to “One of the Guys” anywhere you find your music, as well as purchase them digitally on bandcamp.

Written by Autumn Swiers
Samuel Aaron & Glass-Beagle Share Double Single “Home Again / Storm Chaser” | Single & Music Video Premiere

October 9th, 2025

The irony isn’t lost on the listener that the title of one of Samuel Aaron and Glass-Beagle’s new double singles is called “Home Again,” which is aptly timed with the beginning of their collaborative tour this October and the subsequent music video for their two tracks. The Chicago-based artists will take to the heart of the Midwest this month, traveling to Iowa and Nebraska. Maybe in ways, this Midwestern excursion does encapsulate the idea of home if you shift your perspective slightly.

The music video showcases the collaborative nature and creation of these songs, which is evident throughout their duration, as Aaron takes the lead on the first, and Glass-Beagle is handed the baton on the second. “Home Again” details the sometimes isolating aspects of being home and wanting to escape it, but also the idealization of it despite the fact that it was previously stifling. It’s evident in lines like, “This time I’m on my own, and I don’t like the way I might like this. Always wanted to find a way to feel like I can carry myself home again.” The track soars into its second half with the repeating refrain, “Home is where it’s the hardest.”

These songs complement each other masterfully, transitioning into “Storm Chaser,” which is held together by brushed guitars and steel guitar. Glass-Beagle’s vocalist, Nathan Zurawski‘s plain-spoken vocal styling expresses the uncertainty of the song’s subject, detailing his need to allow them to be free, chase that storm, and maybe that love will come back in time. “And when the rain lets up at last, will our love be gone? Will you have a storm to chase when the highway lights turn on?”

You can watch Samuel Aaron and Glass-Beagle’s new music video for “Home Again / Storm Chaser”.

You can listen to the split single now on bandcamp. Catch Samuel Aaron and Glass-Beagle on their mini-Midwest tour. Find dates here.

Written by Helen Howard
Morgan Powers x ugly hug | Guest List vol. 77

October 8th, 2025

Every Wednesday, 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 Chicago-based artist Morgan Powers.

Amongst natural progressions, Morgan’s music stirs ever so lightly, pumping blood from the heart to the limbs that have been still for so long. It’s in that grace period, the tingling rush of nerves and the movement still too numb to locate, where Morgan’s words become the most reflective, the most fulfilling in these stories of growing older. Leaning into light patterns, rich guitars and melodic intuition, sonically these tunes are gentle, yet still unpredictable, like watching a bug crawl across your arm. As its little legs barley tickle, it’s a moment that feels stuck in time, one of intimacy, curiosity and newfound discovery as you examine the bug’s very nature, cherishing this rare time together and honored that it chose you at all in this big old world. Morgan’s songwriter preserves this feeling of content, the candidness in admiring the simple and reflecting on what makes life so beautiful amongst all the mess.

About the playlist, Morgan shares;

i was thinking about when you’re at a party and it’s getting late in the night and things have sort of settled down, or settled in rather, no one is going anywhere soon. The lights are low, you’re having a wine probably. People have sort of spread out, clustered around the room, into the next, many conversations being held. the music ties everyone together though and even from the other room you know all these people you love are enjoying it in their own way too. There’s a warmth to all these songs, something optimistic. Many romantic, if only for it being nighttime.

You can listen to Morgan’s playlist HERE!

You can listen to Morgan’s music anywhere you find your music.

Written by Shea Roney | Photo by Malcolm Riordan
Big Hug Volume Three | Compilation

October 3rd, 2025
Today, Big Hug is sharing the third edition to their completion series, Big Hug Volume Three. This compilation series was started by Sam Wiesenthal back in 2023 as a way to bring friends and the music community closer together for an important cause. In a recent interview we did with Sam, they said, “I often feel really hopeless with the state of the world and am not sure where to put my efforts. Organizing and releasing albums is what I know how to do and so creating a comp series where I could use that skill for better was the driving concept behind the series.”

Volume Three consists of 16 tracks from artists such as villagerrr, sister., Aunt Katrina, Asher White, Dan English, Scarlet Rae, Michael Cormier-O’Leary, Robber Robber and many more.

All proceeds from Big Hug Records Volume Three go towards New Alternatives – a space based in NYC that helps transgender homeless youth and young adults transition out of the shelter system. They set people up with weekly case management, education services, life skills training, community-building recreational activities, opportunities for self-expression, and offer programs for HIV+ youth as well.

Big Hug will only be released on Bandcamp and comes alongside a limited run of CDs.

The setlist for this comp features;
1. “Keep It” – Asher White
2. “Save the Beat” – Aunt Katrina
3. “Petty Crimes” – D.A. Crimson
4. “Lullaby” – Dan English
5. “Look in 2 my face” – Dirt Buyer
6. “Wait Up” – find my friends
7. “Arriving Into (Demo)” – Margaux
8. “Staring (Demo)” – Michael Cormier-O’Leary
9. “Bar Italia (cover)” – My Wonderful Boyfriend
10. “Said and Gone (demo)” – Robber Robber
11. “Grip on a Thought (demo)” – Scarlet Rae
12. “Hummer” – Seylu
13. “Spies” – sister.
14. “10¢ for a Ticket” – Starcleaner Reunion
15. “Go Go Gangster” – Userband
16. “Weight of the World” – villagerrr
You can purchase Big Hug Volume Three on Bandcamp now both digitally or on a limited-edition CD, with all proceeds going towards New Alternatives.
Sleeper’s Bell: Clover, isn’t about being special, it’s about having only three leaves | Album review

October 2nd, 2025

I’m sitting here, writing this review after running into an old friend at the Logan Square train stop, remembering and examining the guilt and embarrassment I feel for what happened to this friendship I stopped cultivating. We planned to meet up over coffee this coming weekend: there is hope. Clover, an album that explores the experience of being an exactly real person, a “three-leaf clover,” and all the remorse, regret, and quiet weight of simply existing, taps directly into those same gnawing emotions. It reminded me of what it means to acknowledge your simpleness, to be human, and to sit in it — the good and the bad soup of it all.

Released this past February, Clover, the debut album from Chicago’s beloved Sleeper’s Bell, feels like a diary being read aloud. But done in such a way that you start to wonder if it’s your own, the one you keep in your sock drawer. With poetically simple and realistic lyrics like “I exist” (“Bored”) and “We watched the Triple A guy take his cables and jump the engine” (“Phone Call”), Blaine Teppema sounds like she’s speaking directly to you.

The songs pull you into a world that just makes sense. Clover doesn’t draw a line between the band’s world and yours. Instead, the artistry anchors both in something more collective: the beautiful ordinariness of real life. Listening to Clover doesn’t feel like stepping into someone else’s story. Instead, it feels like being gently reminded of the unified human landscape in which we are all growing.

Musically, the addition of saxophone to the usual trio of guitar, piano, and drums adds a deeper, more complex mood. Tempos and temperament change throughout the album, and Teppema’s sharp, clear vocals cut through the instrumentation with a directness that makes you pay attention. The “jam” bridges create atmospheric space that’s almost like the author is thinking about what to tell next, as if it’s happening in real time.

Played by Teppema, Evan Green, and other bandmates Leo Paterniti, Jack Henery, Gabe Bostick, and Max Subar, playing together feels spontaneous, carefree, while maintaining clear, intentional musicianship. Sleeper’s Bell plays with arpeggios, ambient noise, bass-heavy build-ups, cheerful melodies, distortion, and even touches of jazz, like a child building with Legos, unafraid to mix pieces that don’t traditionally fit. Clover leans folk at its core, but it’s this sense of curiosity and craft that sets the band apart in a saturated musical landscape.

Clover feels youthful, not in a naive way, but in a way that feels familiar and lived-in. It’s introspective and honest, filled with the kind of self-awareness that only comes with personal growth. The track “Over” captures the feeling of moving through an emotional numbness; its steady, chugging guitar strumming mirrors that sense of pushing forward despite emptiness. The lyric “but I’m just a three-leaf clover” carries a quiet resignation, a sense of being let down by the ordinary, yet learning to accept it.

In contrast, “Road Song” uses dissonant chords and a faster, skippy rhythm to convey a different kind of motion: one that feels restless and searching. It’s about trying to reach a place that may not exist, but holding on to the idea that it could.

Clover doesn’t beg to be heard. It just kind of sits with you, like a quiet thought you didn’t realize you needed to say out loud. It’s not trying to solve anything, but it does make you feel a little less alone in the figuring-it-out part.

Sleeper’s Bell has made their debut album, something that feels deeply personal but not isolating — a moment shared, like running into someone you thought was long gone and realizing you’ve changed and so have they.

Clover is for the in-between weird times, like growing up while staying the same, feeling anger with embarrassment, having regrets while fostering renewal. It reminded me that even in the human mess, there’s value in just existing through it.

Maybe that’s what being a three-leaf clover is about.

You can listen to Clover anywhere you find your music as well as purchase it on vinyl and cassette.

Written by Lauren Kenyon