“Love Is Listening,” and Other Lessons Mipso Has Learned Over 10+ Years Together

Mipso’s new album, Book of Fools, pushes and pulls away from and toward the band’s sense of home, musically and geographically. There is a kinetic energy in this collaboration that is only achieved from years (10, to be precise) of hard-won work and the evolution of four people who choose each other. Though their sonic palate has shifted from earlier folk and bluegrass influences, this is less of a sea change and more a showcase of transformation and exploration amongst a group that has purposely allowed itself the space to shift. 

Speaking with members Wood Robinson, Libby Rodenbough, Jacob Sharp, and Joseph Terrell is a fresh reminder that a band, no matter how harmonious their music may be, consists of individual humans with their own needs, their own ideas of home, and their own personal evolutions. Bands that survive and thrive through the grueling work of creation to commerce are those that carve out the space for people to move and change and shapeshift. 

BGS reached Wood and Jacob via Zoom in their homes – in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, respectively – and some days later spoke with Libby and Joseph on the phone from a van in Virginia at the start of their tour.

BGS: You all clearly have so much reverence for North Carolina as home base but you’ve also shifted around a lot, geographically. How have the changes of being rooted in one place, but then shifting around affected the music and how you operate as a band?

Jacob Sharp: There was a moment there where we all intentionally spread all across the country, all four in different locations. But the Triangle is home. Almost always, even when tours don’t start in the Southeast, we meet there to regroup and rehearse before we hit the road. And it is pretty obvious that whether we are there or not, North Carolina is the centerpiece spiritually and musically, too. We look behind and see our music and a lot of our search over the first couple of albums was peeling back the layers of what we thought we were supposed to be, being from North Carolina and playing acoustic instruments. Since then it has been about taking away things and adding things that actually feel more like us. These last two albums especially feel like we are honing in on that side of it. What is the North Carolina that we are a product of and that we hope we are creating? What is the new North Carolina? It is less about reinterpreting the past. 

Wood Robinson: Life kind of inevitably draws you away from the place you are originally from, where you identify as your home. Even though I live in Utah and Jacob lives in California, we still feel like North Carolina is the home that will always be home. Fortunately for me, I still get to go home about six times a year. But spreading out doesn’t make our logistical lives easier. 

Joseph Terrell: It’s frustrating. I wish we lived in the same place. We’d be able to play more. We’d be able to write and practice more. But what it has given us is the ability to take time and get together really seriously and for it to feel like summer camp when writing or touring. 

Libby, particularly with the song “East” off this record, I was thinking about this question and how that plays into it. How have the geographical shifts affected the music for you?

Libby Rodenbough: What’s important about the geographical changes is less about where anyone went and more that we’ve had some separation in our personal lives, which has certainly been useful, but logistically complicated. Getting together for tours or during COVID was pretty difficult. In terms of what the overall course of our lives has been over the last decade, it was pretty important that we feel like our lives can have twists and turns and changes and that the band could accommodate that. Symbolically, what it means is just as important as the actual physical space between us. 

Jacob, I had the pleasure of speaking with you earlier in the year for BGS to talk about the state of touring in 2023. I wanted to hear from you all about any differences you foresee in touring this new record from past record cycles, or if you feel like it is going to be similar. 

WR: We haven’t done more than 10 days at a time on the road in about a year and a half. We are all very excited about it. Before then, we had all reached a point where it just felt like going to work. Which is fine, most people do it every day, but this new tour is really exciting. We are playing a lot of really cool rooms. And for the first time in a long time, we are really trying to be intentional about every little thing. Artistically it is really exciting. Logistically, not much has changed. It is still going to be difficult. It is still going to be trying on relationships like it always has been. And there is no panacea for making it work financially other than the grind but you do all of it in spite of those realities. You find a way. 

JS: It is funny, because I can imagine ways for touring to be easier, but I can’t imagine doing it because it wouldn’t feel right ethically or artistically. There was a while when we weren’t really aware we were making all those decisions for the same reasons when we were saying “No” to certain things, or looking in a different direction than what was being presented as the high growth strategy. Now it is very clear to us what we are willing to do and what we are not willing to do. 

JT: I just had some boiled peanuts from a gas station in Virginia.

LR: So basically nothing has changed. 

One thing that is different for us is that we are doing an acoustic pre-show event where people can pay extra money and spend more personal time with us. We’ve been noticing a lot of bands doing this and I think it is mainly because it has been harder and riskier, post-COVID, to tour. Not that tours were ever not risky. It is to pad out the tour budgets, but we are looking forward to it because it is giving more personal contact to the touring experience and helps us to feel like we are doing something new and alive every night. When you only just leave the green room to go to the stage and back again, it can be harder for it to feel that way.

JT: It is really hitting home for me more in the past couple of years that this system of touring and music making and profit generation around music is fundamentally not designed to benefit the artists. Our very first album release show in October of 2013 was, to this day, the most physical media we ever sold at a show. It didn’t make us a ton of money, but it paid for the record. It was easy to see; you make a thing that people want and they come and buy it and they have a good time together and that’s part of how you do it again. We paid ourselves back. It is so much more difficult to do that now. 

LR: It is true on a general, larger scale, culturally, that everyone deserves to be able to live in the richest country in the history of the world. It’s logically obvious that that is possible. I’m not trying to propose an alternative economy myself, but it is obvious that we could do what we are doing and be comfortable and everyone could and should. That’s morally true.

There is a palpable sonic evolution on this record. What are some of your current influences as a band or as individuals (that can mean musical, literary, visual arts) that played into the shift?

WR: All of us are kind of obsessed with Kim Stanley Robinson. He’s the most important science fiction author of our time. He is not only dystopian but he also is very utopian within his visualizations of the future. You have to see the bad in the world we see today while simultaneously imagining how it can be infinitely better. 

Right, otherwise what’s it for?

WR: And I think the process of making music is inherently hopeful. You have to find the light at the end of the tunnel. 

JS: We all really like Big Thief and take a lot of comfort in how they eschew the industry and the model. It hasn’t cost them anything on the success side. That’s definitely a band whose music and the way they center themselves ethically within their career, we really look up to them. 

LR: Another book that I’ve been thinking a lot about for the last three years is The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It is a review of the last decade or so of advancements in understanding early human civilizations. It is a very hopeful book. It is a great time in history to be cynical, but that book allows you zoom out and remember the truth, which is that the things that are fucked up about now are not necessary or essential to human life. And it could work in a totally different way in the future and that’s really essential to believe. I would say that was an influence on some of the songs I wrote for this record, like “The Numbers” and “Book of Fools.” 

JT: I’ve been thinking a lot about the feeling of playing together when something is really happening, not when you are just reciting your line but when something emergent and effervescent is taking place. In the last year or so I’ve been heavy into The Band, The Fairport Convention, and The Grateful Dead. Those are some bands that do this beautiful dance of communication on stage. 


You’ve just passed the decade mark of being a band this last year. And this is in an age when so many bands fall apart because of the economic realities of music or interpersonal relationships, the extreme hardships of touring… What is the glue that keeps you together, or if you want to frame it this way, what advice would you give to bands that haven’t been around for a decade?

JS: We are acutely aware of how hard it is right now to keep it on the rails. It is something that we talk about. It is a part of the ride. We’ve made some mistakes, but the one thing that hasn’t been a mistake is that we are always willing to slow down to make room for how someone has changed and how you need time to understand that. To have ignored it would have been the end. It is crazy that we get to do this. Four really good friends continuing to find ways to share our music with each other and then to share it with this global community that we’ve built. It is so wild that it exists.

WR: I think that also, you have a limited number of years of being “Yes men.” Every “Yes” is at a cost. My worst days on the road have always been ones that end in a show where I’m not thinking about the music I’m making. And if everything else in life is getting in the way of the main thing that you are supposed to have absolute, unbridled joy in doing, then it is worth re-evaluating. I think we are at a high point now of really being able to cherish those moments together. 

LR: Just like in any kind of relationship, there are certain rewards that you can only experience after years and years and years go by. I remember reading this Joni Mitchell quote about why she likes to have long-term relationships as opposed to an endless string of short affairs. She talks about how falling in love at the onset is more about falling in love with yourself. But as time goes on, you learn to actually love another person. Loving another person is a long-term pursuit, foundationally.

The work of the four of us loving each other has been some of the hardest work of my life and then some of the most rewarding. There is a lot of freedom in quitting things. Growing up I felt a pressure to never quit. That was a bad thing because it made it harder for me to understand my own internal compass. I think people should leave situations that are causing them harm, for sure. But another equal and different truth is that if you can find a way to still have enough space for yourself, working alongside people long-term is a beautiful possibility in life that not everybody gets to do. 

JT: The main ingredient of love is listening and it has made me a better person to listen to these friends of mine for a long time. That is also what I love about being on stage with people that I know so well. All of us have lived a decade of huge changes in our lives. It’s one of the best things you can do with your life and the hours of the day, is to listen to somebody else. 

(Editor’s Note: Continue your exploration of our Artist of the Month, Mipso, here.)


Photo Credit: Calli Westra

LISTEN: Hallie Spoor, “Julia”

Artist: Hallie Spoor
Hometown: Denver, Colorado
Song: “Julia”
Album: Heart Like Thunder
Release Date: August 22, 2023 (single); October 17, 2023 (album)

In Their Words: “‘Julia’ is the first song I wrote for what would eventually (three full years later) become a new record, Heart Like Thunder. I had just seen a Bonny Light Horseman show at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, NY, and was very inspired by the performance. Their music has a grounded and natural energy, and that was how I approached writing the song that evolved into ‘Julia.’

“‘Julia’ is a strophic song – meaning it’s a very simple, three-verse format that is a tad unusual to the way I typically approach songwriting. (Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) But I think the simplicity of the form is what allows the story to shine. ‘Julia’ is about losing your lover to their best friend. In real life, we humans can be jealous bitter creatures, but in art we get to be wise and soulful. ‘Julia’ ultimately is about forgiveness – and I hope that feeling of peace is what the listener takes away.” – Hallie Spoor


Photo Credit: Sierra Voss

MIXTAPE: The Musical Inspirations Behind Darlingside’s New Album

Our past albums were written very collaboratively and we sang together almost all the time, whether in harmony or unison, trying to create a unified voice where individuals were difficult to pinpoint. For our new album Everything Is Alive, we made a conscious effort to let the individual voices and minds of our four singers/writers show through. Here are some of the recorded songs by other artists that inspired us in writing and producing the album, to give you (and maybe each other?) a sense of where we were coming from and who to blame if you don’t enjoy the results! – Darlingside

“Cecilia” – Simon & Garfunkel

I enjoy how the energy of this song comes from snaps, claps, and non-traditional-drum-kit percussion — it’s uptempo, but also sparse. I referenced it a number of times while working on “Eliza I See,” whose percussion is mainly the sound of slapping my legs and banging on a desk in my bedroom. – Harris Paseltiner

“A Rose for Emily” – The Zombies

I’ve always been sweet on the key change into the chorus here combined with the entrance of the harmony vocals. I love a moment in a song where I get transported into a whole new place, even while the basic instrumentation maintains course — that’s the same basic move I tried on our song “Darkening Hour,” where the minor chord you’ve been hearing in the verse pivots to major right at the downbeat of the chorus and the harmonies drop in all at once right on top. – Don Mitchell

“King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1” – Neutral Milk Hotel

There’s so much in this track that I love, but the two easiest things to point to are the double-tracked vocal and the louder-than-expected Uilleann pipes that come in at 0:46. “Right Friend” features both double-tracked (triple-tracked, even!) vocals and a loud, buzzy pad coming in on the second verse. – Auyon Mukharji

“I Love You Always Forever” – Donna Lewis

I heard this song for the first time in years at a friend’s wedding and was reminded of how incredible it is. A few days later I asked Don (middle name Lewis, no relation) to come up with a “Don(na) Lewis” guitar part (mimicking the guitar that comes in at 0:38) for “All the Lights In the City,” and he did, and I love it! – Dave Senft

“Simple Man” – Graham Nash

I’ve always loved the distant, nostalgic piano sound at the beginning of this song — it brings memories immediately back to life, like the sound of my brother practicing piano down the hallway in another room of the house. For our song “Sea Dogs” we decided to stick with a distant iPhone recording of the piano rather than a hi-fi recording because it had this same quality. – HP

“Santa Fe” – Beirut

I love how angular and buzzy the brass is on this track — it was definitely in the back of my head while I was putting an early, MIDI, brass-heavy demo of “Baking Soda” together. – AM

“We Did It When We Were Young” – Gaslight Anthem

We listened to this song on a loop when our band was in its early youth, and something about that insistent eighth-note pulse stayed lodged deep in our brains. A decade later, Auyon was learning guitar and sent out a voice memo with that familiar rhythmic feel which became the starting point for “Lose the Keys.” (The vocal melody doubled in octaves later in the song also points back to Gaslight origins!) – DM

“If You Could Read My Mind” – Henry Jamison, written by Gordon Lightfoot

This song was a guiding light for me while I was working on “Can’t Help Falling Apart,” and I think it influenced “All the Lights In the City” a bit as well. It feels honest and confessional and unresolved in a way that I’ve always admired and just feels like an emotional gut punch to me. I love the original, but the version I have been listening to more recently is this great cover by Henry Jamison. – DS

“Amie” – Damien Rice

There were a good few months of my early 20s wherein I was listening to this track daily. The plaintive, orchestral strings in “Down Here” can claim lineage. – AM

“Gulf War Song” – Moxy Fruvous

I think of this song as the gold standard for handling controversial/political subject matter in an effective way. “How Long Again” was very consciously informed by it from its inception. – DS

“Dancing and Blood” – Low
Some songs make me feel things by sounding “real” — humans playing music in a room. This song goes the opposite direction: Everything is surreal and a little unsettling and it seems like things are about to go off the rails at any moment. I think this Low album inspired me to push the boundaries a bit with gated/distorted/off-kilter sounds around the margins of songs that still have a real human performance at the core. – DM

“Bloom” – Radiohead

This song is built on a few measures of extemporaneous piano noodling looped over and over, like an infinitely repeating moment of humanness. For our song “Green Light” we used an old voice memo of a mandocello that I was trying to learn how to play in Dave’s basement, which, when looped, resulted in the rhythmic core of the song. – HP


Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez

LISTEN: Handsome Ghost, “Tonight Comes Round Again”

Artist: Handsome Ghost
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “Tonight Comes Round Again”
Album: Handsome Ghost
Release Date: July 14th, 2023 (single); August 25, 2023 (album)
Label: Nettwerk Music Group

In Their Words: “Eddie and I were chatting through plans recently – tours, recording, etc. – and we realized that we’ve been making music together for over 10 years. Which, in band years, is more like a thousand, in my opinion. Most of the songs on our new record are about my life in music in one way or another. ‘Tonight Comes Round Again’ is about a time many years back, when we were in New York a lot. Neither one of us actually lived there, but we just kind of claimed it as our home base until there was a tour to do or a record to make. The song itself is about a brief relationship of mine during that time. She wanted casual, I wanted more – and frustration naturally ensued as we tried to make something work. It’s rich looking back on it now, given that I was hoping for something serious while I was crashing on couches every night.” – Tim Noyes


Photo Credit: Seb Keefe

‘Careful Of Your Keepers’ Is an Autobiographical Glimpse at This Is The Kit

It feels like the protests are following Kate Stables around. Mere weeks ago she was in Paris, the city where she lives, when it was brought to a halt by the May Day march against pension reform, which ended in violence on the streets between police and demonstrators. Then, she arrived in the UK just as it embarked on a week-long series of national strikes against low pay and poor working conditions.

Stables does not disapprove of the disruption. “People have to remember that this is how change happens,” says the 40-year-old behind the British alt-folk outfit This Is The Kit. Whatever inconvenience Stables may face as a touring musician who currently can’t get around by public transport, she says, only helps to make the point. “It’s more inconvenient not getting paid enough and not getting treated properly.”

Since Stables relocated to France 17 years ago, the difference in national attitudes towards civil disobedience has been an eyeopener. “The UK has got a bit comfy over the decades and taken things for granted, they assume the government will look after them. In France, the slightest threat, people hit the streets and protest.”

Stables’ skills as an observer of the human experience is the golden thread that runs through her songs for This Is The Kit. Her 2018 fourth album, Moonshine Freeze, earned her a nomination for a prestigious Ivor Novello songwriting award, and her follow-up, Off Off On, saw her break further into the mainstream as critics applauded its depth and complexity.

A rarely overt but nevertheless keen political awareness is ever-present. And while Stables describes her new release, Careful Of Your Keepers, as “slightly more personal” than her previous albums, she’s aware that this is more in the way people will experience the songs than the way she necessarily intended them.

Take the track “More Change,” which was released as a single in early June. It is accompanied by an utterly delightful animated video made by her talented family friend, Benjamin Jones, in which various inanimate objects from sneakers to pieces of fruit search yearningly for connection and meaning.

“It sounds like a relationship song,” admits Stables, “But it started off with me thinking about situations in society, and people trying to decide if those are better now than 100 years ago. It’s an impossible question – there’s so much that’s worse and so much that’s better. You have to choose which one gets you through the day.”

The lyrics on the opening track, “Goodbye Bite,” include the memorable image of a “‘How shit is this?’ measuring stick” – and the question of change becomes a recurrent theme throughout the album. “I’ve been thinking about how we deal with it, how we quantify it,” says Stables, who compiled the songs over the past two years. “We make decisions by comparing things against each other… and it’s all meaningless, because any decision is a decision! You’re following your nose and hoping for the best.”

And yet, to quote a famous French writer, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The hypnotic sound and elliptical lyrics that have won This Is The Kit its cult following fanbase remain their trademark and Careful of Your Keepers is a joyous example of the acoustic folk and clubby groove that Stables’ (stable) line-up has been blending over the past decade.

The opportunity to rehearse together for 10 days at a friend’s house in Cork, southern Ireland, proved the power of the band’s long-lasting relationships. “We all live in different places now, but it did us all such a lot of good to be there together, so far away from our other lives,” says Stables. “As the years go by we’ve got better at giving and taking criticism, and you’re able to communicate better which isn’t always the case, in bands or in life.”

She herself has gained a reputation as a musicians’ musician, a favorite of Elbow’s Guy Garvey, The National’s Aaron Dessner, and Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals, who produced the latest album at her request. “I love his live shows, he’s so articulate and thoughtful. And in the studio he has just the right balance of sense of humour and total creative work ethic.” He also turns up in the “More Change” video, transmuted into a long-eared plasticine toy singing backing vocals.

Other influences on the album included punk-folkster Naima Bock, and Horse Lords (“the way they mess or play with rhythm and timing, it makes me so excited and alive”). At home in Paris, Stables has found creative community among a group of French and English artists that include Halo Maud, Mina Tindle, and Belvoir – a duo who, like her, hail originally from the west country of England, but now sing “really loud, super energy stuff” in their adopted French tongue. “Which is really nice, because the outside world doesn’t get exposed to enough non-Anglophone music.”

Stables herself found it slow-going to learn a new language, paralyzed by her fear of making mistakes or speaking with too English an accent. “I didn’t make any progress until I had my daughter,” she admits. “But after you’ve got over the shock of having a baby your inner punk wakes up and you don’t care what anyone thinks. So I got better quite quickly!”

She also found her new environment altered the way she made music. By her own admission, Stables is “quite a drone-y songwriter” by instinct– “I’ll have the same note all the way through,” she laughs. “But French songwriting has tons of chords in it. So now I try and write songs with more than two…”

One track from Careful Of Your Keepers offers an unusually autobiographical glimpse into her daily life. “This Is When The Sky Gets Big” was inspired by a favorite park near her home: “A rare place in the city where there’s loads of sky because there’s no immediate tall buildings.” “It’s not a classic Paris park of gravel and pollarded trees in rows,” She says. “You’re allowed on the grass which is pretty unusual.” The sight of people sharing food, playing card games or dominos – even those who live in the park, because they have no other home to go to – inspires one of the album’s most reflective tracks.

When we spoke, however, she was in Bristol, staying at the home of her friend and fellow musician Rachael Dadd ahead of a show at an open-air amphitheatre on the Cornish coast. Stables loves being on the road; her favourite touring destinations include Seattle, Hamburg, and Japan, a place she, Dadd, and her partner (the musician Jesse D Vernon) toured together in the very early days of the band. “I’d just moved to Paris at the time and I was in culture shock,” remembers Stables with a laugh. “So it was so good to be in a place where people were respectful and nice and said sorry and thank you as much as I did. I’d love to go back…”

There will just be time, before the main tour in support of the album kicks off, for a family wedding in Europe, where she and her twin sister will celebrate their birthday together. (Her two other siblings are also twins – they all spent a lot of their youth, she says, filling in questionnaires from research scientists). As someone with a teenage daughter of her own, the question of the future, and the legacy her generation will leave for the next one, is uppermost in her mind.

You can hear it in the final track of the album, “Dibs,” which ends with the apocalyptic thunder of washing machine drums and the line, “Since the beginning of time, man out of time.” Here is the real change that is coming: the music resonates with the sense of climate crisis without ever explicitly referencing it. “There’s no avoiding it,” agrees Stables. “It’s on everyone’s mind, it can’t help but dribble out into the songs we write, the worry. There’s no stopping the train.”

But as a lifelong fan of the science fiction author Ursula K Le Guin, she can, too, see a brighter future. “Her books are really reassuring, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s books have given me hope, too. Life does carry on. We’re currently living in absolute sci-fi conditions for people who were around 100 years ago. It would just be nice if we knew how to respect that, and carried on in a way that doesn’t create more suffering.”


Photo Credit: Cedric Oberlin

LISTEN: Evan Bartels, “Little Floating Lights”

Artist: Evan Bartels
Hometown: Tobias, Nebraska
Song: “Little Floating Lights”
Album: Lonesome
Release Date: September 17, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Little Floating Lights’ came from a longing for answers. Why are we here? Where do we go? What’s the meaning? I’ve searched in many ways and many places and come up empty. This song captures when I’ve come closest. When I am grounded in love and humanity. The divine doesn’t become obsolete, but it becomes intertwined with the here and now. The universe exists in a moment of pure love. And in those moments we can realize what is happening now is enough. We are enough.” — Evan Bartels


Photo credit: Paige Sara

WATCH: Birdtalker, “Better Days” (Live in Nashville)

Artist: Birdtalker
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Better Days”
Album: Birdtalker
Release Date: October 8, 2021
Label: AntiFragile Music

In Their Words: “This song captures a sober moment of realization and the choice to grasp at hope rather than drown in the breakdown. Musically, it’s lush and flowing, as if you’re floating through the experience in a dream state, lulled into acceptance and moving forward but not grounded. This atmosphere is created by the lilting, at times questioning, bass line and the fluttering and tactile percussion which both give the song an intimate feeling of humanity, as if they represent the wanderings of a questioning heart and its fluttering uncertainty. The flesh surrounding the song’s heart is the regular thrum of the acoustic guitars and the layered harmonies that build throughout. We went through a bit of a journey in the studio figuring out the instrumentation and tone of the song. It began with a more straightforward and confident presentation which we eventually scaled back to this more organic approach, leaning into the song’s uncertainty and delicacy.” — Birdtalker


Photo credit: Jeremy Cowart

WATCH: Field Guide, “Tupperware” (Live at Monarch Studios)

Artist: Field Guide
Hometown: Winnipeg, Manitoba; now Toronto
Song: “Tupperware” (Live at Monarch Studios)
Album: Make Peace With That
Release Date: September 17, 2021
Label: Birthday Cake

In Their Words: “Once in a while if you’re open to it, the universe may use you as a vehicle. This was the case with ‘Tupperware’ which came bursting out of me in a cool 20 minutes. I love that feeling and I really love this song. It’s about my early days living in Winnipeg; it’s about Tuesday nights in Osborne Village where a couple of wicked soul bands play weekly; it’s about my favourite restaurant which has since closed its doors; it’s about the beautiful parts of life that aren’t meant to last forever, and that’s okay.

“I wrote this album while swimming through a sea of change. ‘Tupperware’ came to be as my life in Winnipeg was coming to a close. I’d just moved out of my house, ended a relationship and was set to move to Toronto as soon as a cheap sublet surfaced. In September 2019 I finished mixing my previous release You Were just outside of Vancouver. I jumped on a plane and flew straight to Toronto to move into a little basement apartment at Crawford and Harbord St. in Toronto’s West End. For the next few months I wrote songs, put together a band and started to play around town, and then I met someone who made the songs come out even faster than before. The world shut down and I started looking inward, writing and writing some more. In the summer of 2020 I rented a van and drove back to Manitoba to make this album with my dear friends. I hope you like it!” — Dylan MacDonald, Field Guide


Photo credit: Joseph Visser

WATCH: Aisha Badru, “The Way Back Home”

Artist: Aisha Badru
Hometown: Orlando, Florida
Song: “The Way Back Home”
Album: The Way Back Home EP
Release Date: December 3, 2021
Label: Nettwerk Records

In Their Words: “During my early 20s, I left home, pursed my wildest dreams, traveled the world, and made decisions with my heart that allowed me to experience the fullness of life. This freedom allowed me to become the person I am today. ‘The Way Back Home’ is written from the perspective of someone who understands that in order for one to be whole, they have to go on a self-exploration journey alone. This song explores non-possessiveness in relationships. It embodies a confidence that allows our loved ones to grow without the fear of losing them.” — Aisha Badru


Photo credit: Jeffery Trapani

WATCH: Morningsiders, “This Could Be Good”

Artist: Morningsiders
Hometown: New York City
Song: “This Could Be Good”
Album: Easy Does It
Release Date: July 23, 2021
Label: Nettwerk

In Their Words: “We started writing this project after lockdowns hit, and it was starting to sink in that this was a long-term situation. I wanted to write something about aimless nights out with friends (since there were none coming up anytime soon). We knew we wanted it to feel dance-y and delicate, but also hazy as if you’re kind of floating. The song is meant to capture this rare feeling when you just can’t put a foot wrong with the person you’re with. You’re both laughing at the same things, both on the same wavelength, both equally curious about the other. When that happens the rest of the world recedes away a little, almost like background noise.

“Instrumentally, the challenge was to build an arc out of the same musical pattern that repeats throughout. The entrances and exits of the strings and drums come and go around the steady heartbeat of the tune. We ended up giving the last couple choruses over completely to the instruments, and that’s probably my favorite part of the song. I don’t have to repeat ‘this could be good’ because that feeling is just hanging in the air at that point. For the video we knew that we wanted to bring the tune to life by working with Ilya Vidrin and Jessi Stegall, who are two incredible dancers based in Boston. They totally captured a certain lightheartedness, but also the vulnerability and obsession that come along with falling deeper and deeper into a relationship. Watching them move makes the song feel less like an internal monologue and more like a feeling that is shared and nurtured between two people.” — Magnus Ferguson, Morningsiders


Photo credit: Shervin Lainez