Composer and creator Ken Lovern joins us for a conversation about the new music video for “Boone Plays It Back.” We’ll talk about the process of bringing the music to life in a visual form, and how performance, character, and storytelling come together through sound and imagery.

We’ll also explore the musical approach behind the piece, including Boone’s extraordinary ability to instantly hear, replicate, and transform complex piano works, and how that virtuosity is reflected in the arrangement and performance.

The track features vocals from Madisen Ward, an operatic performance from Alyson Cambridge, drums by Lester Estelle Jr., and trumpet by Stanton Kessler, along with Lovern’s own work on organ, piano, and additional instrumentation, creating a layered, cinematic sound that drives the piece forward.

1.

Tell us the story of this track. Why did you choose to visualize it specifically in this way?

This track, Boone Plays it Back, is the first single from “Blind Boone the Musical”. 

Blind Boone the Musical is an historical musical fantasy about the life of Missouri’s ragtime pioneer, John William “Blind” Boone — a man who struggled against and overcame racism as one of the first African American concert performers.

The setting of this track is that The Blind Boone Concert Company has just rolled into town and Boone’s manager, John Lange Jr., is in front of the town’s new opera house.  

He is hyping the performance, saying “Boone Plays it Back!”

Boone’s remarkable ability to play back what other pianists have just played is a great asset when Lange is trying to convince people to attend a concert. 

One of their most successful performance techniques was to ask any audience member to play a piece and then Boone would play it back, usually with more fluidity and musicality, often adding variations or embellishments.  

This tune captures the excitement, confidence, and swagger of a professional promoter who believes in what he is promoting. 

2. What was the inspiration behind this new video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?

In order to tell the story of Blind Boone more completely, the release is accompanied by a comic book.  

In this video, I use the comic book art extensively to visually tell the story along with the music.  

I also used some vintage photos of Boone and some of Boone’s promotional materials.  

There is also a vintage image of a tornado.  

The Tornado reference “He’ll make a tornado come out from the keys” refers to one of Boone’s most popular compositions where he imitated a tornado on the piano.  

The inspiration was a tornado that had devastated Marshfield, Missouri in 1880, killing an estimated 100 people.  

Reportedly, when Boone first played this piece in Marshfield, the audience members became convinced that there was an actual tornado occurring and started to seek shelter until they were assured it was only the re-creation on the piano.

The only contemporary image is of amazingly accomplished opera singer Alyson Cambridge who sings the part of an up tight local arts enthusiast who is skeptical of allowing an African American performer to play the piano in the town’s new opera house.  But she is won over when she learns that Boone can play the classics by Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann.  

Alyson has performed for over two decades on the world’s leading opera and concert stages – The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, London’s Royal Albert Hall, among others.  

3. What was the process of making the video?

This was a very “do it yourself” video production.  I took images of the comic book and the vintage flyers and imported them into iMovie and used iMovie to create the video.The comic book adaptation of the story was made by The Gutter Studios, Constanza Osuna, Julia Diaz, and Katie Blancha.So, while I hired the comic book artists, I did the video myself.  

Ontario duo YASSiN & Sean Terrio return with “DON’T DO THAT,” an upbeat and emotionally charged alternative pop-rock single about confronting old habits, creative exhaustion, and the difficult process of becoming a better version of yourself. Driven by full-bodied production, soaring energy, and deeply personal lyricism, the track captures the moment where frustration turns into determination.

At its core, “DON’T DO THAT” reflects the emotional weight both artists experienced following the release of their debut album, 2024’s Just Try. “The song was inspired by the state of mind we both felt like we were in last year after releasing our first album,” they explain. “We struggled getting our creative flow back again. Although the song is upbeat, it may be one of the most personal songs to show how heavy music has felt for us over the last little while.”

1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically?
   1. Lyrically there’s an underdog feeling to the story; someone living a certain way for so long, thinking they don’t have what it takes to achieve their dreams, but then taking a leap of faith despite that fact. It’s as if the character has come up with these chorus lyrics to remind themselves to keep going, because we all need a reminder to keep on track. As to why we chose to create a visual for this song; once we finished the track, it became clear that it was going to be a single, and a high-energy one at that. We wanted to build off that energy and, almost creating that reminder to ourselves, further cement this tune as a moment where we wanted to push forward and not fall back. Now that it’s out there, we want to live up to the positivity and energy of this track, in our own lives.

2. What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?
   1. We knew we wanted to recreate iconic movie scenes early in the storyboarding process. These are movies that almost everyone has seen, so it would be clear what’s happening on the screen, but it was also a lot of fun for us to try our best to get close to the original article. I think the dream of being in a movie is common, amongst all sorts of people. Much like following your favourite sports team as a kid, its an early-life exposition to “wanting to be something/someone”. Now, not that everyone retains that dream or goes into acting, it feels like at one point in time, almost everyone wanted to be the character of their favourite movie. 

3. What was the process of making this video?
   1. Well, it started with a dream… LOL! But it did and with the help of some wonderful people from our community, people who believe deeply in creating something fun, and some perseverance from our end, we were able to score an amazing location in Film.ca. We cannot thank Jeff, Charlotte and Jason enough. Their contribution and involvement in this video, but more importantly within the community over decades, truly speaks to what the song, our music in general, and creating “things” is all about. Logistically speaking, it took a lot of pre-planning, coordination, late nights and early mornings, amazing family and friends, our life savings, and the willingness to give it a shot, even if we look like fools.

Calgary, AB art duo HAIR CONTROL (Ryan Bourne & Rebecca Reid) share “TV in the Afterlife,” an anthemic synth-pop workout jam that transcends both the celebratory and the existential. Ebullient art pop with dream-drenched ‘80s-inspired textures, the track transforms apocalypse anxiety and digital-era disconnection into a strangely uplifting, physically charged release.

Originally written by Ryan as a three-chord guitar sketch with a post-punk edge, the song first appeared in earlier form on his Plant City record. Revisited through HAIR CONTROL’s lens, it evolved into an ‘80s-leaning synth pop piece with Rebecca stepping in on lead vocals, reshaping it into what the duo affectionately dubs their “existential workout jams.”

1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically? 

RYAN: “TV in the Afterlife” is a kind of sensual satire set to synth pop. I was messing around with three-chord pop feels on guitar, and the melody felt really ‘80s, so the synth hooks took ‘80s baroque pop and dream pop cues, and the lyric took shape as a kind of metaphysical dystopian daydream. I initially released it as a postpunk garage jam on my 2023 “Plant City” record, though the instrumental of HAIR CONTROL’s version was recorded first. The melody begged to be re-imagined as ‘80s synth pop with Rebecca on lead vocals, so it became one of the first in a song cycle we’ve come to affectionately dub our “existential workout jams”.  The lyric muses on waning attention spans, apocalypse anxiety, engineered isolation, the vacuum of egoic consumer culture, the threat of technofascism, the consolation – as well as the existential horror – of  “never being alone”. But there’s a defiant exuberance to it too, it’s ultimately meant to be fun, and a little funny – as well as celebratory, and the lyrics as well as the track itself are a kind of visually evocative stream of consciousness sequence, which easily lent itself to visualization as a music video.

2. What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)? 

REBECCA: While browsing Marketplace, we found an MCM TV that felt perfect, so we followed the impulse. It became the starting point. The first footage we shot was the TV cycling through different static patterns in the middle of a patch of lilac bushes.

I experimented with 80s-inspired looks for the lip sync components, which naturally influenced parts of the color palette. Ryan got into making short stop-motion animations with whatever objects around the house felt right. Building environments and sets together is already part of our shared visual art practice, so handmade pieces and collected props gradually worked their way into different vignettes, like the giant red glitter lips striding across the screen or the hand-painted spiral rolling across the horizon. 

The narrative evolved as a stream of consciousness, guided more by the movement and pacing of the song than a fixed storyline. Some images, however, have a more direct lineage. For the lyric “renaissance hermaphrodite”, we pulled in photographs I made last fall at the Louvre of the life-size Roman marble sculpture Sleeping Hermaphroditus, which lies on a carved marble mattress added at the end of the Renaissance period. It felt like an apt visual anchor for that moment.

As we got closer to the final edit, we realized it needed one more burst of motion. Ryan had previously scouted a blue wall along the Transcanada, near where we live, so we stopped there before our Sled Island set in-between rain showers and caught what we needed. I improvised a few passes of a mock cheerleading routine while Ryan filmed, carefully framing each shot without backing into traffic on the busy road just behind him. It was one of those last-minute ideas that ended up feeling essential to the finished video.

3. What was the process of making this video?

REBECCA: The process was driven almost entirely by intuition with only a few moments unfolding according to a clear or precise plan. We’d stumble across an image that seemed to connect to a lyric or just landed as a kind of psychic hit, then we’d film it. It felt more like gathering material than executing a plan.

For the “Sweet and Sticky” sequence, we saw a hand with brightly painted nails holding a melting ice cream cone. We scouted a few locations and waited for a hot day. Once we settled on ice cream colour, we drove over and filmed it melting in my hand. Our backup plan was an off-camera hair dryer, but the weather did the work for us.

A lot of the image-making followed the same DIY logic: we like that, it feels right, now how do we make it do what we want or compose it till it feels right. Found footage became part of the process too: mining archival footage and clips from our own collection that suddenly felt like they belonged, folding them into the project wherever they clicked.

This is a way of working we often return to when we’re making videos for ourselves: run-and-gun, intuitive, and open to whatever happens in the moment with a loose vision that feels palpable or precise in a certain detail and following that to see where it leads. When we’re creating work for someone else, we’re much more structured, with detailed shot lists and tighter planning. Personal projects give us permission to experiment, follow instinct, and make decisions as we go. That freedom naturally shapes the DIY aesthetic that runs through a lot of our visual collaborative work.

Following the April 2026 release of their debut single, “Cat Crow,” Hamilton, ON folk duo Michael Antelope (singers/guitarists Doug McBrien and Lenny McGowan) return with “Bridge Over My Head,” a gentle and emotionally layered folk single that explores the painful contradiction of loving something that ultimately harms you. Rooted in close harmonies, warm acoustic instrumentation, and thoughtful storytelling, the song captures the quiet internal dialogue that unfolds when comfort and emotional damage begin to blur together.

At first glance, “Bridge Over My Head” presents itself like a tender love song; soft, romantic, and deeply affectionate. Beneath its warmth, however, lies a much sadder reality. “The narrator is explaining all the signs that the subject really does not care for them in the ways they need,” the duo explain, “yet in the chorus they still express that they need them.”

The song’s title itself reflects that emotional duality. “The ‘Bridge Over My Head’ represents two opposing ideas,” they share. “The bridge is a sign of comfort and safety, keeping you safe from the sun, rain, and the world around you. But when the water rises, the bridge stops you from floating up with it and keeps you trapped underneath.” That tension between safety and suffocation runs throughout the song, giving “Bridge Over My Head” its quietly devastating emotional pull.

Originally written by Lenny while still in high school, the song remained untouched for years before eventually being shared with Doug. Together, the pair brought the track to life through the same live-off-the-floor recording approach that has become central to Michael Antelope’s sound. “All the vocals you hear were done in one take,” they share.

The session also featured bassist Ben Whitley, whose understated performance adds emotional depth and warmth to the arrangement. “We wanted the production to hold a bit more weight than just two guitars and vocals,” they say. “The bass adds this beautiful low emotional element to the song.”

New York–based alternative singer-songwriter Lauren Minear shares her latest offering, “‘Til The World Ends.” It’s a cinematic and emotionally charged alt-pop single that grapples with fear, uncertainty, and the fragile state of the world before ultimately arriving at a deeply human conclusion: love is the only answer. Blending rising tension with introspective lyricism, the track captures a moment of personal and collective anxiety, filtered through Minear’s signature emotional clarity.

“‘Til The World Ends” was written in November 2024 in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. presidential election. “I felt scared by how divided the world has become and worried about the sociopolitical conditions my children will grow up in,” Minear explains. At the same time, she found herself immersed in dystopian storytelling, rewatching multiple Walking Dead spinoffs that explore separation and survival in apocalyptic conditions. “I was thinking about how horrifying it would be to be separated geographically from my family if the world stopped,” she says.

What began as an attempt to process fear quickly evolved into something more grounded. Sitting at her piano, Minear started listing unanswered questions about the world around her, only to arrive at a more instinctive truth. “Naturally, I ended up writing a song about the only answer to fear: love.”

Sonically, “‘Til The World Ends” leans into atmosphere and tension. Produced by Grammy–winning producer Scott Jacoby, the track blends organic instrumentation with contemporary production techniques, creating a soundscape that feels both intimate and expansive. Arpeggiated piano chords form the foundation, while layered contributions from collaborators; including guitar (Ben Butler), keys (Andrew Sherman), percussion (Doug Yowell), and fretless bass (Richard Hammond); gradually build a sense of unease and momentum. A standout moment arrives in the bridge, where a soaring vocal stack from Lauren Mian adds an almost ethereal release.

At the core of Minear’s work is motherhood; not just as a theme, but as a driving force. “‘Til The World Ends” continues that trajectory, shaped by the urgency of raising children in an uncertain world. “I don’t know how else to process the terror of watching two pieces of my heart walk around, vulnerable, in a world seemingly hellbent on self-destruction,” she says.

Following on the heels of the vulnerable single, “Sorry,” Scarlett Macfarlane returns with “Fireflys,” a warm and nostalgic pop single that captures the fleeting magic of youth, memory, and the quiet moments that stay with us long after they’ve passed. Rooted in feelings of ease, joy, and reflection, the track leans into a softer, more sentimental side of Scarlett’s songwriting, offering a moment of lightness grounded in emotional depth.

The song was sparked by a simple, intimate setting. “I have a string of lights that I like to sit out under on my balcony that mimic the randomness of fireflies,” Scarlett explains. “I was sitting out there one night and the rest is history.” That quiet moment of inspiration expanded into something more universal; a reflection on the small, meaningful experiences that shape how we remember our lives.

The title itself carries layered meaning. Inspired by childhood memories of summer nights celebrating her mother’s birthday, Scarlett connects the imagery of fireflies to a sense of wonder and togetherness. “Those are moments from my life that I wish I could capture in a jar and keep forever,” she says. “Much like a child wishes to keep the magic of a firefly forever.” Even the stylized spelling of “Fireflys” serves as a personal touch; a nod to storytelling, nostalgia, and her own creative instincts.

Musically, “Fireflys” embraces simplicity and warmth. A standout moment arrives in the bridge, where a last-minute addition of a whistled melody adds a playful, childlike quality to the track. “One of my favourite things to do as a kid was whistle melodies,” Scarlett notes. “Getting to use that skill in a song was a fun moment for me.” That sense of play carries through the arrangement, which builds gently before opening into a refreshed final chorus that feels both familiar and new.

Lyrically, the song reflects on the shifting nature of time and memory. “Taste the memories, back when life looked like forever,” Scarlett sings; a line that captures the way moments that once felt endless can become fleeting in hindsight, while still holding their emotional weight.