For the band, writing music is a very therapeutic experience. They try to write songs about the things they are struggling with, and mix them with fun upbeat melodies as a good way to blow off some steam and gain some perspective.
Their reflective song, “Devils Working Late,” was inspired by singer Greg Chomut (a.k.a. Luke Warm) and his experience with becoming a father. It was a major transition for him to have everything revolve around caring for somewhere else.
It’s a common feeling to miss going out with your friends and just having fun, especially in the early days of being a parent. Even though Greg loves his children and family deeply, he found that on the rare occasion that he got a chance to go out with friends, he would try to make it last as long as possible – staying out way too late and usually not getting home until the next morning. He would feel really bad about it after, thinking that there was something wrong with him, but he realized it’s probably a pretty normal feeling after such a big change.
The song is basically saying to listeners, “So this wasn’t your best day. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s just part of life.” Hopefully people can associate with the lyrics and if they know the feeling it can give them a little comfort.
Jazz vocalist and songwriter Eva Schubert is a fresh new voice, whose sound blends seamlessly with the classic style of jazz greats like Helen Mirrell, Peggy Lee, and Nat King Cole.
Her fourth album, The Feel of Your Love, is a sultry, hypnotic collection of songs that effortlessly shift the colour of your mood. Beautiful piano stylings, guitar riffs and saxophone grooves mix classic jazz sounds with a distinctly modern sonic palette.
Eva was inspired to write the wistful and haunting “Dark Star” one summer evening when she was walking in the park and heard a man singing in a distinctly Latin style. As she walked on, a few of those notes began echoing in her mind, and she started adding to them.
However, when she brought this song to her producer, he wasn’t really sure how to arrange it. They ended up heading into the studio without any rough arrangement prepared, though they had sketches of all the other songs on the album. Eva just walked up to the mic and sang the lyrics a capella in the studio, for the other musicians. There was complete silence.
Then, when she sang it again, they started to play along… And right there the song blossomed in front of them, like a flower emerging from the soil and maturing in mere minutes.
Lenni Revel’s story begins the way most fairytales end: Big A&R professionals vying for her music, Grammy nominations, and billboards in Times Square promoting her music. But her pop dream ended when she was kicking Adderall cold turkey in a shed outside of her parent’s house and plunged into such darkness that she was eventually admitted to a psych ward and put on suicide watch. Her upcoming album, Unbroken, is about her rebirth and reclamation from the clutches of mental health struggles, drugs, and the music business machine. Unbroken also embodies a profound love story between Lenni and her husband, Robert Revel, a family lawyer and critically-acclaimed author who wrote and co-wrote much of the album.
Her video for her latest outlaw country-esque and pop-rock infused single “Where There Ain’t No Sun” conceptualizes pain and loss. While Lenni’s voice is powerful on it’s own, the imagery of a cemetery really drives home the emotional aspect of the song. What really drives the video home is when Lenni releases ashes at the top of a hill at the climax of the song. It’s chilling, haunting, and mesmerizing. She’s symbolically letting go, releasing herself from the pain.
We spoke with Lenni about the music video:
Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically in this way?
The cemetery in the video is a beautiful old site where the founders of the city are buried. It is a favorite walking path of many locals, including Robert and I. The Mausoleum is also on the cemetery site, and we were granted access by a kindly groundskeeper to shoot the interior scenes depicted in the video. The hilltop scene, where the urn ceremony occurs, is another hiking favorite locale of ours. We imagined that one day we would shoot some kind of music video on the spot because of its beauty.
What was the inspiration behind this video?
The song, “Where There Ain’t No Sun” was originally written about unrequited love. I evolved the song’s vocal melodies and facilitated structural and lyrical changes to accommodate my interpretation of the song as being fundamentally about deep loss and grief. My version brought the visual application of the music to images of death, but painted delicately and beautifully with a performance with heart and soul right at the center of it.
What was the process of making this video?
Once the cemetery location was chosen, the time of year to shoot there became an important element; we wanted to capture the beautiful lush green grasses and mosses that grow there in the spring—new life emerging from death. We shot the graveyard scenes in March and soon after we shot the mausoleum scene at the same location. Our dog “Kota” (she is a pure-bred Thai Ridgeback) was utilized in the gravestone shots as an element representing the haunting aspects of grief and the unseen but ever-watching spirit world. Kota, as a recurring element has subsequently made appearances in every music video I’ve performed in. The ceramic urn used for the ashes has special value to Robert, as it is the gift of his best friend who passed away in his fifties. The drone shots on top of the mountain were shot by a local drone pilot who typically shoots for real estate clientele. We had to shoot the ash ceremony quickly as the sun was setting and we had only a few-minute window to gather all the footage.
Singer/songwriter Erika Olson has a new single out called “Mamma Ain´t Got No Time,” a folksy pop ballad on the life of a mother. It is a rich and intricate song with descriptive and emotional lyrics and an overall light energy. This song is one you will want to play again and again, with it´s unique folk and country vibes:
“‘Momma Ain’t Got No Time’ was born from a conversation with a dear friend. I’d just started songwriting and was struggling with not having any time to do it. My friend so wisely suggested that I write that song. And so, it began. This was not the first song that I wrote, but it was the first song I wrote in my own voice. I felt like this song revealed who I was and how I saw the world. Yes, life is hard, motherhood is a huge transition, and also it is magical, transformative, and I don’t regret it for a second.
Erika is an American expat currently living in East Sussex, England. She grew up living all over the United States, from New Mexico to Utah, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and North Carolina.
Having left a busy law career on becoming a mother, and realising she needed to explore her musical and creative talents more, Erika dug deep and started taking guitar lessons. It was then that she could take some reflection time away from raising her three young children, and revel in her creative passions.
“Mamma Ain´t Got No Time” is all about motherhood and its sea of chaos, the ups and the downs. Rooted in the everyday things, Olson is sure to be a witness to her own journey of becoming a mother as well as use her music as a vessel to wake us up to our own precious and unique lives.
Just about to self-release her debut album, Erika has learned that change is her constant and her power.
Cross-genre music powerhouse NGHTMRE, best known for his jaw dropping live performances and fan favorites tracks like “REDLIGHT” with A$AP Ferg and “GUD VIBRATIONS” with SLANDER, has recruited Maryland rapper IDKfor his hype new trap single, “Trials,” which is available now on all digital streaming platforms HERE. The high energy track is the third single of NGHTMRE’s highly-anticipated forthcoming debut album, DRMVRSE, which is due out September 9.
NGHTMRE’s whirlwind of a career is all culminating with his debut full-length album,‘DRMVRSE,’ which was announced last week and is set to be released on September 9. Created during the COVID pandemic, DRMVRSE tells a cohesive fantasy story filled with characters and plots, which are being revealed through his artwork and music videos. The album’s first single, “Fall Into Me” with SLANDER featuring Dylan Matthew, was released in March and its second single, “The One ” with KLAXX, was released in May.
“The instrumental for ‘Trials’ is something I actually wrote a while ago. It took a long time to find someone I felt could match the energy of the record. Once I listened to IDK’s music for the first time I knew he would be amazing on it. He’s not only an impressive lyricist, but an incredible singer/vocalist as well. He really nailed the vibe perfectly on this one!” – NGHTMRE
Baltimore-raised British-American rapper, producer, and director IDK began his career in 2012 and released his debut studio album, Is He Real, in September 2019 featuring standout singles “24” and “Digital.” He followed it with his second, USEE4YOURSELF, in July of 2021 with major collaborations such as “Shoot My Shot” with Offset and “PradadaBang” with Young Thug, which have over 45 million streams combined on their own. In May of this year, IDK released his third studio album, Simple, with its standout single “Dog Food” with Denzel Curry and produced by longtime friend and collaborator, KAYTRANADA. IDK has also collaborated with The Neptunes, Pusha T, A$AP Ferg, Joey Bada$$, Russ, J.I.D, T-Pain, Swae Lee, the late MF DOOM, and more.
Toronto-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Eliza Niemi grew up with the influence of music all around her. She first learned the basics of bass and guitar from her dad, and these childhood experiences of playing music together by ear fostered the sense of playfulness that she’s approached her craft with ever since.
Her vibrational song, “Walking Feels Slow,” is about being caught between different ways of moving through the world: on the one side is taking things slow and stopping and smelling the roses, and on the other is a sort of reckless, free barrelling-through.
“I wanted to evoke the feeling of desperately trying to stay present – the little games we play with ourselves and mantras we repeat to prevent us from projecting or worrying about the past or future,” says Eliza. “There’s a manic energy in trying to slow down and enjoy each bite as if it’s the whole fruit – a sort of buzzing at a high frequency – that I wanted to embody and convey in this track.”
Her self-produced new album, Staying Mellow Blows (Out August 5th), is about slowing down for the first time in a long time and having space and time to reflect on her life. She’d spent the majority of her adult years on the road with various bands such as Mauno and when the pandemic hit, she was suddenly and unexpectedly in one place for over a year. It was a shock to her system and brought about some serious introspection.
Modern Mystery 
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