Throughout their years together, The Crowleys have focused on building a danceable set through a Venn diagram of inspiration from 60s rock, 80s pop and modern psychedelia. Peppered throughout their music is a driving and crunchy rhythm, distinctive synth warble, diverse vocals, and mind-melty pedalporn guitar.

Their debut LP, Strange Seasons, is a collection of songs by a Hamilton, ON, group of friends who wanted to share music with each other, and now the world. The album attempts to put the strangeness of the world into words and melody.

The instrumentation for the focus track, “Seasons,” was largely written by keyboard player/guitarist Justyn Horlick. It’s an emotional jazzy turnaround that repeats for most of the song. The ending, inspired by the Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings song “100 Days, 100 Nights,” features a transition from 4/4 time to 6/4 time. The lyrics on the other hand were penned by vocalist Giuliana Frontini, on a hot day in November when she noticed that she was unsettled by the temperature.

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

We thought that this song in particular effectively summed up the themes and tones of the album, making it a great candidate for a music video. It is also more grounded in its sonic textures and has a more vintage and natural sound than the rest of the album, which lended itself to the settings and characters found in the video, and is emphasized by the vintage look of the Super 8 film. Much of the rest of the album would demand a lot of neon lighting, lazer beams, and classic cars, which unfortunately just wasn’t in the budget…

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

Like much of the album, the inspiration is environmentalism. We aimed to tell a tale about the allure of consumerism, and the inevitable destruction it leads to. In the video the mask that two of the main characters find is meant to represent consumerism. Like most of us they use this consumerism to hide their true self from the world. This always goes hand in hand with environmental consequences, which in the video is represented by “The Bag”.

3. What was the process of making this video?

When we first set out to shoot the video the main focus was shooting it on Super 8 film. Although we were excited about the Super 8 and the colour and tone it brings, it can be a bit nerve racking. The film is expensive to buy and develop, and you really only have one shot to make it work. The quality of Super 8 depends on the quality of lighting, and we were nervous about the overcast day that we had to shoot on. We ended up shooting the whole thing twice, once with Super 8, and once on a phone as backup. Luckily, the Super 8 turned out great and we had enough footage to use it exclusively.

What initially started as a very open-ended idea of shooting the distinct contrast between nature and industrialism in our hometown of Hamilton, evolved into a story with the help of a few props that we brought along, specifically the Scaramouche mask and a plastic bag, which ended up being the costumes for the main characters of the film.

While the theme of Strange Seasons is lightly steeped in environmental angst there is a romantic current throughout with lyrics often referencing a relationship with another person as a means of surviving the elements.

Formed in 2019 from lead singer/songwriter Angus Watt‘s desire to provoke more dancing within the Victoria, B.C. indie music community, Pastel Blank carries on the torch of such genre-defying luminaries as Talking Heads and Women. Kaleidoscopic guitarwork blends together jagged jabs of funk, soft shades of bossa-nova, and punchy disco beats to create a listening experience that flows between the grooves of indie rock, prog-pop, and new wave.

Produced by longtime band member and musical polymath Connor Head, “Dopamine” is the second single from Pastel Blank‘s forthcoming debut album. One of Watt‘s desires for the recording in-studio was for the single to express the excitement and playfulness of the soon-to-be infamous Pastel Blank live show. “Dopamine” is about the moment when you realize you’ve been flipping between apps like you’re checking an empty fridge for the 10th time, hoping to feed your receptors something that feels as good as the younger days of however long ago you picked up your phone.

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

“Dopamine is about screen addiction and the most mindless forms of doom-scrolling. I’ve spent more time than I care to admit watching the most inane bottom of the barrel content, like a split-screen edit of a podcast excerpt paired with Subway Surfer (or Temple Run for the old-heads). It’s funny to think that low effort, hyper-stimulating content can release some of the same chemicals you experience when you’re in love – there couldn’t be two more different experiences!

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

For the video, I wanted a phones-eye view of someone deep in a doomscroll, like a drawn out version of that split second when your screen goes black and all you can see is your reflection behind a bunch of grubby fingerprints. I wanted the dancing to look like someone who’s being forced to do a TikTok dance over and over. Patrick Macht and Micah Henry, two super talented folks who I’ve had the pleasure of working with on all the videos for this album, designed the creepy screen mask I’m wearing in the video.

3.What was the process of making this video?

We went to a parking lot in Vancouver after dark and I danced around in the screen mask, totally unable to see anything, while the crew called out directions to me. Micah drove around me in his mini-van, with a crazy lighting rig attached to the roof, making it look like some sort of alien observation vehicle.” 

Toronto’s Ekelle rhymes about what she knows best: her real-life experience! Money, sex, drama, and identity stir together to create a style she calls Hood Pop – popular music with a street edge.

“Your baddies are your real ones, hustlers who get shit done and keep it moving,” Ekelle says about her aptly titled new single “Baddie,” which is “perfect for pre-gaming with your girls or driving around on a sunny day.”

Currently, Ekelle is an artist in the RBC Launchpad Music Entrepreneurship Program, guided by her instincts and a passion for music, pop culture and fashion. In 2022, Ekelle dropped her first album, Let’s Get It, landing song features on the video game Boogie, TV show Hudson & Rex and the Stanley Cup Finals. 

After years of crisscrossing North America, Europe, and the U.K., playing in bands such as Sam Weber and Luca Fogale, Jacob Weil found himself with a collection of his own songs that he was ready to share. The indie-folk debut record, Lived In, was produced by Sam Weber. The album’s production is fast, innovative, and intelligent, and the songs are filled with strength, grit, tenderness, courage, and nostalgia. And, like a string of images, Weil leads us through observations and experiences that have led him to where he is now.  

Co-written with Luca Fogale, the focus track “9999” is about multiple realities – more specifically it represents the nine-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine ways out of ten thousand that your life could have gone, had you made one specific decision, as opposed to another. It’s a reflection on a life, a relationship, whatever, where you made a decision, and things ended up one way instead of another. 

In this situation, the song is about a relationship that felt so right, where everything was so perfect, and yet it didn’t work out. It’s about imagining a multitude of realities, in which, if you lived the same life 10,000 times, you just happened to be living in the one where things didn’t work out. 

“The album started off as a collection of songs from different periods of my life – periods of significant growth and change,” explains Weil. “I didn’t begin with a set throughline between them, but it became apparent later on as I was looking back at them that they all shared a commonality – a reflection on what it feels like to be part way through one’s life and have a mind, body, spirit and even home that feel ‘lived in.’”

Joel Plaskett is a beloved east coast Canadian singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist whose music brings together the energetic melodies and hooks of power pop, the muscle of hard rock, and more intimate singer/songwriter fare. Plaskett’s songs are a perennial part of the national playlist, a fixture on “best of” lists, and the soundtrack to the lives of faithful fans across the country and around the world.

When the YMCA in Vancouver asked Plaskett to play at their “virtual campfire” over the pandemic in 2021, he figured he’d write a song for a real campfire and the real moon above. Written with the beautiful simplicity of three chords, Plaskett started and finished “Hey Moon (A Campfire Song)” 15 minutes prior to recording it for the livestream. 

“This version gets kind of rocking for the summer festival stages but it’s basically a folk song at heart,” says Plaskett. “My hope is people will write their own verses for the moon and sing the chorus together.”

In the 90s, iconic artist Chin Injeti fronted the R&B group Bass is Base which had fans all over the world and garnered him a deal with Canada’s Universal Music and Island Records in the United States. During that time, Bass is Base won a JUNO (Canadian Grammy) for Best R&B record and a MuchMusic Video award for their song “Funkmobile.” Additionally, Chin was dubbed SOCAN’s Songwriter of the Year… but this was just the beginning of his success.His latest EP, VESSELS: Volume Two, includes the melancholic yet humorous single “For Better or For Worse” (feat. YBTB). Life doesn’t always work out the way you planned. Evidently, you are not the same person you were when you were in your 20s or 30s. Chin and YBTB have crafted the perfect message that represents who they are and who they’ll be moving forward.