Singer-songwriter Hillary Reynolds invites listeners into a whimsical and warmly contemplative sonic world with her latest single, “Can’t Turn Off My Mind.” This silvery, playful track marks the foundation of Reynolds’ upcoming debut album, Changing Seasons (out later this year), offering a grounded yet daydreamy soundtrack for your morning routine. Blending thoughtful lyricism with classic singer-songwriter stylings, the single evokes a soft space reminiscent of Beatrix Potter illustrations and Jane Austen musings.
“Can’t Turn Off My Mind” was originally written years ago, but found new life after Reynolds reconnected with collaborator and dear friend Madison Malone in Los Angeles. What began as a reflection on insomnia and intrusive thoughts gained richer meaning over time – particularly as both artists became mothers. That distinct sense of sleep-deprived tenderness now permeates the song’s groove-driven chorus, which Reynolds describes as “quirky, left-of-center, but completely natural when you feel it.”
Anchored by upright bass and dreamlike phrasing, the song balances whimsy with lyrical vulnerability. “I love how playful it is,” Reynolds shares. “Sometimes we just need music that makes us feel less heavy. I wanted to put out an album that feels like saying ‘hello’ to an old friend and I feel like this first single is an invitation to that space.”
Canadian vocalist, composer, and Bruce Peninsula frontman Neil Haverty unveils his new single, “Man Down” – a brooding, introspective meditation on illness, survival, and the slow, complicated return to self. Built on dark synths, stirring strings, and Haverty’s unmistakable ghostly growl, the track marks his first solo release after more than a decade composing for award-winning film and television.
On its face, “Man Down” is a reckoning with Haverty’s 2011 leukemia diagnosis, a life-altering moment that shook the foundation of his world. Written as a form of self-talk, the song explores grief, resilience, and the blurred lines between trauma and transformation. Rather than tying a neat bow around survival, Haverty leans into the clumsiness of healing, examining how ideals formed during hardship often fade in the forward tumble of everyday life.
Recorded with longtime collaborator Leon Taheny (Owen Pallett, Austra) and featuring layered string arrangements by Mika Posen (Agnes Obel, Timber Timbre), “Man Down” combines analog synth textures, creaky orchestral moments, and organic found sounds – including field recordings from a Galileo museum in Florence – to build an atmosphere of both ascension and collapse. It’s music that searches for the spark of aliveness even as it grapples with mortality.
Poet William May is expanding the world of his debut chapbook, Blaze Without Burning (Finishing Line Press), with a dynamic and deeply personal audio companion—a collection of 25 original musical compositions written and produced by celebrated artists Denise Marsa and Paul A. Harvey. The soundtrack will be available Friday, June 13, across major streaming platforms.
Blaze without Burning, William May’s debut collection, offers readers of poetry a deeply personal, intricately structured exploration of resilience, transformation, and human connection. This chapbook stands out for its innovative approach to form: each poem in the first section is paired with a “twin” poem in the second section, two poems sharing a title but presenting distinct perspectives. William May’s Blaze without Burning exemplifies the ways poetry can illuminate and ultimately connect us all.
The audio companion reimagines the chapbook’s structure through a musical “twinning” concept reflecting the twinning concept William May displays in his book: each poem is interpreted with a paired composition—original and “after”—mirroring the emotional arc and thematic tension within the book. The result is a soundscape that fuses ambient instrumentation and sonic narrative, guiding listeners through the book’s raw intimacy and lyrical architecture.
Denise Marsa, founder of Marsa Media and a pioneering voice in creative production, brings her seasoned artistry and producer’s edge to the collaboration.
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Paul A. Harvey crafts textured layers of guitar, rhythm, and melodic nuance that deepen the listener’s connection to each poem.
Marsa also represents May through her media company, Marsa Media, handling PR and marketing for his endeavors.
“This music breathes between the lines,” says May. “It doesn’t just accompany the poems—it expands their meaning and enhances the reader’s experience.”
With 25 short-form compositions, the companion album is both a standalone listening experience and an immersive counterpart to Blaze Without Burning. From acoustic intimacy to electric transformation, the soundtrack honors the emotional pulse and poetic shifts that define May’s celebrated debut.
The Blaze Without Burning audio companion will be released via KeyMedia Group and distributed digitally on Friday, June 13, 2025. Links to all streaming platforms here.
About the Artists:
William May, a fourth-generation native of New York’s Greenwich Village, dubbing himself a “Neurodiverse Language Wizard,” began writing poetry when he was 9 years old while a student at The Stephen Gaynor School, a pioneer in special education.
There he received individualized support, allowing him to thrive academically, and, eventually, enabling him to attend New York City’s highly competitive Collegiate School. His work has been featured in SoFloPoJo, Chameleon Chimera: An Anthology of Florida Poets, and The Centifictionist. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the University of North Carolina’s MFA program in creative writing, William shares his work through performances, newsletters, and his podcast, Argh! Not Another Podcast About Book Publishing. Find more of his work, links to publications, and social media contact information at WilliamMayWrites.com.
Denise Marsa is an award-winning singer-songwriter, producer, and founder of Marsa Media. Known for her work across music, publishing, and creative advocacy, Marsa brings decades of production experience and narrative insight to this collaboration.
Paul A. Harvey is a UK-based composer and musician known for his cinematic guitar compositions and atmospheric sound design. He has written for, toured, and/or recorded with Prefab Sprout, Tom Robinson, and Ellis Beggs & Howard. His work spans solo projects, scoring, and cross-genre collaborations.
Sometimes, the most resonant songs emerge not from a single moment of inspiration but from a long, quiet process of rediscovery.
“Open Wide” is the latest single from cinematic folk-pop artist Havilah Tower, and it is one such song – a reflective and emotionally charged meditation on what it means to outgrow the life you thought you wanted. Tower explores the quiet reckoning that comes when ambition gives way to presence, and when clarity begins to form in the spaces we often overlook.
The journey to Open Wide began with an unexpected spark: an article about her alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, hiring their first Songwriter-in-Residence.
That artist, Darden Smith, would go on to mentor Tower through a series of creative breakthroughs, helping her reconnect with her voice in new ways. What followed was a groundbreaking collaboration across borders – Tower and her longtime trio partnered with international music startup Hall Up to bring the track to life, working with UK-based producer David A. Griffiths and Hollywood engineer Adam Freeman to shape the sound.
“Open Wide” marks a shift not just in Tower’s sound, but in her storytelling. It’s the product of reflection, resilience and a willingness to see – and sing – the truth.
1.Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically in this way?
Our newest single, Open Wide, is a cinematic folk-pop song that explores what happens when you’ve built up a “dream life” but it turns out to be different than you thought or want anymore.
Open Wide is a raw, lyrical reflection on trading illusion for truth—and finding the courage to be honest with yourself on what really matters to you, which often are the simple things around you all along.
2. What was the inspiration behind this new video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?
For the Open Wide music video, we wanted to bring the core message of the song, showing the contrast of someone leading a seemingly successful life on the surface while also struggling.
In the music video for “Open Wide”, you follow a central character as she rises to fame through her music, a life she worked hard to create. Even though it all looks beautiful on the outside, she is struggling on the inside missing the core, fundamental things in her life she grew up like spending time with family, true connections with friends and a sense of herself.
Central to where we meet the main character in the story is an unraveling of this supposed “dream life”. It’s through this unraveling that she breaks through to something more meaningful, her own truth and direction – all things that take courage to embrace when you’re leading such a seemingly successful life. This shift plays out in the music video as a parallel between her adult self and her childhood memories that she starts to reconnect with.
It’s a reminder that all the glitters is not gold, and that sometimes our hardest moments can be doorways into something more truer and more meaningful. Hence the lyrics: “Unraveling minds open wide”.
3. What was the process of making the video?
In making Open Wide, we wanted to push the envelope of leveraging technology to tell the story. We tend to embrace a “test and learn” mentality so we decided to leverage some of the latest AI tools, like Runway, and build out the narrative portion of the story, which involved a lot of hours of fine-tuning prompts and then of course, editing the clips to tell the story. Through this work, we built out the journey of our central character.
Simultaneously, we wanted to ground the video in this world with a performance from our band so we conducted multiple filmings in order to capture each of us to interweave throughout the video, mainly featuring Havilah Tower as the primary narrator who is singing Open Wide.
There is a subtle moment that happens at the beginning and end of the music video, starting off with what appears to be a forced smile but ending with a more real, authentic smile. The smile bookends the journey of going from a seemingly successful life to truer success of being connected to yourself and making choices that are actually fulfilling.
New York City is about to experience a seismic collision of hard dance music power as two titans of the global scene—Lady Faith and Angerfist—join forces for an explosive night at Webster Hall on Saturday, November 1st. For fans of Hardstyle, Hardcore, and the adrenaline-fueled underworld of pounding bass music, this is set to be the show of the season—where two legends converge in one of the most iconic venues on the East Coast.
This highly anticipated event arrives at a transformative moment in Lady Faith’s career. After more than a decade of commanding main stages at the world’s biggest festivals and dropping high-impact singles like her official covers of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” and Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” the Iranian-American producer has just unleashed her most ambitious project to date: UNTAMED, a groundbreaking full-length debut album released in Spring 2025 via Dutch imprint SCANTRAXX. Hailed as the first hard dance LP by a female artist released on a major label, the eleven-track juggernaut is a fearless, genre-blurring body of work that traverses euphoric hardstyle, brutal techno, and filthy dubstep without losing the laser focus and precision Lady Faith is known for.
The night at Webster Hall will showcase this triumphant evolution in full force, with fans finally able to hear UNTAMED’s boldest tracks live. From the euphoric anthem “Salvation” featuring Hardstyle legend JDX, to the ground-shaking techno collaboration “Bass In Your Face” with T78, to her emotionally charged vocal cut “By My Side” with Lexy Panterra—Lady Faith’s set promises a rollercoaster of emotion, energy, and defiant spirit. Her remix of Angerfist’s classic “The Law”—already praised by the hardcore legend himself—has been annihilating festival speakers worldwide, and will no doubt be one of the many weapons in her arsenal that night.
“I’m so excited to head back to NYC for Halloween weekend and reunite with my east coast hard dance fam. When putting this show together for Webster Hall, we knew that everyone involved had to be top tier to match how iconic this venue is. Angerfist was the ideal combination to provide our fans with a complete Hard Dance experience and there’s no one else I’d rather share the stage and this moment with!” – Lady Faith
Joining her is none other than Angerfist, the masked overlord of hardcore and one of the most electrifying performers in the world of hard electronic music. With an unmistakable sound marked by relentless kicks, aggressive melodies, and eerie atmospheres, Angerfist has built a fanatical following across Europe and beyond. His legacy spans more than two decades, dominating stages from Defqon.1 and Dominator to Masters of Hardcore. His rare U.S. appearances are always a draw, but pairing him with Lady Faith for this special night adds a once-in-a-lifetime edge to an already ferocious lineup.
Together, Lady Faith and Angerfist represent two distinct but perfectly colliding ends of the hard dance spectrum—one rooted in unfiltered emotional catharsis and genre-bending innovation, the other forged in fire and fury with razor-sharp hardcore precision. This isn’t just a show. It’s a movement—for one night in NYC, where the underground rises, the BPMs spike, and every kick drum hits like a battle cry.
Expect walls to shake, lights to melt, and sweat to pour as these two powerhouses light up Webster Hall in an all-out celebration of the raw energy and passion that fuels the hard dance community. Whether you’ve been following the scene for years or are just discovering it, this is a rare opportunity to be part of a moment that transcends borders, language, and genre—a unifying experience driven by rhythm, rebellion, and release.
What begins as a classic story of romantic infidelity quickly becomes something more nuanced and powerful: a conversation between two women who unknowingly shared the same partner. But instead of revenge, Raphaela offers empathy. In “Leave Him First,” the narrator speaks not to the man who broke her heart, but to the girl he cheated with – encouraging her to reclaim her worth before it’s too late.
The track’s delicate balance of melancholic vulnerability and quiet strength is what makes it unforgettable. It’s a reflection of Raphaela’s unique perspective – choosing compassion over conflict, solidarity over spite.
I started writing this song like I was confronting him, but it didn’t feel right. The moment I rewrote it as a message to the girl he cheated with, everything clicked. It’s about breaking the cycle – telling her, woman to woman, that she deserves better. That shift gave me a sense of empowerment I didn’t expect. It made the song feel more honest, more healing. – Raphaela
Born in Beirut and based in Ottawa, Raphaela brings together global influences and heartfelt songwriting in a sound that’s deeply personal, emotionally cinematic, and rooted in storytelling. Her musical foundation was shaped by her opera-singing mother and her father’s love of timeless classics, which laid the groundwork for her own romantic, introspective voice.
Raphaela’s previous singles – including “Fifth Street,” “South of France,” “Happy Endings,” and “Be My Hero” – have explored the emotional spectrum of love, loss, and healing. “Leave Him First” marks a significant turning point, bridging heartbreak with empowerment, and setting the tone for her upcoming debut EP.
The EP, which releases later this year, will celebrate the brighter side of love – the kind that follows heartbreak and reminds us why we still believe. With its mix of adult contemporary depth and dreamy alt-pop elegance, Raphaela’s work invites listeners to feel deeply, reflect honestly, and move forward with hope.
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