As a DJ, S-ONE knows how to control a party. He’s dominated the night club and party scene from the east to west end, the Greater Toronto Area and is continuing to grow his audience beyond the city and the country as he tours and shares his love of music with crowds everywhere. When other children his age were playing with toys, S-ONE was drawn to his father’s records and expensive sound equipment. As a boy he became known for sneaking and manually spinning records on the needles of his father’s turntable so that he could hear the faint melodies trapped in the grooves of each record.Just in time for the summer S-ONE teams with 23Dreamz on the seductive single “Lil Bit”.A melodic dance floor anthem inspired to help people “find a lil bit of love in our loveless world” 

Melina Coolen is a Canadian songwriter, producer and audio engineer and producer. Her retropop influence is undeniable in her carefully self-produced sound and sophisticated songwriting style. After years of formal classical training and receiving the RCM Silver Medal in piano, she pursued her love for pop and jazz songwriting in college and university.

Her song “Nothing At All” is a true blue retropop bubblegum tune. It features the voice of Linda Vilela, whom Melina thought was a perfect fit to complete the song when she discovered her on Airgigs. 

Athena Park is an award winning actress who has starred in multiple film and television productions in Canada and the United States. Currently studying at the University of Toronto, she is continuously working on new music and film projects. Following up on her debut single, “Tuatara,” Athena’s latest release is the bitterly honest “Heathen.” 

Inspired by the feelings of falling in love with someone who doesn’t truly value you, “Heathen” encapsulates when someone gives themselves up completely for somebody who doesn’t even care to notice.

The symbolic visuals for “Heathen” were shot by OfTheSaint Productions and are dear to Athena’s heart. Being behind bars represents feeling caged – like you can’t escape your feelings. 

Fans of independent Canadian music will likely recognize the name Shane Ghostkeeper from his namesake project GHOSTKEEPER, a band that has been responsible for some of the more thrilling music to emerge from Alberta during the last 15 years. But while his parent band trades in a highly unique, left-of-centre approach to indie rock, this new project is a deeply reverential tribute to the music he absorbed while growing up in the Northern Alberta Métis communities of Paddle Prairie, High Level, and Rocky Lane.

The vocal melodies on “V Chill” were inspired by the need to soothe and entertain Shane’s teething baby boy. After hours of bouncing him around the house, lyrics started to form as fatherly advice and blessings.

“‘V Chill’ was coined by my producer and big brother, Lorrie Matheson,” says Shane. “An appropriate play on my son’s name, Vittal Chillawee Ghostkeeper.”

The Femme Fatale of Folk known as Sarah Segal-Lazar currently splits her time between the busy streets of Montreal and the red shores of PEI. She shares her own special blend of folk and country, wherever the wind may take her. Her latest album, produced by Canadian folk luminary Matthew Barber, comes out later this year.

There’s a farmer in the small community where she’s from on PEI. This older fella lives alone in the home where his family has lived for generations. The locals have speculated whether or not he’s always been a bachelor, or was once married. One day, when Segal-Lazar was visiting, she noticed a room with women’s clothes still hanging in the closet. They looked like they’d been hanging there for years, maybe decades, untouched.

Segal-Lazar didn’t feel like she could intrude with a question, for fear of bringing up painful memories. Instead, she let her imagination take her on a journey, and wrote the song “This Old House” for him – and all the older folks whose stories we don’t always get to hear – incorporating personal details like his grandmother’s rug, faded family photos, and the embroidered tapestries. 

“I started writing this song because I was going to be leaving PEI for a while, and I wanted to write a song about my relationship with the island,” explains Segal-Lazar. “I wanted to write a love song or a breakup song or an ‘it’s complicated’ song about us. But as I started noodling around on the guitar, it turned out that I didn’t actually have much to say about myself – what came out was a song about someone else.”

Originally from London, UK, LTtheMonk had an eclectic musical upbringing that set him off on a journey to becoming a musician himself. Dance is also an intrinsic part of LT‘s toolkit, with bantamweight Gene Kelly-meets-James Brown footwork and immaculate sport socks both indelible signatures of his persona as an entertainer. Melding all of his influences, LT aims to fuse dance music with hip-hop and pop, to create his own unique sound.

LT was listening to a podcast series about the “Cola Wars” of the 70s and 80s between Coca Cola and Pepsi, and it made him think about being in a relationship where you’re considered a “power couple.” In a lot of situations, ego might destroy the relationship, if one person is being given more attention, or achieving more success than the other.

With all that in mind, LT wrote “Pepsi Challenge” with Coke and Pepsi being a cheeky metaphor for the power couple, and how you can compete with each other, or work together and be a way stronger partnership.

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

‘Pepsi Challenge’ was inspired by the Cola Wars of the 70s and 80s, when Pepsi & Coca-Cola were competing to be the number 1 soda in North America, and invented great advertising campaigns like the Pepsi Challenge to try and win. I loved all the vintage Pepsi & Coke commercials that I was watching while I was writing the song (and a lot of the lyrics are references to those commercials), and thought it would be a great song to shoot a video for, to take the Hollywood style of all of those ads and add my own colours and styles to them. And of course, inventing my own Monk Pop and Uptonic sodas for our own Pepsi Challenge!

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

I wanted to take the inspiration of classic Pepsi & Coca-Cola advertising, but bring it into my own new Monk style. So in the video’s storyline, my challenger Kiara Taylor (who also provided background vocals on the song) and I are having contestants take the Pepsi Challenge, but with our own Monk Pop & Uptonic sodas instead of Pepsi and Coke. We compete with the sodas, mix them into alcoholic cocktails, all different challenges to see which soda is number 1.

3.What was the process of making this video?

This video was so fun to make! My director Matt Azzarello and I had our treatment ready, and we brought in Kiara as my ‘challenger’, and a few friends to take the Challenge with us. We went to Urban Queens Beauty Bar in Toronto to shoot the video, which was a perfect backdrop while we spent the day drinking a lot of Monk Pop, Uptonic, Coke & Pepsi, and enjoying the laughter and competition amongst friends!