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| Photo by Aleksandr Karjaka |
Amanda DeBoer Bartlett’s final single “Quick Trips” is out this week. It's the second single we have featured from her forthcoming album and once again we are superbly impressed by the whole thing. Beautiful heartfelt vocals, along with a superbly crafted and melodic musical backdrop, this sets up the new album to be something very special. Written while touring with babies in tow, it’s a tender, road-worn reflection on gas station coffee, fleeting cities, and the disorienting beauty of life in motion.
It’s the last preview before her full-length album Braided Together arrives June 6, a sweeping blend of country, folk, classical, and experimental music, recorded at Electrical Audio with standout Chicago players. Amanda’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Bandcamp Daily, I Care If You Listen, and more.
Braided Together is Amanda DeBoer Bartlett’s second collection of original songs. Blending her roots in country, folk, classical, and experimental music, the album delves into Bartlett’s childhood in Nebraska, her life as a young musician on the road, and the transformations of early motherhood. The songs pay tribute to gas stations and cheap motels, embrace the chaotic sweetness of raising babies, and contemplate reckless escapes into the clouds. With powerful and expressive vocals, Bartlett brings these themes to life through intricately crafted songs, recorded with Taylor Hales at the legendary Electrical Audio and performed by some of Chicago’s most admired players in the folk, jazz, and indie rock scenes.
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HalfLife - Nothing New.
Nothing New is about moving on from people and places, and being able to embrace that while also acknowledging how much you miss them. We wrote this song towards the end of our last year of high school, as we were all preparing to say goodbye to friends and colleagues that we’d known for years.
Artist Bio: We’re a pop rock band, composed of two girls and two guys, who met in high school in Geneva, Switzerland. Now at university, we meet up in the summer to record new music. We released our first song “Never Going Back” in January 2024, a few months before we graduated. In August of that same year we recorded our debut EP “Epilogues”, which was released a couple of weeks back.
For our EP, we drew on a plethora of influences, from Oasis to Bloc Party, from No Doubt to Olivia Rodrigo, as we tried to craft an identity for ourselves. Our EP was written entirely by the band members (plus our bassist’s sister on one track), as well as produced, mixed and mastered by us.
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Indie singer-songwriter Brian Dunne shares the bittersweet new single "Play The Hits," his first solo release since 2023's Loser On The Ropes, out today on Missing Piece Records. A punchy song about aging and self-destruction built around fatalist drama, "Play The Hits" becomes more of a pep talk as Dunne approaches the main character with so much empathy and humor that you can't help but root for them.
Along with the release, Dunne shares a live acoustic performance of the song, which was recorded at the Red Hook, Brooklyn restaurant Pitt’s.
“'Play The Hits' is a song about the constant struggle to swim upstream, and the inevitable surrender of your once sanctimonious and youthful idealism," says Dunne. "It’s a bittersweet, humbling day when you have to lay down your sword; when you find yourself in dire straits (the situation, not the band), and there’s only one way out. So play 'em the hits. The odds were against you from the start.”
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