10 Best Songs of the Week: Miki Berenyi Trio, Good Looks, Dehd, Sour Widows, and More
May 10, 2024
Welcome to the 16th Songs of the Week of 2024. This week Andy Von Pip, Caleb Campbell, Matt the Raven, and Scott Dransfield helped me decide what should make the list. We seriously considered over 25 songs this week and narrowed it down to a Top 10.
Recently we announced our new print issue, The ’90s Issue, featuring The Cardigans and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth on the covers. Buy it from us directly here.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last week, we have picked the 10 best the last seven days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below.
1. Miki Berenyi Trio: “Vertigo”
This week, Miki Berenyi Trio—led by the former singer/guitarist with1990s shoegaze, dream pop, and Britpop sensations Lush—shared their debut single, “Vertigo,” via a music video. It comes ahead of the group’s previously announced U.S. tour dates.
After Lush, Berenyi was also in the band Piroshka and for the trio she is backed by two members of that band—Berenyi’s life partner KJ “Moose” McKillop (of ’90s shoegazers Moose) and guitarist Oliver Cherer. McKillop is sitting out the U.S. tour because he doesn’t like to fly due to both environmental concerns and a fear of flying, so bassist Mick Conroy (Modern English and formerly of Piroshka) is standing in.
“‘Vertigo’ is about anxiety and the efforts to talk myself down from the precipice—the usual cheerful stuff,” says Berenyi of the new single in a press release.
Of the recording the song, she adds: “It’s a challenge to not have a drummer, and to use more programming, but the essence of the music is still guitars and melody—as it always has been, particularly in mine and Moose’s bands.”
French director Sébastien Faits-Divers made the “Vertigo” video, filming it in the Consortium Museum (Contemporary Art Center) in Dijon, in one of the Isabella Ducrot exhibition rooms.
On their tour, Miki Berenyi Trio will be performing both Lush and Piroshka songs, as well as some new Miki Berenyi Trio originals, including “Verigo.”
In 2022, Berenyi released her acclaimed memoir, Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, and the trio was partially born out of the need to perform at book events. Fingers Crossed is now finally available in America via Mango Publishing.
Berenyi does a joint interview with Australian dream pop artist Hatchie in the current issue of our print magazine, The ’90s Issue, where she discusses her memoir and Lush. Buy a copy directly from us here.
Pirohska, which also features former Elastica drummer Justin Welch, released their second studio album, Love Drips and Gathers, in 2021 via Bella Union. Read our interview with them about it here.
Pirsoshka also contributed to our Covers of Coversalbum in honor our 20th Anniversary, where they covered Grandaddy’s “The Crystal Lake.”
Last year, 4AD reissued Lush’s three full-length studio albums—Spooky (1992), Split (1994), and Lovelife (1996)—on vinyl.
In April, Lush and 4AD also teamed up with The Criterion Channel to release A Far From Home Movie, a new short documentary film on the band based on Super-8 footage filmed by bassist Philip King during their tours from 1992 to 1996.
In a press release frontman Tyler Jordan says the song is about his relationship with his mom and “the connection to why I write songs and perform them, and how it affects my other relationships, turning darkness to light in the process.”
Riley Engemoen directed the song’s video and had this to say in a press release: “My friend Liz and I met Dan & Doris at the Broken Spoke and have since been creating a documentary on them called Forcefield of Love. Dr. Dan is known as ‘Austin’s coolest marriage and family therapist.’ Him and Doris are enamored with one another, always color-coordinated in a honeymoon state. They spend most evenings dancing through Austin’s honky tonks and jazz clubs—blissfully and unabashedly forming a quantum energy field of Love—hypnotizing all of those in their orbit.”
Lived Here For a While is the band’s second album and the follow-up to 2022’s Bummer Year.
The album was influenced by an accident lead guitarist Jake Ames had just after the band’s hometown record release show for Bummer Year, when he was hit by a car outside the venue and ended up in the hospital with a fractured skull and tailbone, along with short-term memory issues.
“We were in the hospital with him every day,” says frontman Tyler Jordan in a press release. “It wasn’t clear how bad it was gonna be for Jake. We had no idea how this traumatic brain injury would affect him until the swelling went down. We even wondered if we’d ever play music together again.”
Luckily Ames made a full recovery and joined by drummer Phil Dunne and bassist Robert Cherry, they set out to record Lived Here For a While at Texas’ Dandy Sounds with producer/engineer Dan Duszynski (of Loma and Cross Record). Harrison Anderson has since joined the band as their new bassist.
3. Dehd: “Dog Days”
Chicago trio Dehd released a new album, Poetry, today via Fat Possum. Earlier this week they shared its fourth single, “Dog Days,” via a one-take video.
The band’s Jason Balla had this to say about the song in a press release: “This song is a celebration for the messiness of life and the search for companionship. It’s about opening your heart and letting it be pummeled. It’s taking risks, receiving rejection, dealing out disappointment. It’s about being brave and sometimes making bad decisions. It seems like everyone I know is out here grasping at love and often, fucking it up, breaking hearts and having ours broken along the way. It’s just the rules of the game and I wanted to make an anthem for people on the same rollercoaster, just trying their best, losing fast and loving hard.”
Previously the band shared the album’s first single, “Mood Ring,” via a music video. It was one of our Songs of the Week. Then they shared its second single, “Light On.” The album’s third single was “Alien.”
Poetry is the follow-up to 2022’s Blue Skies(also on Fat Possum) and 2020’s Flower of Devotion (which was released by Fire Talk).
Dehd is Emily Kempf, Jason Balla, and Eric McGrady. After they finished touring Blue Skies, the band embarked on some writing sessions in remote locations. “Eating, sleeping, breathing, living—our only purpose was to write,” says Kempf in a press release.
Ziyad Asrar of Whitney co-produced the album alongside Balla, recording at Palisade Studios in Chicago. Charles Bukowski’s poem “The Laughing Heart” inspired the album.
Bay Area trio Sour Widows are releasing their debut album, Revival of a Friend, on June 28 via Exploding In Sound. This week they shared its latest single, the over eight-minute long “Staring Into Heaven/Shining,” via a music video. It’s the album’s closing track.
The band’s Susanna Thomson had this to say about the song in a press release: “After my mom passed in late June of 2021, I went on a trip in August of that year in an attempt to put physical distance between myself and the pain of what I had just experienced. I was searching for relief wherever I thought I could find it; ultimately, that trip taught me that grief cannot be outrun. ‘Staring Into Heaven/Shining’ is a confessional song, written at a time when I was desperate to gain control over my life through ideas I had about grieving the ‘right’ way. As I tried and failed to reconcile feelings of regret and unanswerable questions, it became clearer to me that all I can do is choose to simply observe the experience of grief. The lyrics are searching, but come to their natural end in a place without resolution; it wasn’t until after finishing the song that I realized there can be hope in accepting that there are things we cannot know about death.”
Previously the band shared the album’s first single, “Cherish.”
Jay Som’s “If I Could” was one of our favorites of the tracks not yet released as a single.
Previously we posted Polachek’s contribution to the soundtrack, “Starburned and Unkissed.” Alex G’s original score for the film is coming out on May 16.
Jane Schoenbrun directs I Saw the TV Glow, which is the follow-up to their acclaimed 2021 film, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. The horror film stars Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine, with Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Fred Durst, Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan, and Danielle Deadwyler in supporting roles. Bridgers and Sloppy Jane also appear in the film as themselves.
6. Ducks Ltd.: “When You’re Outside”
Toronto-based duo Ducks Ltd. released a new album, Harm’s Way, in February via Carpark. This week they shared a new song, “When You’re Outside,” that was recorded during the Harm’s Way sessions but didn’t end up on the album. It features backing harmonies from Julia Steiner (of Ratboys) and Margaret McCarthy (of Moontype).
Ducks Ltd. is Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis.
McGreevy had this to say about the single in a press release: “This was one we wrote pretty early in the process for Harm’s Way, which was a period when a lot of country-leaning ideas were working their way into our arrangements. I’d demoed the harmonies in the chorus (badly), and when we were working on backing vocals with Julia and Margaret they immediately understood what we were trying to do and really elevated it. The song didn’t end up quite fitting in the sequence for the album, but it does a couple things we’ve never done before in a Ducks song so I’m glad we’re finding a way to put it out. It’s about trying to support someone who is making that difficult to do. Unconditional love in a sense. Or at least love with limited conditions.”
McGreevy had this to say about the rest of the tracks on the album in a previous press release: “They’re songs about struggling. About watching people I care for suffer, and trying to figure out how to be there for them. And about the strain of living in the world when it feels like it’s ready to collapse.”
This week, Madrid-based band Hinds announced a new album, VIVA HINDS, and shared a new song from it, “Boom Boom Back,” which features Beck. They also announced some North American tour dates. VIVA HINDS also features Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten andis due out September 6 via Lucky Number. Check out the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as the tour dates, here.
VIVA HINDS features “Coffee,” a new song the band shared in February. VIVA HINDS is the band’s first album since becoming a duo again. Hinds was founded by co-vocalists and co-guitarists Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote in 2011, but for most of their career they’ve been a four-piece. Ade Martin and Amber Grimbergen left the band in 2022, returning them to a duo.
Pete Robertson (The Vaccines, beabadoobee) produced the album, which was mixed by Caesar Edmunds (The Killers, Wet Leg) and engineered by Tom Roach. It was recorded in rural France.
“This isn’t a rational album, this is made with emotions, in no specific order,” Cosials says in a press release. “We never sat down to think what we should write about, we sat down to write about what we were going through. We didn’t choose a ‘new look,’ we didn’t wanna pretend to be mature, or appear as a more sophisticated band. To me it is cohesive, but it’s not a fairy tale or a brainy narrative. It’s heart-driven.”
Of keeping the band going despite the line-up change and other challenges (the pandemic, no label), Cosials says: “We started the band because we are so safe and comfortable with each other. Our relationship is unbreakable. This connection between us hasn’t changed since the very beginning. We still finish each other’s ideas, laugh at each other’s jokes and rhyme each other’s lines. Maintaining that enthusiasm for music and for Hinds through the years may seem extremely difficult to find, but it’s something that only can happen with your very best friend.”
Bonny Light Horseman is Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson, and Josh Kaufman. Kaufman produced the album, which was partially recorded at Levis (pronounced: “leh-viss”) Corner House, which is a century-old pub in Ballydehob, County Cork in Ireland. JT Bates (drums), Cameron Ralston (bass), and recording engineer Bella Blasko joined them in those sessions. The album was finished Dreamland Recording Studios in Upstate New York, which is where they completed their first two albums. Those sessions included Mike Lewis on bass and tenor saxophone and Annie Nero on upright bass and harmonies.
The band collectively had this to say about “Old Dutch” in a press release: “This song began as a backstage voice memo when we were performing at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, NY, so iPhone named it for us. It came together fast with the three of us just finger-painting until there it was. It took a few fits and starts before we realized that it should be a duet and–importantly–a conversation. We recorded it live at Levis’ and when the whole crowd started singing ‘yeah I got a feelin,’ we all experienced a moment of collective lift-off. Josh looked over at Joe’s [bar owner] partner Caroline behind the bar, eyes wide open, arms outstretched, singing along and deeply feeling it. We’d never had that kind of moment tracking a song for a record before, seeing and feeling the connection (beyond the musicians in the room) in real-time as it’s all going to tape. It feels like this recording has some of that ‘real-life’ energy to it.”
The album includes “When I Was Younger,” a new song the band shared in February that was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced they shared its second single, “I Know You Know,” via their first ever music video.
Bonny Light Horseman’s last album, Rolling Golden Holy, came out in 2022 via 37d03d.
This week, psych-rockers Wand announced a new album, Vertigo, and shared its first single, “Smile,” via a music video. Vertigo is due out July 26 via Drag City.
Cory Hanson leads the band, which also features Evan Backer, Evan Burrows, and Robbie Cody. The album was formed from 50 hours of live improvisations. Vertigo follows 2019’s Laughing Matter.
Honorable Mentions:
These songs almost made the Top 10.
Amen Dunes: “Rugby Child”
beabadoobee: “Take a Bite”
The Bug Club: “Quality Pints”
John Cale: “Shark-Shark”
Cola: “Albatross”
Efterklang: “Plant”
fantasy of a broken heart: “Ur Heart Stops”
Kaeto: “HERO”
Martha Skye Murphy: “Pick Yourself Up”
Proper.: “The 90s”
Quivers: “Apparition”
The Weather Station: “Moonlight”
Here’s a handy Spotify playlist featuring the Top 10 in order, followed by all the honorable mentions:
Spacey Jane – Listen to Our Interview in the New Episode of Our Under the Radar Podcast
Mar 30, 2023
Caleb Harper, frontman of the Australian band Spacey Jane, is our final artist interview for Season 3 of our Under the Radar with Celine Teo-Blockey podcast. The fast rising band—which includes Kieran Lama, Ashton Hardman-Le Cornu, and Peppa Lane—had six songs off their recent sophomore album, Here Comes Everybody, break into the Triple J Hottest 100 listener’s poll for 2022. Three of those songs were also in the Top 10—an impressive feat only three other bands have achieved since the Australian radio station launched the popular, annual poll three decades ago.
Their 2020 debut, Sunlight, broke the Top 10 albums on the ARIA charts, while Here Comes Everyone went to Number One. A single from their first record, “Booster Seat,” is a sunny jangle about a dark period that won Song of the Year at the 2021 ARIA awards, proving how resonant their music was, particularly for young people who felt the twin stresses of COVID and climate change at what was meant to be the best time of their life.
The global pandemic might have prevented Spacey Jane from touring their first album but the album’s reach helped grow their popularity internationally and meant that the release of their follow up was met with sold out shows across America, last October.
On the podcast, Harper talks about being labeled the poster child for the COVID generation—kids that came off age during the pandemic—because he sings transparent songs about his own anxiety (“Booster Seat”), mental health (“It’s Been a Long Day”), the culture of binge drinking among young men (“Lunchtime”), and his sometimes difficult childhood (“Good Grief”) growing up part of a strict, religious community in rural Australia.
“It’s fine if people say this or that about it,” Harper says, referring to the label, “I might not always agree…but I’ll just keep making the music that I want to make…for the fans.” The band are currently on a Los Angeles sojourn to write new music, and have already been booked for Shaky Knees festival in Atlanta, with more festival dates expected to follow.
Listen to the episode below.
Please write to [email protected] if you would like to share your thoughts on this episode.
Each monthly episode of Under the Radar features an interview with a different musician conducted by host and producer Celine Teo-Blockey.
Season 3 launched with episode one and our interview with Warpaint. Season 3, episode two featured Seratones. Season 3, episode three featured Marlon Williams. Season 3, episode four featured Bloc Party. Season 3, episode five featured Phoenix. Season 3, episode six featured Tim Burgess. By Celine Teo-Blockey
Tim Burgess – Listen to Our Interview in the New Episode of Our Under the Radar Podcast
Feb 09, 2023
Author, solo artist, and Charlatans frontman, Tim Burgess is our latest guest on Season 3 of our Under the Radar with Celine Teo-Blockey podcast, talking about his sixth solo album Typical Music. Clocking in at more than 120 mins, this 22-track double album is anything but typical. “It was always going to be considered tongue in cheek,” explains Burgess of the album title, “but during COVID…I kept thinking, typically, music can save the day.”
The Charlatans have lost two founding members (keyboardist Rob Collins in a tragic accident in 1997, at the height of the band’s popularity and drummer, Jon Brookes in 2013, from a brain tumor), the first one delivering a seismic shift to the band, and Burgess also recently lost his father, who died during the pandemic. Tim’s Twitter Listening Party grew out of his need to want to connect with people at a time when all live gigs were being cancelled. It quickly became for Burgess, his coterie of musician friends, and music fans everywhere a much needed distraction, then source of joy. The positivity of the listening parties inspired the optimistic tone of Typical Music.
On a more somber moment on the podcast, Burgess reveals the toll that Collins’ fatal accident took on him, “I just drank a lot…after Rob’s death.” Now sober for 15 years, Burgess’ joie de vivre is most apparent when he discusses his love for old records and growing up in Northwich with a mother as the unlikely conduit between him and one of his favorite bands, New Order. He admits that his teenage obsession for listening to full albums from cover to cover with his friends was rekindled during the pandemic when Tim’s Twitter Listening Party became a beacon for people looking to connect with others while in isolation.
Now that Twitter has somewhat imploded with Elon Musk, Burgess was unsure of the Listening Party’s future, “I have no idea. I mean, I’ve disengaged a little bit from Twitter…who knows what’s going to happen? But I mean, the Listening Party kind of is continuously evolving anyway.” They’ve done live shows and Burgess reveals that there are plans for the Listening Party to continue as a radio show.
Listen to the episode below.
Please write to [email protected] if you would like to share your thoughts on this episode.
Each monthly episode of Under the Radar features an interview with a different musician conducted by host and producer Celine Teo-Blockey.
Season 3 launched with episode one and our interview with Warpaint. Season 3, episode two featured Seratones. Season 3, episode three featured Marlon Williams. Season 3, episode four featured Bloc Party. Season 3, episode five featured Phoenix. By Celine Teo-Blockey
Phoenix – Listen to Our Interview in the New Episode of Our Under the Radar Podcast
Dec 05, 2022
Frontman Thomas Mars of French band Phoenix is our latest guest on Season 3 of our Under the Radar with Celine Teo-Blockey podcast. The band—which also includes Deck d’Arcy, and brothers Christian Mazzalai and Laurent Brancowitz—released their seventh album Alpha Zulu, on Glassnote Records last month and have been relishing being on tour together and playing live, post-lockdown. Recorded in a room at the Louvre Museum in Paris over the course of the pandemic and several strict lockdowns in France, Mars explains the significance of Alpha Zulu’s title and how the songwriting relates to themes of death, aging and trying to “manifest the light at the end of the tunnel.”
On a Q &A session on the band’s Facebook, Mars revealed that the vocal take for the synth-heavy single “Winter Solstice” was recorded “in the fetal position, under a table”—a hint at the mood of the track, which was recorded in the depths of the pandemic and California fires. Though Mars now resides in New York with his wife, filmmaker, Sofia Coppola and their family, the foursome always write together in the same room. This was their first where Mars was unable to leave Northern California and join the others in Paris. “The light in this song,” Mars explains on the podcast, “is loyalty.”
Yet Alpha Zulu is not all doom and gloom. Like their previous album—2017’s Ti Amo, which was written in the aftermath of France’s brutal year of terrorist attacks—Alpha Zulu is life-affirming and filled with moments of pure joy and euphoria, songs designed for the dancefloor. In the end Mars says, “That is the function of art.”
Poignantly, Mars also reveals the lasting impact that the death of his grandfather had on him as an 11-year-old, and he talks candidly about growing up in the “judgy” suburbs of Versailles—how that bonded the four bandmates to make music and their families to become close friends.
Listen to the episode below.
Please write to [email protected] if you would like to share your thoughts on this episode.
Each monthly episode of Under the Radar features an interview with a different musician conducted by host and producer Celine Teo-Blockey.
On top of being available on all podcasting platforms the podcast also airs on WLUR, an NPR affiliate based in Lexington, VA (the city where Under the Radar is currently based).
Season 3 launched with episode one and our interview with Warpaint. Season 3, episode two featured Seratones. Season 3, episode three featured Marlon Williams. Season 3, episode four featured Bloc Party. By Celine Teo-Blockey
Consider the hell-scape which has been the news cycle for the last five years and its cast of villains—Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Boris Johnson—everywhere you looked it seemed people were trying to outdo or take each other down. Where money talks and people with means get away with murder. It was in this climate of chaos that Okereke wrote Bloc Party’s sixth album, Alpha Games.
On the podcast, Okereke discusses this coarsening of public discourse that he’s witnessed from the political class, which has trickled down and infected everybody. As a result, he refused to dress up the songs and the stories they tell—of predatory sexual behavior in “Traps,” of people who should received their comeuppance in “Callum is a Snake,” and of the nouveau riche and their hangers-on in “Rough Justice.”
Okereke also shares stories of his childhood growing up in an East London estate where a lot of time was whiled away with his sister in the local playground or with his mother at church. And he reveals that the first time he realized that music could really take him somewhere else was when he heard Suede’s second album, Dog Man Star.
Alpha Games is out now via Infectious/BMG.
Listen to the episode below.
Please write to [email protected] if you would like to share your thoughts on this episode.
Each monthly episode of Under the Radar features an interview with a different musician conducted by host and producer Celine Teo-Blockey.
On top of being available on all podcasting platforms the podcast also airs on WLUR, an NPR affiliate based in Lexington, VA (the city where Under the Radar is currently based).
Season 3 launched with episode one and our interview with Warpaint. Season 3, episode two featured Seratones. Season 3, episode three featured Marlon Williams. By Celine Teo-Blockey.
Marlon Williams – Listen to Our Interview in the New Episode of Our Under the Radar Podcast
Sep 30, 2022
New Zealand singer/songwriter and actor, Marlon Williams is our latest guest on Season 3 of our Under the Radar with Celine Teo-Blockey podcast. Williams released his third album My Boy on the Dead Oceans label, earlier this month. Written in the safety of his hometown during lockdown, Williams reveals on the podcast that he felt “he was onto a good thing” and as such, it was one of several reasons he turned down the opportunity to audition for one of this year’s biggest musical biopics despite having the vocal chops for it.
Williams appeared as a young country singer, in the mold of Roy Orbison, in Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star Is Born—a role that Cooper had in mind specifically for Williams after having heard one of his songs over the radio. Other acting roles on movies such as TrueHistory of The Kelly Gang and Lone Wolf, plus on the Netflix drama, Sweet Tooth,have since followed. He now shares the same acting coach as Nicole Kidman and remarks that recently it’s “feeling like it’s standing on its own two feet—the acting.”
On My Boy, Williams employs skills he’s gleaned from acting to help build worlds and characters that have roots in his boyhood, as a Maori, growing up in Lyttelton. My Boy is a departure from his 2015, self-titled, country-indebted debut. Its palette of choice is the synth-pop fodder from the early 1980s. Elsewhere, Williams admits that Duran Duran was the first album he ever owned but he never quite appreciated its New Romantic allure. Perhaps being back home and closer to his parents again, reignited childhood memories and prompted his ruminations on masculinity, traditional hierarchies, and climate change. Heady as these themes may be, Williams talks us through some of these inspirations and we can see clearly how he employs the over-the-top ’80s sheen as a Trojan Horse to conduct more sobering interrogations.
In May Williams shared the album’s title track (also its opening track), “My Boy,” via an amusing video. “My Boy” was one of our Songs of the Week. Then in June he shared the album’s second single, “Thinking of Nina,” a song inspired by the Cold War spy drama The Americans. It was shared via a film noir-esque video and was also one of our Songs of the Week. Then Williams shared the album’s third single, “River Rival,” also one of our Songs of the Week, as well as its fourth single, “Easy Does It,” again placing on Songs of the Week. My Boy’s fifth single, “Don’t Go Back,” shared via an amusing self-directed video, was again one of our Songs of the Week.
Williams’ last full-length was his sophomore album, Make Way For Love, released back in February 2018 via Dead Oceans. In 2019 he released his first official live album, Live at Auckland Town Hall.
Listen to the episode below.
Please write to [email protected] if you would like to share your thoughts on this episode.
Each monthly episode of Under the Radar features an interview with a different musician conducted by host and producer Celine Teo-Blockey.
On top of being available on all podcasting platforms the podcast also airs on WLUR, an NPR affiliate based in Lexington, VA (the city where Under the Radar is currently based).
Season 3 launched with episode one and our interview with Warpaint. Season 3, episode two featured Seratones. By Celine Teo-Blockey
Haynes’ Shreveport, Louisiana-based band (which also features bassist Travis Stewart and drummer Jesse Gabriel) released their disco-inspired third album, Love & Algorhythms, earlier this year via New West. At the time of writing the album, Haynes was also working full-time as an abortion advocate in the last standing abortion clinic in Louisiana, an experience that brought her close to burnout and informed much of the record’s theme of liberation, Afro-futurism and radical joy as a form of protest.
“Good Day,” the album’s uplifting lead single, blends gospel with bright polyrhythms. It was written in part as homage to author, documentary filmmaker and civil rights activist, Toni Cade Bambara—whose 1980 novel The Salt Eaters chronicles the emotional and psychological toll of women at the forefront of social justice movements. For the propulsive disco of “Pleasure” she turned to Octavia Butler’s science fiction series Xenogenesis (Lilith’s Brood)—an epic tale of transformation involving alien beings (the colonizing Oankali and the sexless ooloi) and the last surviving humans. It underpins issues of race, colonization, and gender.
The rich sonics of Love & Algorhythms proved that producer Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart, Caroline Rose) was the ideal complement for Haynes, encouraging all her interests, especially in astrology and divination. Yet, at its core, Haynes admits that she wants “to 100 percent center Blackness,” as she believes that when Black people thrive, all of society does too.
In the episode, Haynes also reminisces about her childhood growing up in the Deep South, among the pine and pear trees of her grandmother and great-grandmother’s homes. And how that matrilineage owned property and their families ate off the land, thus giving Haynes a glimpse into what she’s fighting for, for herself and for her community.
Haynes is the President of the Board at the New Orleans Abortion Fund, fighting for reproductive rights and raising funds for abortion access. Seratones are currently on their national tour. The band’s previous album, Power, came out in 2019.
Listen to the episode below.
Please write to [email protected] if you would like to share your thoughts on this episode.
Each monthly episode of Under the Radar features an interview with a different musician conducted by host and producer Celine Teo-Blockey.
On top of being available on all podcasting platforms the podcast also airs on WLUR, an NPR affiliate based in Lexington, VA (the city where Under the Radar is currently based).
Season 3 launched with episode one and our interview with Warpaint.
Warpaint – Listen to Our Interview in the New Episode of Our Under the Radar Podcast
Jul 08, 2022
Our Under the Radar with Celine Teo-Blockey podcast returns for Season 3 with Warpaint drummer, Stella Mozgawa discussing Radiate Like This—their first album in six years—and the challenges of completing an album from the other side of the world, during a pandemic. Mozgawa returned to Australia at the start of lockdown and did not have any of her usual studio gear and instruments with her. Listen to the episode below.
Warpaint was formed almost 20 years ago when drummer Shannyn Sossamon urged friends, Theresa Wayman and Emily Kokal to join her and sister, Jenny Lee Lindberg to start a band. Mozgawa became part of the foursome in 2009 when Sossamon left to concentrate on her acting career. Warpaint’s 2010 debut, The Fool, was a critical success but it was with their 2014-released self-titled follow up that Mozgawa really stepped up to her role as an equal songwriter in the band.
Mozgawa reveals how after two years at the University of Sydney, she decided to take a year off to concentrate on playing music the way her parents, both professional musicians, had done. “I guess the ultimate goal was to get a degree in psychology,” she says of her studies, “and to be a therapist, or a counselor, or something in that world of therapy.” Instead she moved to New York and never went back to school. But she’s always leaned into her psych background and in this episode we hear how much it has helped her to navigate her way in Warpaint, and any other musical project or otherwise that she’s been involved with—from producing for Courtney Barnett to playing with Kurt Vile.
As a drummer in Warpaint, a band with three strong lyricists, she knows her strengths are in the sonic production aspects of songwriting. But after 12 years of “being in each other’s pockets” through three albums (The Fool, Warpaint, and Heads Up) she shares some of the struggles she experienced with completing songs like “Send Nudes” and “Champion”—the standout opening and closing tracks of Radiate Like This.
Mozgawa also discusses growing up in Sydney as an only child of Polish immigrants, and how having two parents in a band meant she was never lonely as she often spent time with extended family and friends. While early in her career she was committed to technique and indebted to bands like Tool and CAN, she reveals that it was “MMMBop” band Hanson that first got her smitten with playing the drums.
Warpaint will be touring the U.S. later this month.
Please write to [email protected] if you would like to share your thoughts on this episode.
Each monthly episode of Under the Radar features an interview with a different musician conducted by host and producer Celine Teo-Blockey.
On top of being available on all podcasting platforms the podcast also airs on WLUR, an NPR affiliate based in Lexington, VA (the city where Under the Radar is currently based).
