by Sydney J
Hi, I’m Sydney J, an indie-folk artist based in Manhattan, New York. I’ve been writing songs for as long as I can remember, but in 2025, my approach to songwriting began to shift. I became more interested in creating something open-ended, less like a straightforward retelling of events, and more like a space where multiple emotions and experiences could exist at once.
That shift is what led me to create my most popular song, “but so close!”.
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“There is a place in the heart that/ will never be filled / a space / and even during / the best moments / and / the greatest times.” Charles Bukowski (You get so alone at times that it just makes sense)
The universe is full of magical things and insightful signs.
However, like the sun is sometimes completely out of sight, hidden behind the thickest winter fog and grey skies, it can be hard to connect with it when going through certain moments or chapters of our lives. Magic can seem out of reach or, worse, forever gone.
How I experience the world and everyday life is a rare and precious gift I am very grateful for. It also comes with frequently struggling with finding balance and peace.
I have so much joy to share and so much darkness in me that I still wonder how can these two coexist with such intensity within the same person? And what to do with such parameters?
Continue readingby Poli Nika
I look into his eyes and remain silent. I know my silence wounds him, but I can’t utter a single word. My throat tightens, my head spins with the darkest thoughts I’d never dare say out loud. “What would he think of me then?” These are the monsters inside me, and I’ll never let them destroy what we have. I’ll never let them out, because then…
When I was a kid, I discovered Marty Robbins’ “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs” in my Dad’s record collection and played it obsessively. I fell in love with the stories that that album told and the colorful characters in songs like “Big Iron” and “El Paso.” It was immediately apparent that to me, music was not just a melody and a beat; it was also visual and preferably cinematic. The story that the lyrics told was what really brought a song to life for me.
by John Kennedy of The Dark City Kings
Out of the blue? That doesn’t even describe the moment. Dark City Kings was the runt of the litter in the Asheville music scene. We’d lost two guitar players in the Spring and had just brought in a new guitar player and fiddle player. The core of Dark City Kings has been around the Asheville music scene for a decade – but this band was the runt of the litter and then tossed into a raging river to drown.
Dark City Kings? We were a drunken brewery band that was slowly writing original material. We wrote simple songs. We meant them. We wrote melodies you can sing in the shower and big sing-along choruses. We’d just decided to try again, write an entirely new songbook with this new band formation, practice twice a week, and play a show once a week.
We played our first show together on August 5th.
Continue readingby Andy Coombs of Soft Cotton County
Music was once ‘the most important, unimportant thing we had,’ said music critic and presenter Robert Elms. This sums up my relationship with writing in general and music in particular. I want to keep it unique and avoid the fillers and the B-sides. One great song would make me happy. In an ocean of mediocrity, sea levels are rising, but starfish are still found in the depths.
Hi, I’m Raging Flowers, a singer-songwriter-producer from Auckland, New Zealand. My primary instrument is the electric guitar. I make jazzy self-help indie pop that celebrates the diversity of feelings. My music is about truthfulness, exploration, and hope.
My music career has had an unusual start. I’ve been a long-time music learner, but I decided to pursue a career in tech. I studied Computer Science and had a career as a Software Engineer. I worked for some of the top software companies in New Zealand. I was a star Software Engineer in various fields, including music, blockchain, and AI. Back in my programming days, my ambition was to run a small business of my own.
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Years back, I attended my late cousin’s funeral in the core of the inner city where she lived. One could call the area run-down, poor, and even scary. It was the kind of place where taking to the street at night was risky, let alone by day. Many of the shops were closed down, and the upkeep on the surrounding buildings was minimal, to say the least.
My cousin had been renting a three-room apartment over a dingy hotel where she lived a hand-to-mouth existence due to childhood traumas. Every time I went to this city, I made a point of stopping in on her for a visit because, despite her struggle, she hadn’t lost her sense of humor and hadn’t forgotten the ways of knowing taught to us by our grandmother. She was fun and had a great sense of humor. She didn’t let too much bother her, and I enjoyed spending time with her. It was relaxing because there was no pressure to be anything else than two cousins spending time together. We would often jump into my car, as she didn’t own a vehicle, and drive out to the country for fresh air and a change of scenery.
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Hi, my name’s Jamie Hutchings; I’m a singer, songwriter, guitarist, percussionist, and sometime improviser and producer. I’m based in Sydney, Australia.
Music was a given in my family household as my dad was a woodwind session cat. He’s 83 now, but he still gigs here and there, but as kids, it was his bread and butter. So all of us inherited his musicality in some form, but still (particularly with my brother and I), we found ourselves gravitating more and more towards rawness and originality over professionalism and technique. I was looking through my mum and dad’s record collection the other night, and it’s almost exclusively Frank Sinatra records. Sinatra is amazing, but the overexposure to music in a show-biz format perhaps contributed to us going in a different direction!
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Lissa and I began performing and recording together in Los Angeles in 1980. Our first band was called ‘Live Nude Girl’ formed during the post-punk era. Angular, with arcane drum-machines, synths, guitars, and theatrical graphic visuals. I am an American-born Australian, who grew up in Sydney, went to design school in Melbourne, then after starting my career in visual communication design, relocated to the USA to freelance in design and get serious about song writing. To find collaborators, starting bands, and doing solo singer-songwriter spots around LA, while designing in the daytime.