Song of the Day

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January 4, 2024

Nova: “Bird in the Hurricane”

By: Jack Anderson

Just like a ragtag team of survivors, when you find the perfect pack for your project, playing without them is like taking an axe to the face. So sure, choir singer and solo veteran Nova Barton has strong enough chops to create and command attention all on her own, as heard on her 2021 debut Novaville. But despite maintaining her project Nova‘s eponymous/mononymous status, the backing band of UT buddies she recruited in support of Novaville was just too killer to keep out of the studio the second time around.

Now we dawn on NovApocalypse, Nova’s sophomore LP that’s set for release this April. With the full four-piece of friends in tow, Barton’s already restorative and poignant songwriting (no doubt informed by her music therapy studies) takes a meteoric ascent with wider-than-ever arrangements. And thematically, NovApocalypse is set to sound sort of like if Towns Van Zandt wrote The Road instead of Cormac McCarthy, crippling isolation, excessive blood spurts, rampant deception and all.

While the storm of NovApocalypse is still a few months out, Nova kicks off the cataclysm with a single release show 10:30pm this Saturday at Captain Quackenbush’s Soundscape following openers Hover at 8:30 and Boomershack at 9:30. That single? “Bird in the Hurricane”. Ideal HBO intro credit material from its first guitar strums, “Bird in the Hurricane” soars with pizzicato plucks, light treading percussion, serene string harmonies, grounded bass, atmospheric and Barton’s moody, multi-tracked vocals that collectively “carry the fire”, no matter how bleak the future may look.


Episodes

February 20, 2025

Persona 749: “Stereo Girl”

From the hockey rink of the University of Utah to the mean streets of New York City comes Persona 749. After being inspired through music heard at college parties, Landon Langenbrunner and Che Landikusic started writing music, but without real direction, they were making music from a place of fun, playing around in the sandbox […]

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February 19, 2025

Maddy Kirgo: “Spare”

New Orleans’s Maddy Kirgo writes music not only akin to the eclectic, all-embracing attitude of the Big Easy, but also to the sounds currently pouring out of its venues, or in her case, the buskers on the corner. To that end, her sounds simultaneously evokes the California country rock sounds of the nudie suit era […]

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February 17, 2025

MIEN: “Evil People” (Live In Studio 1A)

We all know that when an artist is featured on a song, it’s likely that they recorded it remote and sent the track to the main artist. But how does it work when you’re a quartet and only 2 of y’all live in the same place? To ask the members of Austin experimental psych band […]

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February 14, 2025

Kowloon: “Heart Begins With You”

L.A.’s Kowloon is truly a one-man operation. Songwriting? Him. Instrumentation? Him. Recording, production? Yep, all Kowloon. Backed by a full library of effects and music gadgets from various eras, Kowloon released a string of singles last year, demonstrating his affinity for the darkwave sounds of the 80s a la the Cure and Bronski Beat. Ahead […]

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February 13, 2025

Tommy Francisco: “Tommy’s Groove”

Even a piping hot bowl of tokontsu ramen can’t fully shake-off today’s bone chill, but maybe the headspace of partying on a yacht in Mallorca can. Austin native Tommy Francisco hit the scene in 2020 with “Fever,” giving him an international audience and proving his ability to blend his Latin and Indigenous backgrounds into a […]

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February 12, 2025

Serebii: “Verrans Corner”

Auckland, New Zealand’s Callum Mower, known as Serebii, has always focused on pushing forward. Forward musically, forward personally, and now, forward into naked vulnerability.   Serebii’s upcoming album Dime finds Mower at his most vulnerable. Historically, Mower has relied on his mastery of instruments and production with others, namely fellow New Zealander Arjuna Oakes, but […]

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February 11, 2025

Slept All Day: “Asteria”

Austin duo Slept All Day may be new on the scene, but don’t sleep on them. Together, the two create moving soundscapes a la Bonobo and Washed Out. And they use their vocals as an element of the scape instead of its driving force. And despite the electronic instrumentation and vocal effects, the music is […]

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February 10, 2025

Middle Satre: “Corrupted (Uncorrupted)”

Welcome! Today’s theme is vision and reimagining. After spending a childhood in Salt Lake City, Hunter Preuger moved to Austin to sow oats with his project Middle Sattre. The project quickly expanded into a six-piece…and then an eight-piece, and a year after the release of their debut album Tendencies, the experimental folk outfit returned to […]

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