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Talkhouse

K Nkanza Hansen is a musician and visual artist from Maryland. They’re the producer and multi-instrumentalist behind projects Spring Silver and Blonde Duluth. As of May 2020, they have graduated from University of Maryland, Baltimore County with a BFA in Visual Arts.

Spring Silver

Music

Introducing: Blonde Duluth’s “She’s Gone”

Stephen Morris is the legendary drummer of both Joy Division and New Order. His contributions to post-punk and beyond are immeasurable, both as a drummer and synthesizer expert. He’s part of both “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and “Blue Monday,” for God’s sake!
(Photo Credit: Warren Jackson)

Stephen Morris

Introducing: New Order’s Stephen Morris Remixes a Maps Song

Uma Bloo is a character Molly Madden invented in response to world-weariness. Originally a solo project based in burlesque performance, Madden has since expanded into a full-fledged band that connects with audiences through sheer force of will.
The band&rsquo;s strengths lie in stage performance and Madden&rsquo;s unguarded lyrics that lay her out in the open. The sultry existentialist Uma Bloo is often compared to Angel Olsen and Warhol superstar Nico, who shares a penchant for defying traditional boundaries of genre while enticing listeners to reckon with the past.
As Madden&rsquo;s first and only music project to date, her upcoming 2020 debut album includes songs she originally wrote when she was as young as 19. When she began recording, she enlisted Mike Altergott who soon after joined the band. Altergott is also a talented musician and engineer in his own right, who has worked with the likes of Fran and Fauvely, to name a few.
Madden brings her background in theater and performance to create an entirely immersive musical experience as Uma Bloo.
(Photo Credit: Monika Oliver)

Uma Bloo

Introducing: Uma Bloo’s “Coming Home”

Alex Ebert (award-winning film composer), Edward Sharpe (platinum-selling hippy), Alexander (indie folk-rapper), Ima Robot (androgynous punk) — it’s all the same dude.
For two decades, Ebert has created original music in myriad forms, styles, shapes, and sounds. From his earliest days as an emcee to the early-aughts buzz of Ima Robot, to the world-beating heights of Edward Sharpe &amp; The Magnetic Zeros, the critically acclaimed Alexander solo project, the Golden Globe-winning neoclassical film score composition for 2014’s All is Lost, and beyond, Ebert’s ability to lose himself in his art and achieve success is undeniable. Transcending boundary lines in the spirit of self-examination, he has spent the better part of the last few years completing a daunting amount of work, including four EPs, a biographical documentary feature film, and culminating with a genre-defying double-album of new material called 5AME!.

Alex Ebert

In Alex Ebert’s New Video, He’s a Roller-Skating Green Screen

Over the course of the last two decades, Detroit&#8217;s ADULT. (Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller) have been perhaps one of the most fervent proponents of a dark, dance aesthetic that harnesses the perverse aspects of the late &#8217;70s analog dystopian post-modernism.

ADULT.

Introducing: ADULT.’s “Total Total Damage”

Roundelay is LAKE’s most cohesive, adventurous, and fully realized record to date with their own brand of sophisti-pop. It is rich, layered, developed, and at times, avant-garde. Odd time-signatures reign without being too mathy, and sprinkles of horn arrangements, grand piano, and pedal steel put the elevator in the new genre they dub from this moment forward, elevator punk.
To summarize the record, “LAKE got heavy!” was exuberantly yelled at a recent gig in their hometown on Whidbey Island, WA. The band agrees their once lighter sound has drifted into a realm where they feel comfortable calling themselves “rock.”
LAKE formed 14 years ago in Olympia, WA. Their song “Christmas Island” is the ending credits theme in popular Cartoon Network show, Adventure Time. Over the years, LAKE has collaborated with Northwest native Karl Blau extensively in the studio and on the road as his back-up band. They released records for historic indie label K (Beat Happening, the Microphones) for 6 years before jumping to German pop and experimental label Tapete/Bureau B for their latest release Forever or Never (2017). In 2020 LAKE is releasing their new album Roundelay with Seattle label OFF TEMPO. They are touring in February with Pinegrove in US and Japan in March and are planning more touring for Fall 2020.

LAKE

Introducing: LAKE’s “Resolution”

Blushh was never Shab’s plan. Shab Ferdowsi started writing songs in 2015 as a joke before moving to Ireland for a month. She thought it would be funny if she could make some money busking on the streets of Galway while she was abroad. Well, she didn’t make a lot of money, but she did get into the habit of songwriting every single day. When she came back to LA with those new songs, her friends offered to join her band so she decided to give this a shot. 
In the fall of 2016 she bought an electric guitar, recorded “Are We Too Far?” in her friend’s garage, and played her first full band show.
In 2017, Blushh released its first EP It’s Fine, followed by a split EP with Maddie Ross that fall. In 2018, Shab learned what power chords are and that’s what you hear when you listen to her 2nd EP, Thx 4 Asking. That fall, the full band headed out on their first West Coast tour.
Within the next nine months, the band (now consisting of Skyler Garn on lead guitar, Kenzo Cardenas on bass, and Arturs Reirs on drums) went on two more West Coast tours, played SXSW in Austin as an official artist, performed at Treefort Festival in Boise to a crowd singing along to Shab’s lyrics, and recorded a full length album.
Blushh’s debut LP R.I.P. Apathy will be out in April 2020 and is the band’s most collaborative project yet.

Blushh

Introducing: Blushh’s “Too Dark”

Damaged Bug is the solo project of John Dwyer. The new album Bug On Yonkers will be out April 24 via Castle Face Records.
(Photo Credit: John Dwyer)

Damaged Bug

Introducing: Damaged Bug’s “I Tried”

Jeremy Gustin is a one-of-a-kind drummer who has toured and recorded with Rubblebucket, Okkervil River, David Byrne, Marc Ribot, Delicate Steve, and Albert Hammond Jr.. He has long been in demand for his ability to bring a touch of the unorthodox to highly structured and improvised musical settings alike, so it should come as no surprise that on his own solo project, The Ah, Gustin explores the outer boundaries of his imagination to the fullest.
The Ah&#8217;s new album Mere Husk, the follow-up to 2017’s Common Bliss, sees Gustin once again crafting animal noises, water sounds, miscellaneous found audio, and his own playing into a harmonic language that straddles the line between his love of pop songcraft and his equally strong attraction to the abstract. Rather than employ gurgling fish tank bubbles and dolphin calls for their ambient properties alone, for example, Gustin bends them beyond recognition so that they mimic synths or serve the role of instrumental parts in an arrangement that falls together like a classic &#8220;song&#8221; — whether Gustin includes vocals or not.
Mere Husk expands dramatically on the vision introduced with Common Bliss. Though twirling from playful to solemn and back again, Gustin&#8217;s music is as easy to take in as watching the myriad shades of colorful marine life swimming through an aquarium.
(Photo Credit: Jesse Harris)

The Ah

Introducing: The Ah’s “Pepper Pupil”

<div>Vundabar is a great guitar band. In an age where critics argue endlessly over whether or not the guitar is dead, the Boston band could clearly care less. Trends be damned, Vundabar continue to play and be who they are. Along the way they’ve sold out 1000+ cap rooms across the country, self-released and sold thousands of their records, and built a dedicated fan base for their quirky indie pop that follows them wherever they go.</div>
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<div>In March, Vundabar will release their fourth album, Either Light, on their own Gawk Records. For the album, Vundabar (Brandon Hagen and Drew McDonald) worked with producer Patrick Hyland (producer for Mitski&#8216;s Be the Cowboy, Puberty 2, Bury Me at Makeout Creek). It makes the first time they have ever had someone produce one of their albums. Their original bass player, Zackery Abramo, re-joined the group to play on the record, and Emily Massey from Slow Pulp contributed backing vocals. Recorded at Gradwell House and Retro City Studios, Vundabar came in with the song skeletons and built out the arrangements in the studio. The difference is apparent and there are a host of new sounds on Either Light, including a sequencer, vibraphone, synth, drum machines, and more layered vocals than ever before.</div>
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<div>(Photo Credit: Pond Creative)</div>

Vundabar

Introducing: Vundabar’s “Montage Music”

Julia Bardo was born and raised in Brescia, a small city in northern Italy, where she sang and wrote lyrics for a local band between shifts working at her father’s bar. She felt uninspired by the music she was contributing to and the life she was leading, so she packed her bags for Manchester three years ago, despite knowing no one in the city, and hasn&#8217;t looked back.
Her debut EP Phase is out March 6 via Wichita Recordings.
(Photo Credit: Ashton Hugh)

Julia Bardo

Introducing: Julia Bardo’s “Please Don’t Tell Me”

Singer/songwriter KaiL Baxley‘s experiences are as diverse as the day is long–the Los Angeles-based South Carolina native and son of a couple of outlaws, who learned to dance from James Brown, has been an amateur boxer, a gunshot survivor, a football star, and a traveling troubadour. Those narratives naturally inform his art, producing songs that cut deep and entice the listener to pay close attention.
On March 6, 2020 he will release his third and most accomplished album Beneath the Bones, via AntiFragile Music. The self-produced album recorded at the late Elliott Smith’s New Monkey Studio, HAS Studios in Charleston, SC and United Studios in Los Angeles, CA is both prophetic and profound.
(Photo Credit: Monica Lightstone)

introducing