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Talkhouse

Briston Maroney’s latest single, “Deep Sea Diver,” was co-written by Dan Wilson and produced by John Congleton, so it’s got a lot going for it. It’s the latest in a young career that’s produced three great EPs so far, with a full-length due in 2021. He plays deceptively breezy Americana that’s somewhere on the continuum between John Prine and Kacey Musgraves.
(Photo Credit: Sophia Matinazad)

Briston Maroney

Music

Three Great Things: Briston Maroney

Ben Gibbard is the frontman of Death Cab For Cutie. The band recently launched <a href="http://wehavethefacts2020.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wehavethefacts2020.com</a>, a site whose proceeds benefit <a href="https://fairfight.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fair Fight</a> and <a href="https://www.futurenow.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Future Now</a>, which seek to support voter rights and combat voter suppression.
(Photo Credit: Rachel Demy)

Ben Gibbard

Three Great Things: Ben Gibbard

Malik is a 24-year-old GRAMMY-winning producer and artist who’s been taken under the mentorship of No. I.D. and his label, ARTium Recordings. He’s also a darling of his hometown Austin, TX, a restless creative spirit who’s been writing and creating music locally for some time. The pinnacle of his work so far is Spectrum (Demo). Out now, each song on Spectrum (Demo)  which Malik describes as “a sort of musical take on Pixar’s Inside Out, if it were as heavily influenced by Outkast, Graduation-era Kanye West, Days Before Rodeo-era Travis Scott, Acid Rap Chance the Rapper, and Nostalgia, Ultra Frank Ocean, as I was”  is named after a specific color and channels its energy and purpose.

Malik

Three Great Things: Malik

Eugene Mirman is probably best known as the voice of Eugene Belcher on the animated comedy Bob’s Burgers, but he’s also a veteran of the alt-comedy world with many albums and countless live performances under his belt. He’s the subject of It Started As A Joke, a documentary about the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, and his song with Lucy Wainwright Roche, “How Do You Lie To Your Child About Santa,” is now available to stream and as <a href="https://prettygoodfriends.com/merch/vinyl-christmas-card-how-do-you-lie-to-your-child-about-santa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">limited-edition vinyl</a> via his label, PGF Records.

Eugene Mirman

Film

Eugene Mirman Is Enjoying TV Comedies from Yesteryear, and a Recent Denzel Film

Hennessey is a good old fashioned hipster band from New York. Manhattan to be exact. In the tradition of Le Tigre, Gorillaz, Devo, and Roxy Music, they are a group of multidisciplinary artists who have come together to create vintage-pop obsessed electronic dance punk.
Leah Hennessey, also known as a playwright and creator of the underground web series Zhe Zhe, is the lead singer and principal songwriter of the band. Synthesizer/drum machine “operator” and Eno-like “non-musician” E.J. O’Hara has been collaborating with Leah “almost since high school.” His main concern is to make the beats sound more like Timbaland. Electronic guitarist Noah Chevan eschews amplifiers and traditional guitar rigs in favor of computer processing.
(Photo Credit: Mike Martinez)

Hennessey

Three Great Things: Hennessey

Liz Garbus is a two-time Academy Award®-Nominee, two-time Emmy Winner, Peabody Winner, Grammy Nominee, DGA Nominee, BAFTA-nominated director. Lost Girls, Garbus’ narrative feature debut, stars Amy Ryan, Gabriel Byrne, and Thomasin McKenzie, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and is released in theaters and on Netflix on March 13. Her work as a highly acclaimed award-winning documentary filmmaker includes the television series Who Killed Garrett Phillips? and The Fourth Estate, and the features A Dangerous Son, Bobby Fischer Against the World, The Farm: Angola and There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane. In 2019, Garbus along with Academy Award®-Winning Producer Dan Cogan founded Story Syndicate, a Dumbo-based film and television production company. Under Story Syndicate, Garbus is in production on a series based on Michelle McNamara’s “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark”, (HBO), a feature on Jacques Cousteau, (National Geographic), as well as others in development. Two amazing children keep her sane.

Liz Garbus

Three Great Things: Liz Garbus

In music, there’s often a tendency to focus on personal pain. It’s a useful shorthand for understanding how an artist got to where they are now, but sometimes that heaviness doesn’t leave enough room for nuance and change. In his solo work, the Indiana musician Kevin Krauter doesn’t flinch when staring down his past, but he doesn’t get too obsessed with the dark stuff either.
In 2018, Krauter released Toss Up, a quiet album that was built on intricate guitar riffs that looped back on themselves to create a feeling of sunlit calm. Krauter’s sophomore follow up, Full Hand, dives further into the world he’s created — one where songs are evocative of late afternoon light, or dust settling on a creaky floorboard, but with lyrics that probe Krauter’s personal life, grappling with sexuality and religion, while exploring what it means to grow up, grow more critical, and, in turn, more self-confident.
Full Hand is out now via Bayonet Records.
(Photo Credit: Hana Mendel)

Kevin Krauter

Three Great Things: Kevin Krauter

Illiterate Light is a Virginia duo made up of Jeff Gorman and Jake Cochran. Their self-titled debut album came out late in 2019 on Atlantic Records, and 2020 will find them on a big headlining tour as well as playing festivals like Osheaga and Firefly.

Illiterate Light

Three Great Things: Illiterate Light

Born in Horn, Austria, in 1985, Severin Fiala studied directing and screenwriting at the Film Academy Vienna. Veronika Franz was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1965. Originally a film journalist for the Viennese daily newspaper Kurier, since 1997 she has accompanied director Ulrich Seidl as an artistic collaborator. The internationally award-winning documentary Kern, which premiered at Festival del film Locarno, marked both Franz’s debut as a director and the first film she made with Severin Fiala. It was followed by the pair’s first joint fiction feature, Goodnight Mommy (2014), which had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival. Franz and Fiala’s latest film, <a href="https://www.thelodgemov.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Lodge</a>, a horror film starring Riley Keough and Jaeden Martell, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and is in theaters through Neon from February 7.

Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz

Three Great Things: Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz

Cathy Yan is a filmmaker known for her distinct aesthetic, darkly humorous tone and love for subverting typical genre rules and telling unconventional stories. Her debut film, Dead Pigs, which she wrote and directed, won the Special Jury Prize for ensemble acting at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, among several other accolades. Her latest film is <a href="https://www.birdsofpreymovie.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn</a>, which is now in theaters through Warner Bros.; she is the first Asian woman to direct a superhero genre film. Next, she is slated to direct and produce a film adaptation of Sour Hearts, a collection of short stories by Jenny Zhang, which she will co-write with Zhang. Yan studied at Princeton, where she earned her BA, and NYU, where she received a dual MFA and MBA in film. Previously, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York, Hong Kong and China, and brings her sharp, journalistic instincts to her filmmaking. Yan was born in China and is currently based in New York. (Picture by Tim P. Whitby, courtesy of Warner Bros.)

Cathy Yan

Three Great Things: Cathy Yan

Allen Stone is a singer-songwriter from Chewelah, Washington. He has released four albums, the latest of which is Building Balance.

Allen Stone

Three Great Things: Allen Stone

Jenny Owen Youngs is a singer-songwriter whose latest EP Night Shift includes an ode to the state fair staple The Gravitron. She also hosts the popular Buffy The Vampire Slayer podcast Buffering The Vampire Slayer.
(Photo Credit: Tucker Leary)

Three Great Things