Neon trees and a some nostalgic musings.
Live Concert Photography: Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage at Rumsey Playfield 8/2/25: Summer Dayes 2025 feat. Yussef Dayes Experience with FKJ, Venna and Salin
Live concert photography of Summer Dayes at SummerStage.
New Video: Big Wild Teams Up With Phantogram on Slinky and Dance Floor Friendly “Too Loud”
Jackson Stell is a rising producer and artist, who initially started his career in his native Massachusetts as hip-hop producer, known as J Beatz. Following a life-altering trip to Big Sur, Stell switched creative lanes, adopting influences from the area’s natural beauty and open spaces. As Big Wild, the Massachusetts-based artist refines alt/indie electronic music by blending organic elements, lush soundscapes with bold, genre-defying creativity and panache.
Stell’s breakthrough was back in 2015 when he toured with acclaimed electronic outfit Odesza and remixed “Say My Name.” That year also saw the release of “Aftergold,” feat. Tove Stryke, which stopped the Spotify Global Viral charts.
Building upon a rapidly growing profile, Stell followed up with 2017’s Invincible EP and his full-length debut, 2019’s Superdream, which saw the Massachusetts-born artist taking on the roles of singer/songwriter for the first time, while blending indie, electronic and disco influences. Stell supported Superdream with extensive touring across the US, European Union and UK while helping to establish his reputation as an innovative and boundary-pushing artist.
His sophomore Big Wild album, 2022’s The Efferusphere saw Stell continuing to explore and push the boundaries of genre and emotion.
The past few months have been busy for Stell: Earlier this year, he released -the first bit of new material since The Efferusphere — “Love Any Longer,” “You Belong Here,” and “The Universe” feat. feat. iDA HAWK, a sprawling dance music track that mischievously nods at James Bond-thriller-like soundtracks, cinematic psych soul and British Big Beat fueled by an infectious optimism. All three of those previously released songs will appear on Stell’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, Wild Child. Slated for an August 29, 2025 release through Giant Music, Wild Child is reportedly one of Stell’s most dynamic and personal albums to date. After The Efferusphere, Stell found himself craving the curiosity and joy that initially drew him to music.
That search let him to reconnect with his inner a child — a creative alter ego that he has dubbed Wild Child. The album’s material reportedly sees Stell creating a richer sonic palette that draws from and meshes elements of indie pop, psych rock and ’60s music. And throughout the album, Stell embraces the kind of playful and mischievous unpredictability informed from creating without constraints.
Primarily written and produced by Stell alongside a close-knit cast of talented collaborators, Wild Child‘s material explores themes of renewal, resilience and connection to the Earth that simultaneously echo throughout the lyrics and sonic textures while striking a balance between childlike wonder and the hard-fought wisdom of maturity. “Wild Child runs throughout the album and is fighting to stay alive and thriving despite the things the world throws at us,” Stell says. “The album’s about exploring that side of ourselves that we don’t explore much as we age. I think we’re often pushed to repress that part of ourselves when we get older, because it’s deemed silly or irresponsible, but I’ve realized that maturity is about balancing both aspects of ourselves.”
Wild Child‘s latest single “Too Loud” feat. Phantogram is a slinky, dance floor friendly bop that showcases Stell’s unerring knack for crafting incredibly catchy hooks. Anchored around the same playful and upbeat sensibility of its immediate predecessors, “Too Loud” feat. Phantogram may arguably be the most 80s sounding track of the album to date, managing to channel Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me,” and the like.
“I first made the demo while I was making The Efferusphere. I can’t really pinpoint inspiration besides following what excites me,” Stell says. ” I try to trust that feeling and not overthink it. As simple as the demo sounded, there was something that consistently grabbed me when I listened back. It was sexy and ethereal. I was hung up on the second verse and the lyrics until I was connected with Sarah from Phantogram. Her voice was perfect and was the last big piece to the puzzle. She smashed it and my team and I were so stoked to work with her. I remember the head of the label, Nate Albert, telling me the song needed to be finished in a week to make it to vinyl. It’s such a cliche when finishing an album, but this truly was one of those songs submitted in the final hour in a mad hellish dash.”
Stell continues, “Sarah’s voice was meant for this track, she really occupied the imaginary space of the track,Her tone and attitude was the perfect compliment [sic] to the production. Sexy and ethereal. I’m really excited for the day when we can play this one together on stage.”
“This song makes me want to roll the windows down and turn the volume all the way up,” Phantogram’s Sarah Berthel says. “Working with Jackson has been such a blast and we can’t wait to dance with you to this soon.”
Directed by Hunter Moreno, the accompanying video for “Too Wild” features Stell and Phantogram’s Sarah Barthel driving through a psychedelic racing through a psychedelic, anime-like night time scene.
Throwback: R.I.P. Eddie Palmieri
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of the legendary Eddie Palmieri.
New Audio: Total Wife Shares Yearning “make it last”
Over the past decade, the experimental Nashville-based duo Total Wife — Luna Kupper and Ash Richter — have firmly cemented as fixtures of both the Nashville and East Coast DIY scenes.
The duo’s fifth album, Come Back Down is slated for a September 25, 2025 release through Julia’s War Recordings. Come Back Down is the follow-up to 2023’s in/out and builds upon their varied and rich catalog, while featuring the previously released 0 EP tracks “naoisa,” and “(dead b).”
Last month, I wrote about album single “second spring,” a woozy track that evokes both the hope of new beginnings and the unease of what those new beginnings will actually mean for you and your life. “make it last,” Come Back Down‘s latest single, the shoegazer-like “make it last” features layers of churning and wheezing guitars and thunderous drumming serving as a lush yet subtly uneasy bed for Ash Richter’s yearning delivery.
“‘make it last’ started as kind of a horny song,” Total Wife’s Ash Richter explains. “I was experimenting with lyric writing that felt a little less serious or sappy, but the more I worked through it, the more it kind of ended up as a love song to the road, or like an ode to time passing veiled by the excitement of living. When overwhelming euphoria removes you from your surroundings and sense of time.”
New Video: Kassa Overall Shares a Coltrane-like Take on Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)”
Kassa Overall is an acclaimed Seattle-born and-based Grammy-nominated, Doris Duke Artist Award-winning, jazz drummer, emcee, vocalist and producer, who as a child drum prodigy taught himself to make beats on an MPC and ASR 10 he acquired at a Seattle Police Department auction. Over the course of his 20+ year career, Overall has firmly cemented a unique sound that sees him seamlessly blending jazz, hip-hop and avant-garde experimentation across six, critically applauded mixtapes and albums that actively pushed genre boundaries while being engaging and accessible.
His last effort, 2023’s ANIMALS explored the complexities of his identity as an artist and as a Black man in America, while featuring collaborations with an eclectic array of artists including Danny Brown, Lil B, Vijay Iyer and JOVM mainstay Nick Hakim.
Adding to a growing profile as a sought-after collaborator and one of contemporary jazz’s most exciting artists, Overall has toured and recorded with Geri Allen, Jon Batiste, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Terri Lynne Carrington and Gary Bartz. His production work can be heard on albums by the likes of Theo Croker, Arlo Lindsay and Danny Brown among others.
The acclaimed Seattle-born artist’s fourth album CREAM is slated for a September 12, 2025 release — both digitally and on vinyl — through Warp Records. The album reportedly sees Overall paying homage to the twin passions of his youth — hip-hop and jazz drums in the tradition of Elvin Jones. The eight-song album sees the acclaimed musician and producer transforming beloved, hip-hop classics by The Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, Dr. Dre, A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets and Juvenile into rhythmically adventurous, witty and sublime jazz-inspired standards.
“This album is almost a boomerang response to all my previous work. No edits, no overdubs no samples or drum machine,” Overall says. “Just a great group of musicians playing together. It just so happens that the compositional material we are drawing from is rap records I grew up on!”
Last month, I wrote about CREAM‘s first single, a breakneck 15/4 Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie-era bop-like arrangement of Digable Planets’ 1992 smash-hit “Rebirth of Slick,” that manages to pull out and restore the swing of the original sample, Art Blakey‘s “Stretching.”
CREAM‘s latest single “C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)” is a Giant Steps/Love Supreme-era Coltrane-like arrangement based on the classic, beloved 1993 Wu-Tang anthem that manages to dissolve the long-held boundary between spiritual jazz and golden age hip-hop. Remade in a minor blues in 3/4 time, Overall’s take on the song manages to pair spiritual jazz’s deep and thoughtful soulfulness and golden era hip-hop swagger in a way that’s hypnotic and remarkably cinematic.
“Their whole energy was an alternative to the get-the-money-shiny-suit mentality. For me, the original ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ was a commentary on ‘Get Money,’” Overall says of his love of Wu-Tang. “It was realism. It pointed out everyone’s scrambling and striving to get ahead, but it also nodded at something beyond that. You could transcend and even control the material world through a higher divine nature.”
Overall sees the transcendent message of Wu-Tang Clan, John Coltrane’s spiritual pursuit of music, and his own praxis as fundamentally connected. “I heard stories of ‘Trane’s band playing in clubs with eight people and they would be playing like their life depended on it, driven by the spirit and purpose of the music,” said the Seattle-based drummer. “People see us as entertainers, trying to be seen, trying to get money, but we are also trying to get to some deeper work.”
Overall just finished a run of the European festival circuit. He’ll be embarking on a lengthy Fall 2025 tour, playing clubs and festivals across North America, Japan and Europe. The tour includes a two-night stand at the Jazz Gallery. The full list of dates are below. Tickets and more can be found on his website, here.
Kassa Overall Live Dates
July 2025
11th – Siligo – Sardinia, IT
12th – Gaeta Jazz Festival – IT
13th – North Sea Jazz Festival – NL
17th – Gretchen – Berlin, DE
18th – Bari Jazz Festival – IT
19th – WROsound – Wroclaw, PL
September 2025
3rd – Solar Myth – Philadelphia, PA, USA
4th – Mannys – State College, PA, USA
5th – Otis Mountain Get Down – Elizabethtown, NY, USA
6th – De La Luz – Holyoke, MA, USA
8th – The Falcon – Marlboro, NY, USA
9th – Cafe 939 – Boston, MA, USA
10th – Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club – Portsmouth, NH, USA
12th – Jazz Gallery – New York, NY, USA
13th – Jazz Gallery – New York, NY, USA
14th – Keystone Korner – Baltimore, MD, USA
16th – Snug Harbor – Charlotte, NC, USA
17th – Missy Lane’s – Durham, NC, USA
18th – Missy Lane’s – Durham, NC, USA
October 2025
8th – Blue Note Tokyo – Tokyo, JP ***NEW***
9th – Blue Note Tokyo – Tokyo, JP ***NEW***
10th – Blue Note Tokyo – Tokyo, JP ***NEW***
23rd – Minaret – Los Angeles, CA, USA
25th – Earshot – Seattle, WA, USA
31st – JazzKlub – Frankfurt, DE
November 2025
3rd – Lower Third – London, UK ***NEW***
6th – Mladi Ladi Jazz – Prague, CZ
8th – Rockit – Groningen, NL
New Audio: ZODIAC Shares Lush and Summery “Horizon”
Formed back in 2023, the rising London-based production and DJ trio ZODIAC — Joe Doyle, Will McMullin and Ellis Moss — quickly signed to [PIAS] Électronique, the label home of artists like Tinlicker, Eli & Fur and Innellea. Each member of ZODIC brings a distinct sound and vision to the project, blending their talents to create a captivating electronic-driven soundscape that’s both evocative and immersive.
The London trio’s debut single “Blink,” featuring The Boxer Rebellion‘s Nathan Nicholson received support across the global electronic music scene, earning endorsements from Joris Voorn, Above & Beyond, Sister Bliss and Alfa Romero.. Adding to a growing profile in the global electronic music scene, the London-based trio have had opening slots for Armin Van Buuren, Korolova and a growing list of others.
The trio’s highly-anticipated debut EP Constellations I was released last week. While showcasing deep, driven and rhythmically rich melodies, the EP marks a new chapter for the group — the first batch of new material following the addition of Ellis Moss, an already established name in the electronic music scene.. The EP’s first single “Horizon” is a club banger anchored around glistening synth oscillation, a relentless motorik-like groove paired with tweeter and woofer rattling thump. The production serves as a lush and hook-driven bed for a soulful, pop belter vocal sample. Ultimately, it may be one of the more Ibiza/summery songs I’ve listened to and covered in the past few months.
Throwback: Happy 61st Birthday, Adam Yauch!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 61st anniversary of the birth of Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch.
New Video: Los Angeles’ Dear Boy Teams Up with Rocket on Anthemic “After All”
Los Angeles-based indie outfit Dear Boy — founding members Ben Grey (vocals, guitar) and Keith Cooper (drums) alongside Austin Hayman (lead guitar) and Lucy Lawrence (bass, vocals) — can trace their origins back to when its founding members Grey and Cooper were living in London during their mid-twenties. The band’s Hayman and Lawrence joined once the duo returned to the States. Interestingly, despite their Stateside roots, the Los Angeles-based quartet’s work has drawn from ’80s and ’90s Brit pop and shoegaze — with the band citing Pulp, Oasis, Slowdive and The Jesus and Mary Chain as major influences, while also embracing the likes of Pixies and R.E.M.
The band’s sophomore album sophomore album, the Aron Kobayashi Ritch-produced Celebrator is slated for an October 17, 2025 release through Last Gang Records. Following the success of their full-length debut, 2022’s Forever Sometimes, the band took a step back from perfectionist production practices and leaned into spontaneity. Written in 12 sessions and recorded live in under two weeks, the album’s material reportedly bristles with a palpable energy while showcasing the band’s musical and creative chemistry. “We made this album to remember why we do this in the first place,” the band says. “Because we love it. We adore each other. Joy. Connection. Heartbreak. Celebration. We’re not interested in anything other than that.”
Celebrator‘s first single, “After All,” features Rocket’s Alithea Tuttle. Anchored around rousingly a rousingly anthemic hook and chorus, the new single immediately brings 120 Minutes-era MTV and 90s Brit Pop to mind while arguably being the most straightforward, bombastic rocker of their growing catalog to date. “It is crazy to have been a band for this long without contributing a primal-teenage-bedroom-rock riff. Happy to finally right a wrong,” the band’s frontman Ben Grey says.
The collaboration with Rocket can be traced to a deep and genuine friendship. “We first played with Rocket on New Year’s Eve a few years ago and became fast friends. We’re both from the Valley, went to the same pre-school, a tale as old as time,” Grey explains. “But truly, they’re an important band, and I think Alithea has one of the defining rock voices of this generation. We feel so honored she sang on ‘After All’. It’s the Catherine Wheel/Throwing Muses moment we’ve always dreamed of.”
Directed by the band’s Ben Grey, the accompanying video for “After All” is fittingly, a decidedly 120 Minutes-era MTV-like visual that’s a slick mix of old super 8-shot home videos of family gatherings and celebrations with footage of the band playing in a studio amidst a storm of confetti.
New Audio: Los Angeles’ Swimming Bell Lovingly Tackles Beck’s “The Golden Age”
Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and musician Katie Schottland is the creative mastermind behind Swimming Bell. Earlier this year, she released her five-song Rob Schnapf-produced EP Somnia through Perpetual Doom.
Somnia invites listeners to an ethereal sonic realm, a sort of underwater dreamworld where melodies drift effortlessly and rhythms pulse like ocean currents. Schottland envisioned the EP as an escape from the crushing weight of reality, a space where listeners could feel suspended — as though they were floating — between wakefulness and dreaming. Collaborating with Schnapf, Schottland embraced a much more percussive approach, allowing textures and rhythms to guide the listener through the material’s shimmering soundscapes.
“I wanted this EP to feel like sinking into water, where everything is softened and suspended,” says Schottland. “Given all the stress and tension in the world, I wanted to make a feeling of escape – something hypnotic and transportive. Rob and I explored percussive layers in a way that felt both grounding and dreamy, creating movement within.”
Her first single since the release of Somnia EP is a gorgeous and lovingly faithful cover of “The Golden Age,” off Beck’s critically acclaimed and beloved 2002 effort Sea Change. “Sea Change has always been one of my favorite albums. I love the production so much,” Schottland says. “I’ve wanted to cover ‘The Golden Age’ for a long time and when my pedal steel and keyboard players lit up at the idea too, it felt right. Rob Schapf produced this version, and we kept it minimal and open, letting the song unfold naturally.”
New Video: Wombo Shares Nervous “S.T. Tilted”
Since their formation back in 2016, Louisville-based trio Wombo — Sydney Chadwick (vocals, bass), Cameron Lowe (guitar) and Joel Taylor (drums) — have carved out a unique lane for themselves, contorting post-punk structures into uncanny shapes. And with their Danger in Fives, which is slated for an August 8, 2025 release through Fire Talk, reportedly sees the band not only enhancing their formula, but routinely perfecting them.
To ace their techniques, the Louisville-based trio had to tear them apart first. Long-held , standardized practices of writing and workshopping material in Joel Taylor’s post-war basement rehearsal space were paused while the band explored different writing process. And that experimentation results in the band showcasing some subtle shifts and additions to their sonic palette, including digital texture and the incorporation of drum machine on a couple of tracks. The band’s desire to change their model was in part to “get away from a results mindset, where it’s about producing things for a certain expectation instead of doing it all for the joy of exploring,” the band’s Cameron Lowe says. Adds the band’s Chadwick, “I don’t want to be in a band that’s confined to one form of writing. Where’s the fun and the creativity and the exploration in that? You have to push yourself and try something new.”
Danger in Fives final advance single, “S.T. Titled,” sees the band at their distilled, purest essence. Anchored around Lowe’s angular, off-kilter bursts of scratchy guitar, Taylor’s skeletal yet propulsive drumming and Chadwick’s supple bass lines, the song’s arrangement serves as a nervous and uneasy bed for Chadwick’s dreamily mesmerizing delivery. By contrasting the deeply nervous and uneasy with the seemingly calm, the song somehow manages to evoke our current nightmarish moment in which we’re all slowly losing our minds — and trying not to show it. But, as always cracks will show . . .
“It’s the first song we wrote after the Slab EP that made it on Danger in Fives,” the band’s Lowe says of the single. “We weren’t sure it was going to work, but all the contrasting parts ended up being cool. It’s rare for a Wombo song to be written on guitar first like this one, with some of the bass and drum parts jammed out in the basement afterwards. The wacky guitar part came last.”
Directed by the band’s Cameron Lowe, the accompanying video for “S.T. Titled,” continues a run of entirely self-produced videos. The video sees the band in a hand-made waiting room set, constructed by Lowe and Chadwick in Chadwick’s garage. The band is seen anxiously waiting in the waiting room — with the expected anxiousness and unease that waiting rooms entail.
The Louisville-based trio will be marking on a tour to support the new album. The tour includes a September 12, 2025 stop at Baby’s All Right and a September 14, 2025 stop at one of my favorite rooms in Montréal, L’Escogriffe. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.
Throwback: Happy 124th Birthday, Louis Armstrong!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 124th anniversary of the birth of Louis Armstrong.