Cover Collector – July Rainbows

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Design by Ryan Morrissey

I don’t know about you guys, but I love a good album art collage. One of the first things I do every Friday is head over to tapmusic.net and render a 4x4 chart of the albums I listened to most over the past week. At the end of each month, I do the same thing with a 5x5 that recaps my previous 30 days of listening. By the time December rolls around, I look forward to recapping the last twelve months with a gigantic 10x10 grid in an unwieldy encapsulation of the 100 albums that defined my year. 

Is it a little self-aggrandizing? Sure, but it’s also a fun way to see a quick snapshot of what my last week, month, or year has sounded like. At its best, this practice has led to fun conversations and solid recommendations going back and forth with friends as we bond over specific albums. Sometimes it’s that shared love over a deep pull from years gone by, other times it’s just noticing trends with a recent fave that seems like an unshakable presence week in and week out. At the very least, I suppose it’s satisfying to see a bunch of records that I feel an affinity toward lined up and embodying a specific stretch of my life. 

At some point near the tail end of last year, I conceived of a more communal way to bring this love of album collage to life. Because, sure, getting a live readout of your listening history is cool, but this is also about album art, an essential part of the experience and something us music nerds can fixate on just as much as the songs that sit beneath the cover. As such, I’m excited to welcome you to the sixth edition of Cover Collector: a monthly installation where the Swim Team discusses some of our favorite albums based on album color. For July, we’re writing about ravishing rainbows. 

Radiohead – In Rainbows

XL Recordings

I’ve had the greatness of Radiohead explained to me by several dozen white dudes in my 32 years. And I, too, am a white dude, so I know many others have gotten it worse. On first dates and in comment sections, Radiohead has become perhaps the foremost band whose legacy requires defending and proselytizing.

I’m not going to do that to you. Mostly because I don’t believe in it. I completely missed Radiohead until I was like 30. At first because I was a tweenager more heavily invested in what Taio Cruz and The Beatles were doing, but then I avoided them precisely because of the “Front Row of Every Anthropology 201 Class” guy who feels the need to preach about OK Computer’s influence.

Earlier this year, Pitchfork made a completely unforced error in creating a March Madness-style bracket of every album they’ve granted Album of the Year to since 1996. The Pitchfork of 2026 is written by people who are relatively more diverse than 30 years ago, and they cover a much wider array of music more forgivingly than ever. But the reader base and the nature of online commenters have not evolved quite as much. Hilariously, the final 2 albums in the bracket—one that featured Outkast’s Aquemini, Beyoncé’s Renaissance, and Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters—were Radiohead’s Kid A and Radiohead’s OK Computer. It wasn’t Pitchfork’s fault. The RadioBros move like amoebas.

Anyway, whoa, okay…I’m supposed to be writing about In Rainbows. When I get the urge to listen to Radiohead, when I want something spacey and atmospheric and maybe groovy, I will put on In Rainbows. My second choice is The Bends. If those two are not available (why would they not be available?), I simply do not listen to Radiohead. Y’all ruined any chance of me enjoying Kid A and OK Computer. I think In Rainbows is an example of what I like most about Radiohead: big, layered compositions, every type of guitar sound imaginable, and Thom Yorke caterwauling over it all, singing about god-knows-what. (“Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is the best Radiohead song, let’s fight).

The first time I heard about In Rainbows was in 2007 when it came out. My mom got me a subscription to Entertainment Weekly (not one of the cooler magazines), and they were talking about Radiohead choosing to self-release this on their website with a pay-what-you-want model. I thought it was cool then, and it’s still cool now. This model, along with their music, has served as a real eye-opener to modern musicians about what is possible.

Much like every conversation about Radiohead, this piece wasn’t really about the music, now was it?

– Caleb Doyle


Circa Survive – Blue Sky Noise

Hopeless Records

I am a devotee of the surreal, and few bands capture that quality as well as Circa Survive do. Their distinct brand of indie prog and Anthony’s siren-like vocals create a lush, strange atmosphere, and the art gracing their album covers is equally captivating. There aren’t many better pairings than the work of celebrated painter Esao Andrews and the music of Circa Survive. Esao’s work is instantly recognizable - elegant figures, vivid colors, and otherworldly beings adorn bizarre landscapes. While he is probably most famous for his work on the covers of Juturna and On Letting Go, the cover of Blue Sky Noise is my favorite of Esao’s. It shows a young boy making direct eye contact with the viewer, hand moving to cover a wounded arm. His head is haloed by the gaping maw of a winged eldritch creature – not deer, not angel, but something in between. The sacred meets the profane here, surrounded by hills that encroach at impossible angles. It is simultaneously one of the most beautiful and most chilling paintings I’ve ever seen, and I love it with my entire being.

Every song on Blue Sky Noise captures that same paradox of allure and terror. “Get Out,” one of the album’s best-known tracks, parallels striking melodic passages against urgent vocals that rise to a shriek. “Imaginary Enemy” is a feverish and frantic defense of self, with textures that ebb from thin to dense in a matter of seconds. The band is impeccably in the pocket, wound almost too tight, and Anthony is at his vocal ultimate. The palpable tension throughout Blue Sky Noise rages and mellows with desperate intensity - causing me to feel as though I, the listener, am the wounded child saint, pursued by a creature that already has its claws in my back.

– Britta Joseph


Torche – Harmonicraft

Volcom

Remember Volcom hardcore? Perhaps Scion metal? No, you’re only familiar with Google AI Olympics ad corporate shill punk? Okay, look, I understand the anarchist argument that any sponsorship for your music is “selling out” or somehow compromising the “punk” ethos. But just picture the late 2000s and early 2010s when companies who, in some cases, had no business getting involved with bands like High On Fire or the Melvins, were actually doing cool and creative things for them.

Volcom was at least a skateboarding company and already rooted in underground culture, so when Florida sludge-pop pioneers Torche released their third full-length Harmonicraft through Volcom Entertainment in 2012, that didn’t seem like a mismatched partnership. There was even a limited-edition skate deck bundle for the hardcore fans. I was only hardcore enough at the time to get the vinyl version that came with a rainbow lollipop slipmat, but that did me just fine for a number of years. Harmonicraft is an excellent starting point if you’ve missed out on Torche all these years, featuring their catchiest songs yet but not turning down the heaviness whatsoever. Much like its rainbow-detailed album art, the band seamlessly melds headbanging and harmonies better than almost anyone.

– Logan Archer Mounts


mauve – About the Weather

Really Rad Records

Pine trees, a raincloud, an orange, a purple crab. It’s always nice when an album legitimately sounds like its cover, and I have always loved how much mauve’s one and only release, About the Weather, sounds like the bright, trinket-y illustrations that adorn their cover. 

mauve was a late addition to the 5th wave sound. They popped up on Twitter radars in 2022 with their barnstormer, “20,000 Degrees,” and released their debut in the summer of 2023, a spectacular high for the crashing wave of the emo era. I think about the switch-up on “Drive/Threw” all the time still, a deceptive, jangly track that blows the album open for “Oh My God!” and the gloomier “Two.” Their Origami Angel influence (another band I almost picked for the rainbow cover – shout out The Brightest Days mixtape) comes through the clearest on the final song, “Sun,” but is honestly closest to the older emo waves of yore (like late second wave). mauve was a cool little blip on the emo radar that I still miss, but at least I have this cover. My favorite illustration is the pink lobster.

– Caro Alt


Cheem – Power Move: Victory Lap

In Bloom Music

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the Connecticut nu-pop quintet, Cheem. Their undeniable sense of self, their approach to genre blending, and their impressive instrumentation all make them a standout act in the big ‘26, and their latest release, Victory Lap, is no exception. Typically, I can take or leave deluxe albums. Too often, the extra tracks feel tacked on for a separate release and probably should’ve stayed on the cutting room floor. However, when lead singer Sam Nazaretian sent me the original Power Move ahead of its release in November, something felt missing. I only realized this once I received the deluxe version, and those bonus tracks helped round the whole thing out and make it feel like a complete album. 

Cheem continues to improve and excel with each release, and Power Move: Victory Lap adds that extra oomph to send the original album into the stratosphere. “Future Tense” opens the album perfectly with commanding instrumentation and slow, steady rhythms that pull the listener straight in. “Rhyme/Reason” is yet another classic hip-hop-inspired Cheem hit to really show you what the band is about, while my personal favorite on the album, “Mistake,” feels like it was pulled straight out of the Persona 3 soundtrack and encapsulates so much of what I love about Cheem. Power Move: Victory Lap has quickly joined its predecessor, Guilty Pleasure, as one of my favorite albums of all time, and I don’t see a world where the next Cheem release doesn’t achieve the same status. 

– Ciara Rhiannon


Jamie xx – In Colour

Young

Back in the early 2010s, I was obsessed with The xx. We all were. The group’s self-titled debut dropped when I was halfway through high school, and songs like “Infinity” and “Stars” captured a steamy moodiness I’d never heard in music before. Coexist was a more mellowed-out follow-up that I utilized as “study music” on a regular basis – a little less exciting, but reliable and still recognizable as that thing I was first drawn to. When Jamie xx released In Colour in 2015, I wasn’t sure how I felt at first. Sure, there were a couple of features from Romy and Oliver Sim that gave off whiffs of The xx, but it felt like a much more instrumental and electronic project than the bedroom-whisper indie I was used to. Fortunately, 2015 also marked the beginning of my obsession with Young Thug, and his feature here, where he passionately delivers the line “Imma ride in that pussy like a stroller,” was emphatic enough to keep me coming back. These days, I view In Colour as a very good electronic album. The opener, “Gosh,” does a great job pulling you into this kaleidoscopic world, and after a handful of listens, it quickly becomes clear that each track takes its own hyper-distinct approach, whether that’s due to the handful of features or a choice in the instrumental like the killer steel drum in “Obvs.” It’s a fun record to throw on in a group setting with its own distinct little pockets of vibes and, when it comes to rainbow album covers, it simply doesn’t get better, or more satisfying, than this. 

– Taylor Grimes


Pet Shop Boys – Introspective

Parlophone / EMI-Manhattan

Pet Shop Boys remain very high on my concert bucket list, especially after the sting of their New Order co-headline tour being rescheduled twice over due to the pandemic. Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant crafted some of the greatest keyboard music of the 1980s, starting with their breakout single “West End Girls,” and are still steadily releasing music today. 1988’s Introspective feels like the full-circle evolution of the group’s sound: theatrical and grandiose dance anthems that would get even more blown out on later records like 1993’s Very.

This six-track LP wastes not a moment of synthpop bliss, each number carefully crafted from beginning to end like the opener “Left To My Own Devices” or the moody “Domino Dancing.” Pet Shop Boys’ unbeatable streak of cover tunes begins on this album with their surprising but successful take on the country classic “Always On My Mind,” and in 2009 they used “Domino Dancing” as the dancefloor plan for a version of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida,” which to me remains the best version of the millennial pop opus. Introspective brings its title theme to full-body movement music, cementing Pet Shop Boys as undisputed progenitors of their genre.

– Logan Archer Mounts


Coheed and Cambria – Year of the Black Rainbow

Columbia Records

If we’re all honest with ourselves, I think there’s always at least one album in our favorite band’s discography that sticks out like a sore thumb. Sure, we like to think we love all of our children equally, but when pressed, we have to hit ‘em with the “I don’t care for [X album].” I’m as die-hard a Coheed fan as they come, but have always had a complicated relationship with their fifth studio album, Year of the Black Rainbow. It’s not just that the release had notable shake-ups surrounding it – the booting of their original drummer, Josh Eppard, and subsequent replacement with Chris Pennie of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails’ eccentric producing influence, and lead singer Claudio Sanchez’s ongoing desire to evolve the band’s sound and musical approach – and the final product was heavily affected. 

The resulting album is, to this day, the most oddball release the band has ever done. While I have never completely gelled with the album as a whole, it does contain a couple of my favorite tracks of theirs, and songs like “Guns of Summer” really swing for the fences and show off Pennie’s truly staggering drumming chops. When it comes to Coheed’s discography, there are no releases that I dislike; it always comes down to which albums I love the least, and the reality is that I think Year of the Black Rainbow will always sit toward the bottom of the pack for me. Either way, I think it’s always good practice to revisit those black sheep albums in your favorite band’s discography every once in a while to remind yourself why you love them, not in spite of those albums, but to appreciate how they deepen and expand the band’s catalog.   

– Ciara Rhiannon


Forests – That’s Not Very Mid-Century Modern of You

Self-released

Forests is an emo band. That’s what their Bandcamp description was in 2016 when they released their debut album, Sun Eat Moon Grave Party. Despite being based in Singapore, they’ve cultivated a strong fanbase in the US with the perfect blend of melodic/abrasive vocals, mathy riffs, and all-too-relatable lyrics about memories that would be better off forgotten. Something Forests does particularly well is blending in references and influences, most obviously on “Trauma Dumpling,” uniting both Title Fight’s “Numb, But I Still Feel It” and Linkin Park’s “Numb.” This half-joking, self-referential humor isn’t anything new, but Forests pulls it off more effectively than any other group I know.

The album art for That’s Not Very Mid-Century Modern of You is a good metaphor for the ground the band has covered in ten years. Much like the cover of their debut, there are still mountains, stars, and a UFO, but now with much more detail. Their name on the album isn’t just one color, but a rainbow of creatures. They’re like they were ten years ago, but with more experience, more influences, and more control. I usually say that the best emo bands break up, but I hope Forests is making music like this for decades to come. 

– Braden Allmond


Adrianne Lenker – songs/instrumentals

4AD

The two most common questions I get when people find out I play guitar are either “Can you play Wonderwall?“ or “Do you have a favorite guitar player?” My answer to both hasn’t changed in the last few years: No, I do not know how to play Wonderwall, and I am not interested in learning how, and Adrianne Lenker is my favorite guitarist living today. Generally speaking, I tend to drift toward her solo output more than her work with Big Thief, not only to take in the wonderful ways she navigates across the fretboard, but to hear the often devastating stories she blends with her beautiful playing. songs/instrumentals, like much of the art that was created during the 2020 COVID lockdowns, evokes a very lonely time and place that most of us have probably subconsciously put away to find some sort of reason to keep going. But Adrianne, with a resilience I could only hope to achieve at some point in my life, carved out a remote space in the mountains for herself and her regular collaborator Philip Weinrobe to process the crushing feeling of what she dubbed “heartsickness” from not only the despair the pandemic had wrought, but also the dissolution of a romantic relationship and the death of a grandparent.

Both songs and sister album instrumentals are the result of a month of processing that heartsickness in the woods of Massachusetts. Lenker decided to take a more personal approach to this group of songs, making them feel strikingly intimate (especially so during a time when we were all communicating through screens and webcams). The detail in the tracks across the album is painterly in just how visual they are. “Circle of pine and red oak / Circle of moss and fire smoke / Fan on the ceiling like a wheel spoke / Push the clutch and I pull the choke,” she sings in one of my favorite sequences during “anything.” I’m there with her and her lover, passing the time in the woods, simmering slightly in the summer heat of a hot bedroom, driving down an empty street trying to time the mechanism of a manual vehicle with another. Floating in time, in memory, in whatever the day brings when you’re so deeply in love with someone.

Instrumentals, as you may have guessed, consist solely of Lenker’s guitar playing and the ambient sounds surrounding the cabin where the album was recorded. It’s two pieces, “music for indigo” and “mostly chimes,” clock in at just about 37 minutes. “mostly chimes” starts with some quiet guitar improvisation and ends with about 11 minutes of nothing but wind, chimes, and birdsong. The intimacy of Lenker’s songs is beautifully reflected through the intimacy of just being- a reminder that despite it all, the simple fact of existence is an act of love itself. 

– Nickolas Sackett


Honorable Mentions

Hey, we can’t write about every album with this color, so here’s a list of some more that we feel like we should mention.

  • Anthony Green - So Long, Avalon

  • Discus - To Relate To

  • Karmanjakah - Diamond morning

  • Pool Kids - Pool Kids

  • Pretty Bitter - Pleaser

  • Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs

  • Hey, Ily! - Hey, I Loathe You!

  • Longfriend Timefriend - Here’s to Not Feeling Worse

  • Microwave - Stovall

  • Cotton Jones - Paranoid Cocoon

  • Every Time I Die - From Parts Unknown


Collect some more Covers:

January Blues

February Reds

March Yellows

April Greens

May Purples

Swim Into The Six Hundred

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Hello, and welcome to Swim Into The Sound’s 600th post!

Since I just recently waxed poetic when we published our Million Word Celebration back in June, I’ll try to keep this short. Word count and navel-gazing aside, tradition is a tradition, and I don’t want to ruin my streak of celebrating each fresh hundo that this site breaks off. If you are in the mood to journey back through the past, here are each of our previous centennial posts:

Stemming nicely off our 500th post, this celebration of 600 is mostly concerned with merch. Long story short, the Swim Into The Sound merch store is officially back up and running! There’s also some free shit in the mix, but for that, I’d like to elaborate… 

Last year we whipped up a fresh round of Swim Into The Sound merch that I was super proud of. Still am! This drop included a pretty sizable run of “Caffeine Lovers” shirts inspired by a certain Northeast coffee chain, a batch of big-ass totes emblazoned with our classic logo, and some “Smoke Into The Sound” lighters that I can only deliver by hand because the USPS is weird about shipping flammables through the mail for some reason (😒).

When we put this merch up for sale, I was adamant that any proceeds would be split among three charities: The Palestine Children's Relief Fund (pcrf.net), Be Loved Asheville (belovedasheville.com), and the Gender Liberation Movement (genderlib.org). While we still haven’t covered the costs of production or sold out of any of these offerings, at the end of 2025, we donated $100 to each of these charities, and it felt nice to turn all our nerdy work here into something actionable. 

I’m excited to announce that (after a move and semi-horrible period of jobless limbo) I’m now settled into a new city and back in possession of my big box of Swim Merch. Thanks to my friends Mad, Poppy, and Dimple for keeping the merch safe in North Carolina while I figured out my living situation. 

Not only does this mean that our store is officially back online, but on top of this lovely merch spread, I’ve also made it so that anyone can get a Swim Sticker shipped to them for FREE! That’s right, if you’ve wanted to stick our little logo on a street sign, dive bar bathroom wall, laptop, or water bottle, then this is your chance. I’ll ship one sticker for free anywhere in the US. If you want a handful of them, there’s a pack of five available for $6, or for $8 you can get three stickers and a Swim Into The Sound guitar pick!

When I first started doing these posts to celebrate each fresh 100 articles we achieved, it felt a little self-congratulatory since I was the main one writing, editing, and publishing all this stuff. Even still, I believe in celebrating your achievements and recognizing the work that got you to where you are. To that end, I’d like to thank all the Swim writers who have helped us reach 600. I just ran the numbers, and I’m the attributed author on only 45% of these posts. Sure, I edit everything and organize things behind the scenes, but this site is now made up primarily of other people’s writing, and I think that’s cool as fuck.

This is all a long-winded way of saying Swim Into The Sound is the cumulative effort of dozens and dozens of talented writers, designers, coding friends, and cool music people I’ve been lucky enough to meet over the last eleven years. Thank you all for being here, for caring, and for all the beautiful music and writing I’ve been able to experience; I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

Happy 600! Go getchaself a sticker. 

Getting Loud About The Quiet with Josaleigh Pollett and Jordan Watko

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Photo by Josaleigh Pollett

Who’s your favorite musical duo? Lennon and McCartney? Becker and Fagan? Morrissey and Marr? For Salt Lake City-based musician Josaleigh Pollett and their collaborator Jordan Watko (AKA Crowd Shy), the answer to that question is simple: the one that they formed together. They say this not in a conceited or self-grandeurizing way, but in an extremely compassionate, heartfelt, and mutually appreciative way. Those same qualities are the ones that define their latest project, If I Let It Quiet, releasing tomorrow via Audio Antihero.

The pair began working together in 2020 with Pollett’s second LP, No Woman Is The Sea, and garnered further attention from the indiesphere with 2023’s In The Garden, By The Weeds. In the last six years, their musical relationship has evolved into an unbreakable symbiotic bond that persists even with a 14-hour time difference between Pollett’s native Utah and Watko’s new dwellings in Japan. I conducted my virtual conversation with them from my home in Illinois, and of the almost two hours we spent together across our three time zones, Pollett and Watko spent a majority of it talking about each other as much as their music, sentiments that were never better confessed than at the very end of the call...

The themes of emotional, physical, and spiritual distance are explored in a number of different ways throughout If I Let It Quiet, although the duo views the separation as less of a challenge and more of a resource.

“It’s made us get a lot more intentional,” observes Pollett. “When we made the last record, we were spending time on it regularly. But because of the nature of a long-distance friendship, even without the creative partnership element to it, you can't just be like, ‘Maybe I'll see you this weekend,’ and then it magically happens. Now, it’s, ‘What are you doing next week on Wednesday? I mean, my Wednesday morning, but your Wednesday night. I will send you a Zoom invite.’ And you have to do that just to hang out across the ocean. I think it was really helpful that right after Jordan moved, we weren't making a record yet; we were prioritizing our friendship first.”

They continue, “When Jordan lived in Salt Lake, every Saturday we would get together, and we would go get breakfast, and then chat for four hours. Then maybe work on some music. Nobody wants to sit on a Zoom call for several hours without an agenda. And my day job is work from home, too, so I was like, ‘Jordan, I love you, but I don't want to get off my Zoom call day job and then hang out on a Zoom call with you for four hours after that.’ So we have to do all of this shit, condensing our close friendship and creative partnership, in just an hour or two each time we talk. We have to prioritize the friendship, stay connected, stay close, understand each other, and then also be very open to an entirely new way of creating something, because what does our music look like or our collaboration look like when we don't have that breakfast and four-hour therapy hang where we talk through what happened to us that week? We had to have a plan in place because we didn't have limitless time. It was a really interesting experience because of that.”

From a production angle, Watko describes, “From my perspective, the big thing was that we both knew the long-distance thing was gonna be possible. Just given how we had worked together in the past, which was a lot of back and forth and working through these songs together and then apart, and then coming back together, and then apart again. Before the move even happened, our mantra was like, ‘If we're gonna blow this up, let's blow it up. Whatever needs to change, let's change it. Let's do whatever needs to happen.’ Specifically, the biggest change from working together in Salt Lake versus working long-distance was that I felt early on that I missed having air in the recordings. So much of the record is about distance, and I felt it was important to keep the air in as much of the recordings as possible. The biggest change for me was relying a lot less on synthesis and MIDI instrumentation, and a lot more starting from real audio. Whether it was field recordings or scratch tracks from Josaleigh, then throwing those in through a lot of different effects to make them sound a little more synthesized. I think it did make a difference that there was more of a human element in the production of this record.”

If I Let It Quiet is far from the first internationally recorded album, but it may be the one that hides the players’ separation the best that I’ve heard. Pollett and Watko have made their most blended and seamless record yet entirely on their own continents, and they were set up for success from their previous work together.

Pollett explains, “I think it really benefited us that this move, and this adjustment that we had to make for the distance, happened after we'd already been really close and worked on two records together. If this would have been our first record, there would have been no fucking way. We had already been building our friendship in a vulnerable way that allowed me to let Jordan into the lyric writing process. We've been building that trust for years.”

Speaking further on their tenacity, Pollett says, “I knew from recording and writing In The Garden, By The Weeds that there are so many things that I was precious about, but that I could have done so much better. I trust Jordan so much to be able to tell me that something's not working, or to brainstorm what could look differently. It took six years of hanging out together for me to feel comfortable enough to really accept that from Jordan and truly know that it makes our work better together.”

Watko has also had to push himself as a producer being in unfamiliar territory. “Living where I am definitely influences what I’m doing now,” he says. “This has been my chance to use a lot of my own field recordings from the city. I think I've got three or four different ones of our busy street taken from the 14th floor of our apartment building. You get all these cool reverberations, especially the samples I used on “Yasaka, Natsu” of a parade that happens every summer right by us. In some ways, it's an interesting mix of peacefulness and cacophony, more than anything I experienced in Salt Lake. Those have worked their way onto the record to some degree.”

Pollett shares in and about one of my favorite tracks on the record, “Escape Routes,” which features the standout production advancements from Watko. “I've felt so incredibly proud of that song,” they say, emphatically. “The production feels so deeply unique and special. When I listen to it, I don't know anything else that sounds like it, but it feels so connected to both of us. It was one of the first ones we started writing for this record; I actually had written the initial demo for it before Jordan moved. He was trying to be very sweet by giving me enough time to emotionally prepare, but for months I was out of control and would cry and shake him whenever we’d see each other. When I showed the song to Jordan, I was in this interesting space where the move was still two months away, but obviously I couldn’t really do anything else about it. There was all this stress and anticipation, and I was really trying to keep all my fits from getting to him. I just felt like a disaster because I love him so much and I want to be supportive, and I want to be like a safe place for him to talk about his moving stress without me sobbing every time. “Escape Routes” came out of that space, and Jordan said it was one of the first times he’s ever seen himself in my lyrics. It was resonant for both of us for drastically different reasons. I even felt like I was trying to write it from his perspective.”

Watko follows, “There was so much anxiety when we were working on that one that ended up coming out in the production. It kept getting increasingly anxious and frenetic. I was trying to recreate the sickness we were feeling, but at some point towards the end, I wanted to highlight the optimism that also existed. But anxiety in general is certainly one of the throughlines on the entire record.”

“We are super intentional about sequencing and themes,” Pollett says further about those throughlines. “When Jordan came back to play Kilby Block party with me last year, we spent so much downtime noodling on song ideas, and were able to pull a concept together. We had finished “Escape Routes,” “Radio Player,” and “Repeating,” and we had a chunk of ideas for other things. We were able to talk through, in person, how things could feel thematically, and how they could be connected and flow for a record. There’s distance, and doubt, and anxiety, and relationships, and the record is very authentic to us because it's what we were living in. The themes were revealed to us after some time, but they were also created by us.”

Photo by Kyle S. Ford

Pollett and Watko’s creative partnership stands out among the slew of bedroom-pop singer-songwriters you can find on Bandcamp at any given moment, and they’ve achieved record after record of truly one-of-a-kind music. I was curious if that happened to them naturally, by accident, or some mad-scientist level of self-awareness in their lab.

“We’re both perfectionists to an extent with our music,” says Pollett, “but sometimes I do feel like Jordan and I are on a different level at certain moments. I usually know sooner than him, but then maybe two weeks later or two months later, he’ll feel the same.” From a lyrical standpoint, Pollett feels, “There are so many times when I go back and look at a song and think, ‘what was I talking about?’ ‘What did I mean?’ It won’t be until years later that I'll realize how much sense it makes. Lyric writing, to me, is a weird, intentional job, but also alchemy. I love when I don't really know what it's about or if it doesn’t mean anything grammatically. Maybe the assumed meaning is something totally different. I love writing as nebulously as possible, but with a certain amount of specificity. I can get my feelings out, but it can be a blank slate for those feelings. I can come back to a song that I wrote ten years ago, apply it to a completely different situation now, and still connect to it. Meaning is so subjective, and I never feel like I have to figure it out.”

Watko says, “We definitely overthink things a lot. Even talking about when you're onto something, that first 25% of working on a song has a lot of uncertainty. And then the last 25% is us trying to figure out if we’ve made all the right decisions. The bulk of the middle of the process is when it can feel like we have it, but I often need Josaleigh to rein me in. I have a tendency to overcook things.”

When the team tries to figure out how Pollett’s lyrics and vocals will mix with Watko’s production, it’s a collective effort across the LP. Pollett describes, “Prior to working on this record, we had a pretty concrete process. I would write a melody on guitar and some lyrics, then send it over to Jordan. He would spend some time with it, thinking through some production ideas, and then we would come together a little bit more and work through the more granular details together. With this album in particular, it was a little bit more collaborative from the get-go. We'd really build out the song structure together, and Jordan was so much more involved in the lyric writing and editing with me too. Which is hilarious to think about because we did it from way farther away this time.”

Watko agrees with the irony and continues, “It was fun to dig into these scratch takes that Josaleigh would send me in their infancy, and it allowed us to work through more arrangement decisions together. This record felt more informed by both of us, and I think we both got to do what we each do best: Josaleigh as a songwriter, and me getting to create some fun sounds with what they sent me.”

…I chose an absurd but intentional penultimate question: “Josaleigh Pollett, what is your favorite thing about Josaleigh Pollett?” This was their answer:

“I probably would have used to say that it was being able to process the world around me through writing songs. It’s always just been how I get through big feelings, hard times, joyful times… I'm so grateful to have this tool that is always present and accessible and something that I can use to navigate whatever the fuck is happening in my life. But honestly, now it's my creative partnership with Jordan. I feel so deeply blessed — and I don't use that word because I'm not a religious person whatsoever — but it feels insane to me that I've had so many relationships in the past where it’s either platonic, or romantic, or creative, but it feels so otherworldly to have this platonic love in this creative partnership that inspires me to be a better person, to grow the craft that I care about, and also to like the music that I'm creating more, and to be a part of something that I truly believe in.

I would still probably be making music, writing, and recording songs if I hadn't met Jordan, but I certainly wouldn't be thinking that other people should listen to them. What Jordan and I have is so special. When I hear one of our songs, it sounds like our friendship. I talk all the time about how my favorite bands are the ones that, when you go see them live, you can tell they fucking love each other. If you can tell that they don't give a shit about each other and they're just on the stage to play the music or whatever, that’s rarely gonna resonate with me. I've always coveted that, and I don't feel like I have to anymore because I have that with Jordan. I believe in what we do so much, and can feel how much we love each other in the music.”

Josaleigh Pollett: talented songwriter, loving friend, mind reader. My final question for them had already been answered: “What is your favorite thing about Jordan Watko?” They got to the place I was looking to guide them towards, but they were already there waiting ahead of me. Both Pollett and Watko didn’t need the follow-up, or any additional clarification. Because when I asked Jordan Watko what his favorite thing about Jordan Watko is, he matched Josaleigh’s freak without missing a beat:

“It's the same answer. I've forever been tinkering with things in my own space, and I wouldn't trade that for anything, but Josaleigh has an ability to connect to people in a way that I feel so lucky that I get to be in the orbit of. It’s opened my world up so much; the fact that I've been able to meet, share, and collaborate with so many other people through Josaleigh is the joy of my life. I know you asked what my favorite thing about me is, but that’s it. I feel really lucky to have people that want to work with me, as a human being and as a musical collaborator.”

It’s this humble and considerate partnership that is at the core of the record, where you can’t talk about Josaleigh Pollett’s vocals and lyrics without also talking about Jordan Watko’s production and composition, worldwide distance be damned. If I Let It Quiet proves no strong relationship can ever be broken, and is a testament to their determination to release the art that matters to them more than anything, showered in the audible love that they’ve worked so long to grow. So listen to this record with your best friend, whether they’re in the car with you in your hometown or they’re on Zoom half a world away. And most importantly, don’t let your feelings towards them quiet.

Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

Riley! – To Live and Die in the American South | EP Review

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Pure Noise Records

When explaining the peculiarities of the Southern identity, Flannery O’Connor wrote: “Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” The freakish nature of the South is all-encompassing, one that swallows you whole rather than sneaking up behind you. It’s a region of endless mourning and gregarious myth. Frightening at times, apologetic in others, uncomfortable always. In their latest EP, To Live and Die in the American South, Riley! attempts to make peace with the anguish their home has wrought. 

Texas’ inclusion in the South has always been hotly disputed by those hailing from the Deepest parts of the region. They claim it’s too Western, too different from the culture found on South Carolina’s patios or in Georgia’s sunrooms. I have always disagreed with this perspective; Texas has the same ghosts in the attic as the rest of the South, the same violence as Louisiana, and the same mountains as Tennessee. I bring up this debate because Riley! is from the Rio Grande Valley, a place at the tip of Texas’ hooked end and near the same Gulf that borders Mississippi and Alabama, a place where the South legitimately meets the West, and To Live and Die in the American South connects them both. 

Beyond this connection, emo, a genre more classically found in the mid-Atlantic or the Midwest, is not necessarily the approach most musicians would utilize to encapsulate the feelings of decay and distress within the American South, but Riley! makes a staggering case for changing the tune. For years, Riley! has toiled away in the remains of the 5th wave emo scene, frustratingly stuck as an ‘if you know, you know’ band. The excitement of their last album Keep Your Cool on Counter Intuitive Records, turned Riley! into one of emo’s most reliable collections of Road Dogs, thanks to near-constant touring. Yet their success keeps climbing, on To Live and Die in the American South, an EP produced by Phillip Odom, the band breaks itself wide open through a raw examination of the complicated relationship the trio has with their home.

The first song on the EP, “Roll for Initiative,” begins with a question, “If I died right now, would I still haunt this house, or would it just rot with my body when I’m put in the ground?” It’s a question that veers the album directly into the literary territory of the Southern Gothic, a genre centered around inspecting the grotesque hauntings of the South. Vocalist and guitarist Ryan Bluhm answers the question for themselves: “I think I’m meant to live and die here, and there’s no way out.” This feeling of dread is threaded through every song on the EP. The conceit of the song, firmly entering it into the Southern Gothic, is Bluhm’s admittance, “There’s nowhere else I’d rather die.” It’s the heart of the genre, a disgust for home infused with an unshakeable feeling of belonging.

Cesar “Izzy” Izaguirre and Kris Gallardo’s rhythm plays “Roll for Initiative” out, leading into the quieter “Another Round of Radical ‘Ritas, Please.” The rot felt in the prior song returns, but instead of the secrecy of experiencing misery in private, this song puts those feelings in front of an audience. Tades Sanville of Hot Mulligan, a writer contending with similar topics of self-hatred and grief, joins in over Izzy’s pounding drums. 

Across this EP, Riley! utilize an arsenal of familiar voices with similar expressions of introspection to deepen the emotionally wrought work. On the next track, the deceptively upbeat “Two Bucks,” a song about feeling useless, one of the angriest, most suspicious voices in the Emo world appears: Eric Egan of Heart Attack Man. It’s an unguarded, honest song; Bluhm and Egan agree that they are both just ghosts. Gabe Wood of saturdays at your place has long studied the impact of his own actions in song, making him the perfect pick for “Backseat Bartender.” Across Bluhm and Gallardo’s intricately woven riffs and basslines, Wood and Bluhm beg someone to crawl into their head and find what’s wrong. 

The final song of the EP, “73 Summer,” catches Bluhm in a moment of grief. For a record contending with the wretchedness life can inflict, it only makes sense to end on the aftermath of death. The band gives the questions within the lyrics plenty of room to linger, creating a specter looking back. In that same quote about the Southerner’s natural predisposition to identifying a freak, O’Connor added that “Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature.” The ghost Bluhm is speaking to is made present by their words and the song's ferocity. The shadow may be strange, but it’s familiar.

The final bit of the O’Connor quote referenced throughout all of this is the notion that “It is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.” Riley! achieves this in 17 minutes on To Live and Die in the American South. The admissions and frustrations put to song on this EP breathe familiarity into feelings of freakiness, making them whole. Riley! may feel tied to the American South and all of the internal strife it creates, but this is the place that made them, for better or worse. 

Caro Alt (she/her) is from New Orleans, Louisiana, and if she could be anyone in The Simpsons, she would be Milhouse.

Exploring the Atmosphere: An Interview with She’s Green

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Photo by Myles Ross

In a world that is becoming more chaotic and artificial by the day, the act of finding your peace has never been more important. The environment that we surround ourselves with is essential to maintaining our sanity and cultivating our creative inner world. Rising indie rock band She’s Green recognize this and have tailored their specific act of creation by going back to basics on the most human and naturalistic level. The Minneapolis quintet has made a habit of heading to various forests, lakes, and quarries to center themselves while creating the kind of music that not only replenishes their own souls but also those of the fans who listen to their music. 

The band – comprised of singer Zofia Smith, guitarists Liam Armstrong and Raines Lucas, drummer Kevin Seebeck, and bassist Teddy Nordvold – has established a worldwide following solely off a few EPs and a handful of singles. The music these five create speaks for itself with lush textures that are richly melodic, designed to draw you into inescapable dreamy atmospheres. Their songs have a cinematic quality, where one stroke of a guitar can feel gut-wrenching, then exhilarating at the drop of a hat. Smith’s otherworldly vocal range, matched with the whirling dervish noisy-yet-melodic guitar leads, is a combination that is just killer, and it’s clear as day why this band is connecting with so many people before they even have a proper debut album under their belts.

The group’s newest EP, swallowtail, has the gratifying feeling of a band finally putting together the pieces of their true potential. Opening track “locket” possesses a clear reverence for the shoegaze ancestors of our collective past, nodding heartily toward the lineage of 90s greats like Slowdive and Cocteau Twins. My favorite song, the mid-album cut “mettle,” has a smoggy wash of reverb-drenched guitar riffs that are thunderous in all the right places. One track later, “keeper” is another standout in which the rich guitar textures are painted with precision, and Smith’s vocal register is yet again a major highlight. It’s one of those songs that you can put on while staring out at the night sky, glaring at the stars and getting lost in space. 

I got a chance to chat with Zofia Smith and Liam Armstrong over Zoom, where we discussed everything from their patented “moss music” sound, the indie scene out in Minnesota, and touring China for the first time. We even managed to sneak in some Jonas Brothers talk.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SWIM: I read that you describe your sound as “Moss Music.” 
What does that label mean to you? 

ZOFIA: Moss Music is a small thing that nourishes its environment and is very firm and dense, but also fuzzy and soft. I think that really describes our sound. Sometimes there's a love sound, and it’s a lot; then it’s heavy, and then there’s this gentleness to it. The point of us making music is to create an environment for a person to nourish their soul. 

SWIM: Are there any other bands that you would consider Moss Music? 

LIAM: That is so tough. I would say Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. He makes an ambient kind of tape guitar. I'm also gonna say George Harrison… And let’s get Weyes Blood in there too.

SWIM: What is it about dream pop and shoegaze that attracts you guys to make records in a similar aesthetic? 

LIAM: We had a huge obsession with 90s bands, but also music with ambient textures. We wanted to see how far we could push experimentation with the sound of a guitar. In a way, we tried to make it not sound like a guitar anymore. I think this helps me paint a more grandiose picture that also leans into our interests in movies and visual art. 

ZOFIA: Those sounds have always seemed captivating. I'm instantly drawn to the sounds of Beach House and that beautiful chorus reverb sound. It just invites me in, and I want to wrap up in a blanket and sink into it. This is the best, most comforting sound to me. That started my deep dive into shoegazing dream pop. That obsession made me want to try it out myself and see what I would come up with with the same sort of sounds. 

SWIM: What was the first concert you ever went to?

LIAM: The first concert I went to with my dad was this folk rock band, Dawes. Then I also saw Rush with my dad. So definitely bands on different ends of the spectrum. 

ZOFIA: My first one was the Jonas Brothers. I was obsessed with them. My parents were kind of in a different lane, so I got into cool music in high school, and it felt like I had all the cool discoveries a bit later than most people. 

SWIM: I gotta ask, did you have a favorite Jonas brother? 

ZOFIA: Nick was my favorite.

LIAM: I also went through a huge Jonas Brothers phase as a kid. My favorite was either Nick or Joe. I don't know, it’s too hard to pick. 

SWIM: I think it was scientifically proven that Nick is the coolest Jonas brother. Who are we to argue with scientists? Are there bands you listened to growing up that influence what you're doing sonically today? 

LIAM: Definitely, I used to listen to a lot of Coldplay and Death Cab for Cutie, because that's what my parents would throw on around the house. That music definitely opened up this kind of emotional side of me. I really just wanted to make some heartfelt music. That still always resonates with me. 

ZOFIA: I don't know if the music I heard growing up did so much for me because I listened to a lot of pop music. I think that definitely has helped me with certain melodies, though; you can come up with a pop melody and put it into any song for a chorus. I was listening to Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, just a lot of female pop artists. It plays a role in the melodies that I come up with, because I was always singing around the house and taking videos of me singing certain big pop songs. 

SWIM: Can you talk to me about how you come up with your melodies? Do you try to find certain pockets lyrically? How do you come about those? 

ZOFIA: Honestly, I am freestyling over something that they made, or we're jamming, and it’s just gibberish coming out. I don't usually have the words first. Usually I'm diving into the instrumental, and sometimes I'll find words in that. I'll listen back, and maybe subconsciously I'm saying this or my heart is telling me that. Other times, I'll have something written beforehand if I can't come up with a melody, and I'll see what works with the lyrics I already have. But, normally I'll come up with the melody first.

Photo by Liam Armstrong

SWIM: Your writing is really eclectic. Is there a specific formula in how She’s Green creates songs? 

LIAM: Nowadays, we all get in the practice space, and we'll be jamming, or we'll start with somebody's guitar riff. Sometimes one of us will have a fully fleshed-out demo, and it won't get changed much. I would say we're leaning more towards writing as a group and building off something that someone brings to a practice session. 

SWIM: How difficult is it to write within a group of people as opposed to solo? 

LIAM: It was definitely something that we all had to learn together, but I feel after touring with each other for so long and practicing so much together, we're all super comfortable now. 

SWIM: I’m always fascinated by how bands come up with names. How did you decide on She's Green? 

LIAM: We were just throwing out names. I think there was something about She’s Green that was kind of vague, but you can also apply a lot of meaning to it. The name kind of paints a metaphorical picture. She’s Green sounded cool and, for us, symbolized Mother Nature in a way because we are all really into plants. 

ZOFIA: I like that the name has a feminine identity. I know we're a band where I'm the only woman in the group, but our music is honestly pretty feminine from our melodies and everything that we're doing. I just think it's cool that we have a feminine-sounding name.

SWIM: What were some of the names that were on the cutting room floor? 

ZOFIA: Moon Due was an option, and before that, Liam and I had released a couple of songs under the name Sad Films. 

SWIM: You described your love of 90s music earlier. Are there any 90s bands you would love to dream of playing with? 

ZOFIA: Slowdive is my number one. Every time I've seen them, I'm overwhelmed. It’s just so, so beautiful.

LIAM: We're playing with Chapterhouse. They're a very sick band from the 90s, and that's a dream come true. 

SWIM: Is there a song you're most proud of creating on swallowtail? 

LIAM: I'm gonna say “close your eyes” because it's a song we've had for a really long time and we’re finally ready to get it out there. 

ZOFIA: Yeah, that one specifically we were sitting on for a long time, and we were messing with the instrumentation for a while, shortening parts, lengthening parts, and re-organizing them. We’ve been working on that song for two and a half years. We finally have this beautiful song, and it feels complete, and I don't want to change anything. It just feels so rewarding to have that payoff. 

SWIM: When you have a song that takes two and a half years to create, how do you fight through that? Do you go at the song head-on, attacking it daily? Do you just let it simmer for a bit? What kind of methods do you work through with writer’s block on a song?

ZOFIA: We put that song on the back burner for a second and took some time away from it because I wanted to have a clear head going in. That way we could listen with a new perspective on what it needs. I think we gave “close your eyes” a few months, actually. We just kept giving it more space to breathe. 

LIAM: It's also been kind of tough for us to really sit down and work on stuff in between touring. Some stuff just gets pushed to the back. There are still things that we would find that I say, “Wow, this is really cool.” It's a constant barrage of information that brings a lot of the good ideas, but also takes time to really find them.

ZOFIA: Our bassist Teddy was the one who figured out “close your eyes.” He knew right away what he wanted while we were practicing, so that definitely helps when someone comes in and knows exactly what they want to do with a song.

Photo by Nick Cai

SWIM: How was it touring in China? How big of a culture shock was it going from your home state of Minnesota all the way to China? 

LIAM: It was wild. I had been to Asia before, and our other guitarist, Raines, has been as well. It was just an insane experience. It helped a lot that Raines actually speaks Mandarin, so it was really fun to communicate more easily with the locals. The food is amazing, everything is affordable, and it's easy to get around. All the crowds were so tuned-in and very polite.

ZOFIA: It was cute. We had Raines on the end of the stage because he could have conversations with people. We could move him along, and then they could talk to him, and it was so sweet to hear from them. We got a bunch of letters from them. 

But it was so nice having Raines there. There were a lot of people that said to us, “I'll take you for a ride, come with me,” and Raines would say, “Okay guys, let's go.” We'd just be in some random person's car. We don't know what they're saying up front. We don't know what's happening. But it's so sweet to see how they open up to Raines and how interested they are in our culture. They're speaking with him about politics, and it was so cool to get that perspective. A lot of people were like, “If you're going to China, be careful,” but it just felt so safe, and everyone was so sweet.

SWIM: How did that feel when people on the opposite side of the world are so attentive and caring about your songs and connecting to your music?

LIAM: It was unbelievable. We were not expecting that at all. I was worried there would be around 10 to 20 people at every show, but it blew us away to have near sellouts every night.

ZOFIA: We were shocked. These venues have a capacity of 300 to 500. We just thought there's no way people are gonna show up, you know? We're gonna get like 15 people, but it was actually bigger than our normal show in America. Honestly, it’s unreal. People had signs they made for us. They wanted to take pictures.

SWIM: To take things back home, your sounds are very scenic. Is there a favorite forest or nature walk you like to go back stateside?

LIAM: We really love St. Croix Falls near River Falls, Wisconsin. There's also Kinnickinnic State Park. It’s a really clean trout stream, and it's nice to get down there because it feels like a different world. We just hang out,  take acoustic guitars, and write.

SWIM: Do you have any favorite bands from Minnesota?

LIAM: Yeah, definitely, The Replacements, obviously. Bands that are currently kind of up and coming are like Lana Leone, Mother Soki, and Berzica. 

SWIM: How tight-knit is the Minnesota indie scene? 

LIAM: It's super welcoming. I mean, people are always willing to help you out with anything you need. It’s so inclusive and also safe. A lot of people really look out for each other. I don't think we would have started playing in a band if we hadn't seen all these cool bands growing up. 

ZOFIA: I had been going to local shows since high school, so it was really just such a welcoming and tight-knit community, and everybody kind of knows each other, even if you're playing in a different genre. It's not just like a folk show or an emo show, you know, we kind of cross paths with the lineups. I love that.

SWIM: Is there anything you would like to accomplish before releasing your debut album? 

LIAM: Just taking everything in, I feel like right now, we're kind of in the brainstorming stage of creating. It's all up in the air. I think it's finding the time to actually sit down and write. We'll probably end up going somewhere, maybe this winter, like a cabin, to start writing it. But right now it's basically all ideas. I mean, we have some songs written and some we're still working on, but I think it'd be really cool to sit down and try to conceptualize the album itself. 

ZOFIA: I personally wanted to be more thought-out, like creating a story and a theme. It would be fun to have a visualizer for the whole thing, like a movie. That would be an ideal scenario where we could come up with some sort of plot and get a cohesive video because our music is very cinematic. I'm excited about some of our ideas from what we've been working on and making something out of that. 

SWIM: Speaking of cinematic, you both directed your music video “paper thin.” How fun was it creating from another platform?

LIAM: That was super fun. It’s something that we also get to do on the side just for fun because all of us are really into films. It was really fun to try our hand at that. 

ZOFIA: It was cool to have direction that day. We had a plan, but it was cool to be like, ‘let's do this. No, let's do this.’ That was a fun environment; nobody was being intense, and we didn't feel stressed about timing. We were just kind of going with the flow. That ended up being one of our favorite videos because it was just a lot of fun and low stakes.

SWIM: Final question. With both of you being big film buffs, what's your favorite movie you've seen this year? It could be new or old.

ZOFIA: Honestly, Purple Rain. It’s a Minnesota classic. I hadn’t seen that movie until recently, and it was awesome. It’s really inspiring. 

LIAM: For me, this Cantonese film called Love on Delivery, that we just went and saw in the theater. It was so funny and just a good time. It was hilarious. I definitely recommend that. You're looking for a goofy movie. 

David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.