Illuminated by the sun bouncing off the yellow wall behind her while sitting on the porch of her home in New Hampshire, Wyn Doran joined me via video call to talk about her journey with music, the healing nature of music, and the power of vulnerability and collaboration.

Rock and roll isn’t dead—it lives and breathes in the mesmerizing guitar grooves and rustic vocals of Caleb Kopta’s music. From Springsteen to Styles, Kopta’s classic-cool style tastefully plucks components from all facets of the rock genre. Take the eclectic, beating new wave synths in “Foreign Language” to the Spector-style Wall-of-Sound dreamscape of “Kids.” Kopta’s catalogue has something to offer for every rock-and-rollers palate.

Leo Bautista is like speaking to myself in another form. We both have struggled with finding who we are as people of color in predominantly white environments and still do to some extent. However, our creative outlets have allowed for immense growth and radical self care when we were denied the opportunity in the roles that were thrust upon us. For me, I have the art of the written word to thank for allowing me to love myself. For Bautista, he has the art of music in being a powerful beacon of hope that both allowed for vulnerable self discovery and impactful resonance with humanity.

I caught up with Elliott fresh out of the studio where he’s been working on his next EP with producer Jason Wozniak—release date still being determined. Despite just releasing a single, he was buzzing with excitement about being back in the studio. After a month or two of low creative steam while adjusting to life in a pandemic, he’s hard at work with a renewed sense of appreciation for being able to create. Songwriting especially keeps him going, because it allows him to process his emotions and thoughts, which later translate to the self-expression he loves about music.

After two years of knowing OddCouple, we finally had a real and honest conversation–which was long overdue. The first time I met him was via a group text message with musician Jack Red. Jack had reached out to me to virtually style a music video shoot for him and OddCouple. Never meeting him in real life, I pulled pieces for the shoot and never heard from him again, until about a year later.

Randomly on the rooftop of the Virgin Hotel, I finally met him. That night was a blur, but the mention of the video shoot came up and I wouldn’t see him again until a year and half later. This time, It was in the middle of a global pandemic and at a wine shop.

After exchanging pleasantries, I reminded him that I was the one who virtually styled the video–which has never seen the light of day. We chatted a bit about the work he’s currently doing and a bit about the future of music. As it was time for us to depart, he suggested that we do this again, so we did. After an hour portrait session in my Humboldt Park studio, we chatted for nearly two hours.

Taylor Noelle started her pop career with a seemingly counterintuitive move from Los Angeles to Nashville to aIn school, listening to voice-memos of herself playing guitar and piano, she felt a long way from making the upbeat and layered music she envisioned. Popifying her music meant getting into a studio, but growing up outside the blast-radius of contemporary music, and listening to The Beatles and The Beach Boys, lends her music a stripped-down sound reminiscent of those 60’s icons. Still, she describes the process of making hits like ‘End Of The Night’ as a little like rocket science.

Hadley Kennary is a pop singer-songwriter based in Nashville, Tennessee, with a heart and soul that travels across the country. She is an artist, fusing poetics prose into her lyrics, coalescing that prose with melodic sounds. Hadley hopes to continue to connect with those around her, something that stems from the will to truly love herself, so she can love others.

When you’re able to go out [into nature]...you have yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, and a bunch of open land. It provides a lot of clarity and allows you to reach within yourself a little bit to a greater degree than when you’re in the city and you’re always connected to something else.

The music that New York musician Ryan Zuli Jr. makes, under the moniker Zuli Jr., stays with you. It is deeply emotive, drawing from personal reflection and patient songwriting. Not only that, but the songs are total earworms—deeply inspired by the current magnates of R&B and pop music, but maintaining a tether to the foundation of classic rock.

Part 1 of “All That Has Come Apart/Once Did Not Exist,” Sonny Falls’ new album, is an exploration into how adversity can be a catalyst for positive growth and change. The rock album pulls you along an undefined narrative into Sonny Falls’ life, where the focus rests on the storms that follow the calm. Although the songs can be heavy, Ensley punctures the compounded tension with a throbbing guitar chord or a humorous chorus.

“I grew up hearing a pretty simple story,” Daniel said. “There's this grandfather that talks to his grandson and the grandfather says he had two enemies, that two wolves live within anyone: jealousy, malice, envy, greed, hatred, bigotry. The second is love, peace, mercy, kindness, hope, justice. And the grandson responded with ‘Which one of these will win?’ His grandfather responded with, ‘The one that you feed.’”

Noah Chris is a 21-year-old artist making moves for himself in Chicago. He brings about the vibrancy of love we need so much right now as he finds solace in Chicago as a home and music as a way to connect with people and learn from one another. A poetic soul who shapeshifted into the music scene, Chris implements the sounds of both R&B and hip-hop into his music with the fusion of acoustic undertones that make you wanna sit back and vibe for the entire duration of this pandemic.

Music has been a consistent line of passion for Gray as a man finding a place in the world . As a child, Gray was heavily influenced by his father’s independence and love for the classic RnB of the ‘80s and ‘90s. At the age of eleven, Gray fell in love with music, specifically the sound emitted from the trumpet. As he grew, the music he created fell back in love with him—a voice that demanded others to listen.

D-Composed is revolutionary. Led by two Black women, the chamber music collective builds experiences that immerse audience members into a world of Black composers, Black musicians, and Black culture. In an industry where—once again, dead white guys dominate—D-Composed’s Founder and Experience Curator, Kori Coleman, and Artistic Director, Danielle Taylor, create space for Black voices to be heard.

The Chicago-based musician has spent much of her career drifting between the city’s various music scenes, floating through their cosmos and absorbing what she can before moving on. She describes herself as a wanderer. The effects of this wanderlust can be heard in her music: shapeless, genreless, somewhere in the gravity between jazz and post-punk and gospel and trip-hop. drea, though, uses simpler terms: “It’s like blue-purple. The sound Chicago usually makes is orangey-red, and I appreciate orangey-red, but that’s just not what I do.”