The Alaskan-born daughter of a folk musician, Tekla Waterfield comes by evocative, poignant songwriting honestly. Waterfield has played music in various formations in Seattle since she moved to the area in 2010, but most recently, she’s stepped out on...
In late May, while listening to police flash-bangs and screams of protestors outside his apartment in Seattle during the widespread protests following the May 25 death of George Floyd, multi-instrumentalist Jordan Thomas, a.k.a. Cool Ruins, says he felt the...
In her senior year at Bennington College in Vermont, Dana Foote, a music composition major, was required to present a concert of original music. Foote gathered together some of her school peers, the songs she wrote, and she called...
Jessica Dobson is a quiet giant of contemporary indie music. Along with performing her own material in Deep Sea Diver, Dobson has worked with indie music darlings like Beck, Conor Oberst, Spoon, and The Shins. And yet, if you...
The last time I met with the baroque pop duo Gracie Coates and Rachel Ruggles (aka Gracie and Rachel) was in 2014, in the backyard of Coates’ parent’s house in Berkeley, California – which happened to be near where...
On a bandstand, it’s not uncommon to leave space for band-members—and special guests—to solo and share their own interpretation of a song live for everyone to enjoy. But, during quarantine, while musicians and audiences are alone in their homes,...
Is it too late fix the things in the world that are broken? That was the question on powerhouse Seattle guitarist Kathy Moore’s mind when she wrote her Super Power trio’s newest single, “Bad Day’s Coming,” and started planning...
Oregon State’s motto, “She Flies with her Own Wings,” was first adopted in 1854 as a nod to the “independent spirit” of the state’s first pioneers. In her new single by the same name, Kristen Grainger and True North...
On a cold, gloomy day in late March, a few weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, singer Debby Nagusky picked up her guitar for the first time in weeks. She had just read several news articles—one about the shortage of...
Using a mixture of performance art, experimental opera, free improvisation, and literary composition, artists Lisa E. Harris and Nicole Mitchell have created EarthSeed, a ten-song album recorded during a live performance and inspired by the groundbreaking works of Octavia...
According to a 2014 study by the League of American Orchestras, less than 2% of musicians in American orchestras are African American, only 4.3% of conductors are black, and composers remain predominantly white as well. Hence, as a classically-trained...
Seattle-based drummer and singer-songwriter Heather Thomas had grand plans for 2020. After releasing her sophomore EP Open Up last year, Thomas hit the road, planning a nearly year-long journey with the intention of spending each month in a different...
About three years ago, Adrienne Clark and Anthony Darnell, bandmates in Seattle new wave dance pop group Killer Workout, replied to an ad from a man who had bought out the stock of a closed-down video store. Interest piqued,...
What do you hear in your head when the world goes silent? This was the question Elijah Dhavvan of Seattle band Tobias the Owl set out to answer with his third full-length album Visalia. The question was originally posed...
For more than a decade, songwriter Tomo Nakayama has been a staple of the Seattle music scene—first as leader of the eight-piece chamber pop group Grand Hallway, and more recently as a solo artist known for his tender and...
The Spider Ferns, the Seattle-based band of couple Kelly and Alton Fleek, never felt more alone and isolated than during the latter half of last year, when they cared for Kelly’s terminally-ill mother until her passing in late 2019....
Seattle, the epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak with more than more than 1,000 cases, has now been on social distancing-induced lockdown for about a week now. At first it was just a lot of hand washing and a limit...
Eight years ago, Kate Voss tapped Jason Goessl on the shoulder at a party after recognizing him from a performance he had a few weeks prior. “I asked if he’d like to play music with me sometime. He gave...
In the first lines of her new single, “Do You Miss Me Yet,” Asheville-based singer-songwriter Anna Lynch sings, “Do you miss me yet/ Or are you watching the phone?/Am I on your mind/ Or am I already gone?” It’s...
Seattle-based singer Marquetta Miller met most of her fellow bandmates in blistering soul fusion band Breaks and Swells while working a cocktail bar in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. It’s in this same neighborhood, at a dive-y karaoke bar, that...
On “Home,” the new remixed single from electro-pop duo White Night, there’s a chime-like synth pattern and haunting vocal loops that swell over a percussive drumbeat. It’s classic indie electronica—and in some ways, not a sound that most people...
Singer-songwriter Leila Sunier just moved to Los Angeles from Colorado in September. The 23 year-old chose L.A. out of a relative familiarity—she once spent a summer interning at a music library in the area—but the change of scenery is...
As far back as Seattle’s Eleni Govetas can remember there’s been Balkan music in her life. By seven years old, she knew the heat of a Greek summer well, winding through tobacco fields on dirt roads in the backseat...
Until three years ago, singer-songwriter Caitlin Sherman’s musical career in Seattle was always attached to one romantic partner or another. For seven years, she was married to local Seattle guitarist Jason Goesl, and for nine years the two performed...