I'm sure I'm not alone in this but my browser has about a hundred tabs open at all times. Generally these are items that I want to read later or, most likely, albums I want to spend more time with and ideally write something about. Well, the time has come! Let's close out those tabs. This isn't my ideal format to do this but better to do something than to do nothing.

This is a smattering of music that's come my way in 2025 that I feel is worthy of a nod. I hope you'll hit play on some of this and let them find their way into your ears. Hyloxolos - Hyloxolos
I am a big fan of the label Dead Currencies. Everything they release is varied & interesting. They also manage to put together a short run of vinyl for all of the releases that feel hand crafted. I can't pinpoint exactly what it is but each always feel special.

Hyloxolos is a bit of a supergroup that is comprised of Dave Harrington (Darkside), Peter Matthew Bauer (The Walkmen), Dylan Carlson (Earth), Dylan Fujioka (Meatbodies) and Otis Bauer (Trench). If nothing else, having a member of The Walkmen involved in a new project should be enough to hit play. Hyloxolos is a big, sweeping, immersive experience. It's part soundscape, part giant guitar riff and 100% best listened to at maximum volumes. Tracks average 6-7 minutes in length, taking their time to unfold and draw you in to a cosmic wall of sound.

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Brandy McMaxwell - You Gotta Start Somewhere, Am I Right Ladies?
I know zilch about Brandy McMaxwell. I stumbled on this release while looking for new music to add to my Halloween mixtape. The opening track, "Evil (The Song)," is a great inclusion for such a mix but the rest of the record is an incredibly enjoyable peek into a musical brain with a lot of different ideas being worked out at once. "Hands Are for Holding" has a haunting and funky style to it. "I Think You're Weird" is like listening in on the Addams Family playing around on a four track. "Lonely in Nashville" is a bass riff heavy pop lament. It's eclectic but not erratic. McMaxwell has a load of great ideas and every one of them cuts through.

There's not been anything released from this particular Bandcamp account since 2024. This album in particular is from 2022. There's no streaming presence, website or Instagram I can find. It's a gem and I'm delighted I was lucky enough to find it. I hope there's more in the future.

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Vexagon - Love is Surrender
This red drenched cover art caught my eye when exploring Ampwall and the one line description fully hooked me - "Based on the world of Twin Peaks." Such a conceit could go a number of different ways but Vexagon does not simply ape the styles of Angelo Badalamenti, they channel melancholy and eerieness of Lynch's world excellently. Love is Surrender stands on its own as an immersive collection of heavy synths, drum machines and gothic styles but listening to it with the knowledge that Twin Peaks was a kernel of its creation adds another layer of appreciation. It's not music you'd hear at the Bang Bang Bar nor is it music that is directly referencing characters or plot, it is a spiritual companion. The way it should be.

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The Mommyheads - The Mommyheads (1997)
I randomly stumbled upon the recent releases of New York power pop band The Mommyheads and was surprised to discover that they'd been at it since the late 80s. Their self-titled major label debut occurred in 1997 with production from Don Was and some light Jon Brion involvement; not too shabby if you ask me! Not quite as sugar-y as Jellyfish but certainly in the same realm.

Happy Halloween! Nice to have the festivities fall on a Friday. Hope you get to enjoy them fully! Here are some treats for you. First, enjoy some Mundane Halloween Costumes. Then, make sure you queue up John Paul Bullock's 2025 Halloween Mix. Then, enjoy these vids!

• Mambo de la muerte - 1951 performance from Tongolele. There are a lot of people dressed in DIY skeleton costumes, tons of horns and dancing. Impossible not to love. via Falfa.
• Squirrel Nut Zippers "Hell" - I haven't listened to thsi in 20 years but this week I woke up every morning with this song in my head. Truthfully: it rips.
• Jan Terri - Get Down Goblin - you may not listen to the entire song but that chorus is gonna stick with you for awhile.
• The Monster Club Dancer - perfectly campy horror movie from 1981 that has this dancer scene between stories. The transition that occurs is fantastic. Jump to 2:36 to get it going (but the whole song rules).
• Rapping Werewolves Spotted in Middle Tennessee - a more pessimistic version of me would have rolled my eyes at this but I can't deny its charms. If I saw a pack of werewolves downtown rapping, I'd be enamored.
• Boo Dudes - Skeleton Dog - we talked about this already but I keep coming back to it. Stupid but delightful.
• Trick or Treat Possum Style - if you're into public access TV flavors, this is pure uncut goodness.
• The Company of Wolves - the quality on this trailer is downright awful but I can't help but be completely intrigued by those wolves!
• Pumpkin Dance - you've seen it. It's a classic. See it again.
• Masque of the Red Death Credits - really amusing Vincent Price movie from 1964 with some very cool closing credits. You gotta jump to 1:40 to get the goods.

Happy to share my 2025 Halloween playlist for We Own This Town - the aptly named 2025 Halloween Spectacular. It's about 90 minutes long, all local Nashville music and all delightfully creepy. Some of it far more creepy than delightful! I haven't made a WOTT episode since May. There are a lot of reasons for that but, regardless, it felt good to knock the dust off and make another one - especially for Halloween, which is one of my favorite mixes to make. If nothing else, listen to the first 60 seconds, in which Michael Bleeds makes an appearance.

I am also happy to suggest that you revisit the archives to hear mixes from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and the first from 2017. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Imagine a dog made of bones that chewed on his own bones! Chilling!

Truthfully tho, you don't have to imagine it all! Boo Dudes have done that work for you! The song is taken from their 2025 album Hardwired... to Scare a Crow, a synth-pop record of absurd Halloween inspired songs.

If you appreciate this, there's a deep catalog of works going back to 2014 you can dive into. And if you get really into it, you may find yourself believing that they actually go back as far as 1983.

I don't consider myself a Nirvana completionist by any stretch of the imagination. I'm of the age where Nevermind was a big deal. I'm also of the personality type that I certainly listened to as many b-sides as I could get my hands on (hi, "Marigold"). But I've never heard From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah nor thought for a moment about picking up any anniversary boxsets. After Cobain passed away, I moved along and was happy with my level of fandom.

Ironically, that lack of interest paid of! This Live at the Paramount concert popped up in my YouTube feed the other day and I was quite intrigued. A 70-minute show from Halloween 1991, filmed in 16mm and performed just four weeks after Nevermind was released?! Incredible!

Turns out it was released back in 2011 as part of a Nevermind anniversary release and I was just completely ignorant to its existence. Whoops! Regardless, my brain is ready for a revisit on this material and maybe yours is too.

I mistakenly did not post this back in October but this thread of Mundane Halloween costumes is incredibly entertaining. There are 30 tweets in the thread, so if you like the four above, you're in for a real (mundane) treat.

It's Halloween. That means it's time for you to get your dose of the KXVO Pumpkin Dance. Yea, you've seen it a thousand times and you think you're over it.. but you're not. Even this unnecessary extended cut is delightful for the entire 4 and a half minutes!

If you think that's too much, you can always find the original on Dailymotion. Or maybe allow yourself to enjoy the Shaboi Mash-Up version! Or maybe you wanna read how it exists in the first place. Do it all. Treat yourself.

For me, this music video for Ejmi Rhiel supercedes just being a plain ole music video. The entire vibe of it feels like a nod to horror movies, latent spaces, back rooms and the days of VHS - all swirled into one. If you told me this was plucked from a thrift store and these kids were never heard from again, I'd believe it. The artist name, the song title, everything about it is just the right amount of bizarre. It really takes off in the 4minute range. I'm posting this on Halloween and it couldn't be more appropriate.

The immersion is even more effective when you dig into the rest of the AmyReal channel, which has a completely opposite, maximal, aesthetic.

I recently became aware of the "Halloween Extravaganza and Procession of the Ghouls" at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC. The event is a large scale puppetry exhibition that has been going on for decades! The Mettawee River Theater Company is responsible for all the creatures and they are incredible.

Founder Ralph Lee was also responsible for starting the East Village Halloween parade in 1974; which is an incredible spectacle to this day. Oh, and remember the SNL skit for Land Shark? Yea, Lee made made that shark. Sadly, he passed away in 2023 at the age of 87.

Learning more about his legacy is really rewarding. Spend some time with this short biopic, read these memorials and then scour Google Images for "Mettawee River Theater Company" and then you must watch this.

Much to my own surprise, it seems I have been making Halloween mixes since 2005. I missed one in 2016 but published two in 2017, so I'm revising history and saying I've never missed. This year is no different! I just published Gruesome Ghouls and Ghosts, a two and a half hour mix of spooky and scary tunes that just so happen to be from Nashville. Please do me a favor and hit play on that just for the first 60 seconds. You may not have 2.5 hours available for a slow burn from kooky songs into scary soundscapes into totally devolved sounds but you've hopefully got 1 minute for a goofy introduction from my favorite alter ego, Michael Bleeds! We have fun.

For proper posterity, I'm going to list all the prior mixes below. Next year will mark twenty years of doing this. I can't even comprehend it. Hope you enjoy!

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  Gruesome Ghouls and Ghosts
  2024
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  Dark Delights
  2023
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  Creature Feature
  2022
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  Spooky, Scary & Ghoulish Delights
  2021
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  The 2020 Halloween Spooktacular
  2020
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  Halloween Spooptacular 2019
  2019
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  Volume 119
  2018
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  Volume 96
  2017
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  Spell Caster
  2017
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  Ruination Rumination
  2015
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  Revival Denied
  2014
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  Potions and Brews for Countless Horrors
  2013
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  Paralyzed with Fear
  2012
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  Endless Hell
  2011
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  My Descent into Madness
  2010
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  Dark Despair (Undead Trespass)
  2009
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  Crepuscular
  2008
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  Et Tu, Morte?
  2007
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  Songs for Spooks
  2006
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  Pure Terror
  2005

The title really says it all. Enjoy John Carpenter's Halloween Theme On Theremin. Tis the season.

Like many of us, I have too many tabs open. Here's a smattering of what I currently have open to give myself the permission to close them for good.

• Please Honk, I'm Texting Bumper Sticker - we all know someone that needs this.
• monFade - modest stadik - new side project of this guy that embraces lo-fi studio tools. It's all instrumental and beat based and I am really enjoying it. A more proper review would be appropriate but I'm doing my best to spread the word here.
• macOSpilot AI Assistant - intrigued by this add-on that "answers your questions about anything, in any application." Basically, it takes a screenshot of what you're doing, sends it to ChatGPT Vision and tries to answer your question. The demo isn't all that speedy but the promise is undeniable.
• Precision Pressing Pricing - not really relevant to most folks but this vinyl manufacturing pricing is nuts. I'd be a fool not to try this?
• Grant Lindberg - "Too Fast" - at one point in time, Grant and I talked all the time. We drifted for no particular reason but I've been keeping up with his latest musical output and it's quite good. He's even got Kellii Scott from Failure playing drums on a number of these tracks.
• Various Artists - El Teatro Esta Cerrado (The Theater is Closed) - this compilation was released by a label I enjoy called Dead Currencies. They often do short run lathe cut vinyl for some of their releases and always have an interesting smattering of musical styles. This is a nice sampler to get familiar with them. The Mount Olympic track is a nice place to start and the High Aura'd track is destined for your Halloween playlist.
• Faircamp - is this meant to be a Bandcamp alternative? It certainly looks like it and I'm very keen to figure out how it works under the hood.

If you encounter a commercial from the late 80's featuring a bunch of adults dressed as vegetables singing about how to stay healthy.. well, you save it and hope it inspires a niche Halloween costume for someone, somewhere, someday.

2023 has been a slow year for my long running Nashville music podcast, We Own This Town: Music. Lots of work obligations and not enough spare time to actually compile, record, edit and release new episodes. It happens but I was hellbent on getting out the annual Halloween episode.. and I'm happy to report, I did!

Dark Delights is a two hour mix of Halloween songs all from Nashville artists. The first hour is a bit more upbeat and "jovial," while the second hour dives deep into darker and more atmospheric soundscapes. I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

Even if you have no interest in listening to a Halloween mix, please listen to the first 2 minutes of the episode as I introduce it as "Michael Bleeds." It's an intro that I look forward to writing and performing every year because it's absolutely idiotic but oh so fun. I think you'll enjoy.

I've spent a decent amount of time in Owensboro, KY throughout my life thanks to plenty of family living there. However, it wasn't until recently that I discovered the delightful weird side of it.

With a few hours to kill, we drove around the city aimlessly and stumbled upon T.B.'s Flea - a shop touting itself as a Music & Horror Oddball Shop. When you see a sign with that label, you go inside.

TB's did not disappoint. The shop was filled with collectible ephemera. From Gremlin's 7" storybooks to a massive clown collection to Halloween decore, there was a little something for everyone. It felt like being in the basement of your hoarder uncle but without the terrifying clutter. Shop owner TB was nice enough to give us some suggestions of where else to go in Owensboro and I'll share them with you here, should you ever find yourself in a similar position.

• Star Trax Video & Tanning - if that name doesn't draw you in, this list may not be for you. Owner Steve Grimes has a massive shop of VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray options all for sale or rent. I don't even own a device that plays any of those formats but I had to check it out.
• Wonder Whip - home of the Wonderburger. We didn't actually eat here but it's worth a drive by for the vintage signage.
• Consumer Mall - the giant red, generic, sign adorning this place actually doesn't make it seem that enticing but I'd put it high on the list of required destinations. It's setup like your standard antique store (inside an old big box store) but it's packed to the brim with random promotional items like the entire Simpsons family on their couch.
• Moneytree Book and Music Exchange - this was on the list from TB but we didn't get a chance to visit. Yet. Looks promising.
• TD's Tuff Decisions - another one we didn't get the chance to visit but is high on the list for next time. Costume Rentals and Hi-Fi music equipment? Okay!

Owensboro, KY is mostly a quiet, quaint, town with lots of strip malls and chain retail shops that you might just pass right through if you ever saw it but it's definitely got some gems worth checking out.

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The level of Halloween dedication I aspire to. This installation is nuts!

2 tracks from this Sydney psych-doom-rock band that hit the spot. Load it up into your Halloween playlist stat!

In years past I used to make a yearly Halloween mix comprised of music I'd been listening to over the year. More recently, the majority of music I intake is all Nashville based as a means of fueling my podcast. So, to that end, my Halloween mix has transformed into a yearly podcast episode. The 2022 edition - Creature Feature - is out now! The entire mix was a blast to put together; starting off with more light and entertaining tracks and slowly devolving into darker and harder tracks. The first 90 seconds are absurd and, honestly, probably my favorite thing I make all year.

If you want more of this there's always the 2021 edition, 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017.

Spent my weekend at Spooky Ghoul Festival dressed up like a Tennessee license plate. It's possibly the most niche costume I've ever worn but it seemed to go over well.

Originally designed by Norris Hall, the Cool Cat design has been around the Nashville area for a long time. So long, in fact, the local alt weekly is a bit sick of it. As far as I can tell, the plate is no longer available to order - so maybe they got their wish!

We pay tribute to the Cool Cat on Nashville Galaxy and I felt it was time to take my fandom to the next level. Halloween 2022; done!

It's October so let this be your annual reminder that Curse Walk, the one-and-only album from Shaboi, is the greatest treat you can give yourself during the Halloween season. Originally released in 2009 as the fourth release for yk Records, it's hard to imagine an album aging better than Curse Walk has. It's runtime is just under 30 minutes and it manages to cover a ridiculous variety of styles in that time. There's some contemplative ballads, some Gershon Kingsley-esque keyboard fun, some absurdist hip-hop, some country-western and even a bit of soaring R&B ballad. You'd think that would result in a lack of cohesion but, somehow, magically, it does not.

It's a real treat and I highly suggest you get it into your life: Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music or wherever you prefer your tunes.