I am a subscriber to the Poprock Record list - a regular dispatch of musical treats. Recently, they mentioned the Japanese surf rock band The Routes and their Joy Division cover album Surfin' Pleasures. Granted, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" in a surf rock style doesn't carry quite the same melancholy burden that the original does but that's not the point! Every track on here is extremely well executed and somehow manages to fuse the two styles together extremely well. And that cover art is pretty brilliant.

Every year during the Tennessee Williams Festival, a contest is held in honor of A Streetcar Named Desire. This contest involves people recreating that scene where Stanley Kowalski screams for his wife Stella's forgiveness. The results are fantastic.

Stanley Kowalski is an despicable character but take a moment to browse the YouTube results for a bit of silly goodness. There's so many great results.

Earlier this year I quit Spotify. There's plenty of streaming service providers in the world and I'm happy to not be a daily active user on that one.

However, one thing Spotify had that I really enjoyed was a embeddable player. This let me get the playlists I'd made on Spotify out into the world - like on my old music page. It wasn't super fancy but it was sleek enough. Unfortunately, the same can not be said of YouTube Music embeds. The embeds they offer are undeniably awful - it's just a YouTube playlist with a drawer. The drawer isn't even open to let you see that more than one track exists!

Fortunately, there are a lot of APIs to let you interact with YouTube. Why not whip up a little interface to fetch a playlist and make it look nicer? That's exactly what YewTube is. A nicer looking YouTube Music embed!

The name is absurd (thanks jms) and the URL is insane but I am happy with the functionality. Just go here, paste in a YouTube Music Playlist* and you should get back something relatively nice looking! If not, please contact me on Bluesky and let me know what happened.

* to my surprise, this actually works for almost any playlist on YouTube. So, go nuts!

The other morning I got tagged on Instagram by an account I'd not heard of. They doodled me and it was on the main grid! WTF?!?

Turns out, the account was MUGZ Coffee, a NY based coffee roaster from designer, illustrator, typographer, artist Jason Powers. The doodle was part of a morning routine, just like the coffee.

Turns out Jason had also emailed me a heads up about the doodle and the coffee, I just hadn't seen it yet. Honestly tho, it was a delightful treat to see my little visage. I've got a bag of coffee on the way to me now. Maybe snag one for yourself.

Looking at the work of Kirill Semenovich I am blown away. Enamored. Gobsmacked. Entranced. Every single post is beautiful and surreal and often chaotic in the most mesmerizing way.

These clips are taken from larger bodies of work - THE OLD MAN and SAFE HAVEN in particular. The work on their official site and Instagram is worth a perusal to say the least. Not all of it is pixel art in the least, that just happens to be the first that caught my eye.

I'm a lifetime fan of Michael Madrid. I shared an office with him for awhile. I was in awe of his Buddytown creations, his work at Asterik and Wonderful Union. He was always relentlessly creative and driven by authentically joyful desires. The last few years he's been involved with many adventures off the Internet. They occasionally manifest at Summer Holiday, a print label for photo books, hats and whatever else he fancies.

The latest release is Dreamlube, a compilation of photos taken between 2018 and 2025 by Madrid himself. He's a fantastic photographer and seeing a collection of the work together is a delight. Full stop. I suggest you follow him and Summer holiday on Instagram, as your feed should be filled with good things.

Dreamlube will have a book launch in a few spots. Check them out if you can:
Nashville — The Green Ray, Mar 20, 2026
LA — Dada Bar, Mar 27, 2026

I think Threads is, mostly, a Dumpster Fire of provoked engagement but occasionally there is a good feeling post on there. For example, this question:

has there ever been a song where the drum beats are Morse code that also serve as a separate layer to the lyrics

Lots of good replies in there - particularly this one. While it may not be answering the question directly, it did steer me towards this Erased Tapes compilation. I was familiar with the label but this particular release is new to me.

Released during COVID, the compilation is an intentionally ambiguous collection of works by undisclosed artists. All of the song titles are in morse code. You can decode them on your own but it will take spending time with the record. Despite not knowing who I am listening to at all on this thing, I can confirm that it's a diverse and well curated listen.

It's on Bandcamp, YouTube Music, etc. Give it a whirl!

• A Good Post - you are a creature. Never forget.
• "Metroidvania" Movies - I've never connected these dots before but Die Hard really is of the Metroidvania genre. Here's a whole list of them!
• Mr. Show: The Oral History - I have to assume at some point in my life I've encountered this article before but my mind is blank recalling it. So time for a re-read.
• New Farsi Numbers Station - wake up, new Numbers station just dropped!

Times can be tough. Let Nic Cage inspire you to keep going. Here are some distractions for your day as well.

• Top 5 Men's Freestyle Trampwall Runs - are you familiar with Trampwall Running? Welcome to your new favorite sport (?).
• System Of A Down - Chop Suey [ Cover by TORWAI] - honestly? perfect.
• Godzilla vs Zilla - remember the 1998 Godzilla movie? I recall it being a flop but had no idea that in 2004, the American version of the creature reappeared in the Japanese Toho movie Godzilla: Final Wars and got destroyed in mere seconds. Pretty brutal takedown.
• Shipping a Button, 2026 - some niche content here but if you're involved with Tech and Engineering at all, this will hit home. If not, it will be complete gibberish.
• Tele Novella - Broomhorse - did everyone in your high school suddenly become obsessed with Harold and Maude for a semester? They did at mine. This Tele Novella music video is an excellent tribute to it.
• Angine de Poitrine on KEXP - I don't want to know anything about this band. I just want to bask in their existence.
• Moron Movies Part 1 - endurance challenge: how many stupid clips can you make it through? Some are genuinely funny. Many are flat out dumb. A few are bizarre beyond description. Only one way to see them all.

The amount of work documenting and presenting every Walkman from 1978 to 2005 must have been a wild undertaking but that's exactly what you'll find at Walkman Land. Color me impressed to say the least.

Letting the site tickle those nostalgia feelings is worth the visit but, moreso, it's a fascinating journey to travel through time and watch the design trends of the equipment change. Most of the evolution is slow across the decades but, occasionally, you'll see a standout that goes against the paradigms of the time and looks futuristic. Those are my favorites to look out for.

MOSS is a drawing tool / playground from Brainfruit. Put simply, it's a place to doodle online with a limited (but intriguing) set of brushes. The limitations of the tools are part of the draw (pun intended) and the platform provides Challenges if you're stuck by the blank page problem (which I almost always am).

Primary takeaway here: people are still making fun things on the Internet. Go tinker with them.

Jenny Wen has an impressive resume! She's leads design for Claude over at Anthropic. She was Director of Design at Figma and spent time at Dropbox, Square, and Shopify. Regardless of what you think of the actual design of each of those places, you can't deny that there is likely a very robust design process and a lot of people trying to make informed decisions. As such, Wen has some interesting perspective on the future of design. Inversely, she's also employed by Anthropic, so that's likely going to inform her answers a bit as well.

All that together makes for an interesting podcast episode talking about the future of design, process and the tools that will be used. It's a long episode with a lot of ground being covered, so block off a good chunk of time to let it sink in.

My personal design experience with AI assistance has been OK. From a generative art perspective, some interesting results came from it! Images I've used to augment existing designs or to help form something new. From a purely design perspective (i.e. layout, UI, UX), nothing has impressed me too much. But I'm a sample size of 1 and it's still very early days.

I'll refrain from monologuing too much about this but AI is fundamentally changing how writing code works... it will be interesting to see if it has a fraction of that impact on any other area.

Absolutely adored this Jon Hicks rundown on The Perfect Music App Doesn't Exist. Obviously that's true for a number of reasons but what exactly are those reasons? Hicks will tell you! Scrobbling, local files mixed with streaming, big beautiful artwork, immersion, organization, sorting, et all. Even better still, he'll show you what's lacking and what he proposes he'd like to see. Oh, and Hicks was a part of the branding work for Firefox, Mailchimp and Shopify so this isn't just an essay from someone without solid experience in the graphic design world!

The final proposal is very interesting! I love how he was able to incorporate so many of his requests into a very clean solution that finds that balance of robust info and entirely usable.

Because it's the Internet, I will add my two cents. I find the blurring on the right edge of the artwork to be offputting. It is immersive but I don't want my artwork blurry. Let it be a sharp cutoff! But, seriously, if any company dared to build this - they'd win over every designer still lamenting for Rdio's return.

Continuing my Larry Sanders kick, I recently ran across this book excerpt from Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers. I've not read the book but this piece is a great oral history of how The Larry Sanders Show came to be on HBO, what the work environment was like and loads of behind-the-scenes anecdotes.. many of them not very flattering! Here's a particularly jaw dropping one about Rip Torn (Arthur) from Linda Doucett (Darlene).

Linda Doucett: One episode, they were cutting lines, and Rip didn’t like it when his lines got cut. He was getting really angry, and the AD comes into the writers’ room and says, “Rip is going insane. He’s smashing everything in his dressing room and he has a gun.” Everybody froze and Garry says, “Oh shit, we have a show to shoot. Send Linda in. He won’t shoot her.”

Obviously gun violence (or the threat thereof) is not something I condone or praise but it sounds like no one on the show did either! Holy moly that is wild.

If you're a fan, it's a Must Read.

More often than not, YouTube's algorithm has got my number. I'm not sure when I was shown the work of Rusty James but it is right up my alley. James reinvents Nine Inch Nails songs as if they came from different albums within the NIN catalog.

More specifically, he'll take a song like "March of the Pigs" and rework it as if it was part of The Fragile. Or "Love is Not Enough" as if it were from Pretty Hate Machine. From what I've read, he is leaning into using actual samples from the original records to reimagine the songs.

This is obviously some deep niche fandom at work here but if you're into it, you're into it. If nothing else, it's a fascinating experiment.

If you're a regular reader here, you likely know that I've been enjoying Ampwall for a few years. It's an alternative to streaming platforms that is akin to Bandcamp but taking a different approach. One of their biggest differentiators is just how much they ship. For those of you not in tech, that means they are adding new features, improvements and optimizations to the platform all the time.

Their latest launch is the iOS app. Just like how Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp have apps to help you listen and discover music, now Ampwall does too. The experience is, obviously, not exactly same as those destinations because their catalog is different but it's provides a pleasant way to find new music, support that music and then enjoy that music. If you aren't on Ampwall yet, I think this may be the thing that gets you to finally check it out.

If you do sign up, here's some free music for ya: Bleary "bug", Fetching Pails "Duchenne Smile". That should get you started!

Every few years I find myself revisiting The Larry Sanders Show. If you've never seen it, treat yourself. If you have seen it, I promise there's a high rewatchability. Get back in there!

Inevitably, I start deep diving on random Garry Shandling snippets during my revisitations. Case in point, I just discovered this extended Dr. Katz recording from Jonathan Katz own podcast Hey We're Back!. The original 1996 episode is amusing but, understandably, edited down to include multiple plots and streamlined psychiatrist couch chat. This podcast episode is a much longer version - 40+ minutes of Katz and Shandling riffing back and forth. It's as absurd as any Dr. Katz episode and that's a good thing.

"Raw Shandling" was the filename for the recording. Perfect.

Last week I saw Flickr teasing something new. Yes, Flickr! The original destination for photo sharing that has been acquired a number of times and is probably forgotten in the recesses of your mind. My assumption at their tease - "Photographers need art, not algorithms" was that they were going to launch a new app that was just a linear feed of your friends photos. What a dream!

What they actually announced was MODE Festival, a photography festival in Minneapolis that costs between $330 to $660 to attend.

I'm torn on my excitement levels. On the one hand, I actually think it's good that they launched a real life event for people to gather and connect. The Internet is doing an increasingly terrible job of bringing people together. Also, who needs another app? On the other hand, paying for a festival can be a tall order. But there are great examples of it working.

Gonna keep an eye out. Be curious to see what the reviews are in October when it's over.

Way back in November of 2024, I posted about the Major Label Debut podcast, a show having conversations with artists about their transition into working with a major label. Over the last few years, it's had a ton of great episodes with many very notable artists! They talked to Dave Pirner from Soul Asylum, Mark Arm and Steve Turner of Mudhoney, Ryan Miller of Guster, and Nels Cline of.. Nels Cline! That's just to name a few.

They also started talking to other people at the intersection of art and commerce. Brendan Bourke of PR firm The Syndicate, Lisa Fancher of Frontier Records, and music lawyer Randy Ojeda - all equally compelling as the artists and producers chats. I'm a fan of the show. I think host Graham Wright does a great job and producers John Paul Bullock and Josh Hook are really making a compelling listen. So, I was quite shocked when they asked me to be a guest! I'm not saying that to feign humility, I just don't consider myself or my store in the same arena as Soul Asylum. hah!

I am flattered and honored to be a part of the show. I also think I did a decent job with my episode and hope people enjoy the chat. Maybe you will too! Give it a whirl.

I mentioned that Bleary has joined the yk Records roster and will be releasing their debut full-length in May. "sugar splint" is already out and, now, "bug" is everywhere. I know I'm biased but I'm a massive fan of every track on this record. The guitars on "bug" remind me of several other "space rock" bands that I adore but not in a derivative way, just sonically similar. It's steeped in huge sound and melancholy vibes; a stellar combination when pulled off this well.