My lovely wife was showed me this delightful TikTok from animator Bug Grotto set to a cute little song by Welles. The name rung a bell - I recalled an artist of the same name but with a different style (plugged in guitars, psychedelic and big production). Turns out, it's the same artist and Jesse Welles is known to be a bit of a chameleon - performing under variations of his own name, as Jeh Sea Wells and in the bands Dead Indian and Cosmic-American.

Taking a bit of a deeper dive into the @hellswells Youtube channel, we find a different looking Welles and much more stripped down performances. I'm particularly keen on "The Poor" - drenched in sarcasm and satire, delivered in a minimal folk diddy.

His newly discovered popularity doing stripped down folk songs like "Bugs" is surprising but not unearned; he's clearly a prolific songwriter. I'll keep an ear out for whatever future version of Welles emerges; they all seem intriguing.