In 2017, a longtime friend of the podcast Seán Barna was living in New York City and wrestling with some serious life questions. How could he survive as an artist? Did he even WANT to make music anymore? Moreover, did he have anything left to say? In 2018 he found some of those answers through a fateful friendship and a handful of spontaneous studio sessions from which his latest EP, Cissy, was born.

We’re sitting down with Barna to talk about the creation of Cissy, the power of drag queens, struggling artists, and song, and winding down our time in the basement with our friend who was there at the beginning.

Over the past few years, Israel Nash has been building a solid catalog of cosmic folk and country from his home-base in Dripping Springs, Texas, and now he’s taking the show on the road. We sat down with Nash before his recent stop in Washington DC to talk about his most recent album Lifted, the power of recognizing the beauty of nature, and how our connection to each other is the key to building a better world.

Artist/poet/father/musician Lonnie Holley has experienced the best and worst of modern American life in his 68 years on the planet, and on his latest project MITH, he pours all of that and more into a powerful meditation on blackness, our humanity, and how to survive in our darkest of nights.

Join us as Kevin and special guest Wes Covey try to unpack some of what makes MITH, not just the best and most essential album of 2018, but the year’s most important.

Morphine’s Cure For Pain is an album that revels in finding hope in the darkest nights of our souls. For twenty-five years the weird magic conjured by Mark Sandman (2-string bass/vocals), Dana Colley (sax), and Jerome Deupree (drums) has remained singular in its sound and remains (oddly) peerless to this day.

This week we’re celebrating their remarkable achievement by taking a deep dive into one of the greatest albums ever made PLUS checking in with friend-of-the-pod, author, musician, and native Bostonian, Ryan Walsh to get a first-hand account of the band in it’s prime.

PJ Sykes is a man of many talents - Photographer, political activist, cat-dad, musician - these are but a few of the many hats he wears. But this week we’re talking with him about a role he’s filled for over seventeen years now - label head.

Founded in 2001, Cherub records has been the home of not just PJ’s music, but eccentric releases from the Richmond, Virginia scene and beyond. Tune in as we take a tour through his musical past with bands like Kids Techno, A New Dawn Fades, Graceland Grave Robbers, and his recently put on hiatus project, Hoax Hunters!

Shooter Jennings is a man of many moods and talents, but on his new album Shooter, he's returning to his Country roots. A celebration of the Hank Williams Jr, and all of the troublemakers and rabble-rousers that came before and after, Shooter is bursting with debauchery, heartache, and something sorely missing from today's Country music: fun.

PLUS! We're sitting down with the true savior of Country music - Wheeler Walker, Jr. - to discuss his upcoming album and tour, why the Nashville machine continues to give one of it's own the cold shoulder, and much, much more.

Hailing from Dallas, Texas, this group of rock and roll veterans (between them they've recorded and toured with the likes of St. Vincent, The Apples in Stereo, The War on Drugs, The Deathray Davies, Baboon, Daniel Johnston, and more) got together and decided to form "greatest band in the world. Maybe." and so it was that Motorcade was born. Armed with an ear for the past and a heart for writing great f@#@ing songs, Motorcade's debut defies expectations and is one of the best albums of 2018. 

Luna Honey’s new album Peace Will Grind You Down, finds the the humanity in the darkness while Blood Orange’s Negro Swan serves as a guide on how to make it through it. We’re checking in with both on our latest feels-packed episode.

U2's finest hour wasn't lifting us up singing about MLK, a spiritual celebration of the history of American music, or even future pop from the edges of our imagination: It was an insistent, eccentric, and infinitely prescient project that almost wasn't, named Zooropa.

Over the past few years, Israel Nash has been building a solid catalog of cosmic folk and country from his home-base in Dripping Springs, Texas, and his, ahem, uplifting new LP Lifted is the latest product of his time in the proverbial desert. PLUS we’re sitting down with Joachim Cooder to talk about his latest EP, Fuschia Machu Picchu!

Erin Rae joins us in the basement to talk about her stellar sophomore release Putting On Airs PLUS our review of Lori McKenna’s stellar new album, The Tree.

The otherworldly jazz titan Kamasi Washington and his friends are back with a fittingly epic follow up his 2015 jazz odyssey The Epic, and the results are out of this world.

HYPE has always been a part of the music/entertainment industry, but in 2018, have we gone too far? Increasingly, it's not enough anymore that an artist delivers a few great hooks. To succeed they have to be the greatest of all time, the savior of the music industry, or, even worse, the voice of a generation, all often without even having a single album under their belts.

On our latest episode, our friends Philip Basnight (Broke Royals) and Rafa (Rafa's One Man Band, Saduardo's actual brother) are joining us for a frank discussion about how we consume, market, share, and celebrate music in the modern era.

Washington, DC's Flasher made minor waves with their self-titled debut in 2016, and now the trio is back with a new label (Domino) and a fun-as-hell new LP, Constant Image. Recalling the late 80's heyday of gothic synthpop, Constant Image's outta time, place, and, most importantly, outta sight sound is the new hotness arriving just in time to save us all from another dreary Summer in the swamp.

PLUS! Ali Shaheed Muhammad & Adrian Younge's long-gestating project The Midnight Hour is finally out in the wild, and we've got a tasty track for you to turn the lights down lowwww and do whatever comes naturally for ya.

On our latest podcast, soul/jazz polymath Kadhja Bonet is back with the follow up to her remarkable 2016 debut, The Visitor, and the more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same. Bursting with the uniquely impossible smoothness and impeccable sophistication that defined The Visitor, Childqueen is a singular that mood feels as fresh as it does timeless. Special guest Marcus J. Moore (Senior Editor, Bandcamp) joins us to journey through this latest weird and wonderful that Bonet has shared. 

PLUS! Israel Nash is back with some potent good vibes, and we've got the first single of off his upcoming LP for you to get lost in!

Over the course of her almost twenty-five-year career, Neko Case has proven time and time again that she is a fierce force of nature to be reckoned with, which makes it a little weird to say that Hell-On is her most powerful work to date. Built on the literal ashes of a recent personal tragedy (her Vermont home/studio burned to the ground) and bursting with love over the joy found in even the darkest parts of our lives, Case's latest is a potent reminder of how deeply honest art can change the world, one listen at a time. 

PLUS! Kingsley Flood is back with Neighbors & Strangers, there most poignant LP to date, and we're spinning a new single from it to help you fall in love with this raucous Boston/DC band all over again!

Barely a year after releasing his apocalyptic magnum opus Pure Comedy, Father John Misty (aka Josh Tillman) is back with another sonic journey into depravity. God's Favorite Customer finds the embattled monarch of the "poem zone" taking a break from battling the evils of modern times to engaging in bloody combat with his greatest enemy and nemesis: himself.

Special guests Lindsay Hogan (Talking LIke A Jerk) and Seán Barna join Kevin and Drew as we follow this modern day lizard king down the rabbit hole of his deepest insecurities and regrets to find out what's on the other side for one of this generation's most relentlessly talented (and relentlessly misunderstood) voices.

The soulful North Carolina by-way-of Wisconsin jack of all musical trades returns to the basement for a candid and hilarious chat with Kevin and Eduardo about his new LP, People Are My Drug.

Known to most of the world as a political playground, Washington, D.C. is a city where decisions that shape the course of, not just American, but HUMAN history, are made every day. More than that though, D.C. is a city where cultures collide resulting in a creative class that produces some of the most compelling and diverse art in the world. Built on the legacy of jazz and go-go, D.C. is on the cusp of a creative explosion and bringing everything from hip-hop to indie rock into the fold.

In part five of our Sounds of Washington, DC series, Chris Richards (pop music critic for the Washington Post) is joining us to talk about the bone-crushing sounds of one of the cities most renowned exports: harDCore. From Bad Brains to Genocide Pact and everything in-between, it's about to get loud on the latest episode of ChunkyGlasses: The Podcast.

Before, "indie-rock," before "alternative," there was "college rock" and four arty dudes from Athens, GA were its KINGS. On our latest episode, we're looking back at R.E.M.'s Murmur, one of the most influential "rock-and-roll" albums of all time, thirty-five years after it changed the music forever.