Interviews – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E42: Turning Jewels Into Water

Turning Jewels Into Water, photo by Ed Marshall

Turning Jewels Into Water is a project with composer/percussionist/turntablist Val Jeanty and percussionist/composer/electronic musician Ravish Momin. Formed around 2017 when the two met at a jam session at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, New York. Recognizing a shared affinity for crafting unique rhythms and soundscapes and compatible methods of working the two artists have since worked together to explore the ways in which new technologies can be used to blend electronic and acoustic instruments in creating music that reflects the diverse cultural heritages and musical interests in common. The name of the project is a commentary on access to natural resources and howthat has been politicized in human struggles for power especially in the capitalist era increasingly so with the rise in climate change impacts. A casual listen to any of the duo’s three albums reveals a mastery of rhythmic arrangements and patterned tones for a sound that is ambient adjacent but more akin to the kind of early industrial beat-making and culture jamming sounds heard in a band like Cabaret Voltaire but steeped in modern sensibilities and production methods.

Listen to our interview with Ravish Momin on Bandcamp and follow Turning Jewels Into Water at their website linked below. See the project live at The Bug Theater presented by Creative Music Works on Saturday, January 24, 2026. There is an artist discussion and Q&A for premium ticket holders at 6pm with the performance after (doors 7, show 7:30).

Turning Jewels Into Water website

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E41: babybaby4ever

Over the last handful of years discerning fans of synth pop in Denver that have been fortunate enough to witness a babybaby4ever show have an artist worthy of her influences. Lily Conrad grew up in Golden, Colorado and started playing music at a young age getting into playing guitar and then cello by her middle school and teen years. In 2016 in college Conrad started making music and performed her first show as babybaby but in the past couple of years she changed the project name so that it was more findable via internet search engines. Early on playing out in and around Denver Conrad was part of the local DIY scene playing house shows and underground venues like the now defunct Posh House. Around that time she started playing keyboards in the live version of psychedelic garage rock band Rose Variety with her friend Becc Perez. The pandemic era stretched time in weird directions but since the world opened up again Conrad started playing around more often in her solo project at venues that could better represent her developing sound and its highly developed, rich synth tone and production. The show now includes props and aspects of performance art from Conrad making a babybaby4ever show memorable both visually as well as for the finely crafted songs that have the spontaneity and vulnerability of classic indiepop and the robust and enveloping melodic tonality of 80s New Wave. In 2026 babybaby4ever releases the new album 4ever is a long time via Denver-based imprint Witchcat Records. The nine songs are loosely a kind of breakup album as breakthrough. The lyrics and moods honor the heartache and the will to move forward by embracing vital experiences and the roots of who were are and what makes our lives feel vibrant.

Listen to our interview with Lily Conrad of babybaby4ever on Bandcamp and follow the artist at the links below. The album release show happens on Saturday, February 7, 2026 at Hi-Dive with Pleasure Prince, Xenon Thief and DJ WNGDU, doors 7pm, show 8pm, $12.

babybaby4ever on TikTok

babybaby4ever on Instagram

babybaby4ever on YouTube

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E40: Corey Ledet

Corey Ledet is a zydeco musician and composer who was born in Houston, Texas but grew up around Louisiana Creole culture spending summers with relatives in Parks, Louisiana just east of Lafayette. As a kid Ledet started playing drums around age 8 or 9 playing on his grandfather’s old kit, which the latter had played when he was a drummer in Clifton Chenier’s band (Chenier was one of the pioneers of zydeco). From there Ledet was playing shows and eventually switched to playing accordion around age 12 or 13. The musical style fuses elements of blues, rock and roll, soul, R&B and Creole folk songs and its lively energy and uptempo rhythms helped to make it popular well beyond its southwest Louisiana origins. Zydeco artists entered underground and mainstream American music throughout the 80s with the popularity of artists like Rockin’ Dopsie, Terrance Simien and of course Buckwheat Zydeco. Ledet came of age during this time and over the course of three decades has established himself as one of the musical form’s most prominent practitioners twice nominated for a Grammy.

On December 23, 2025 Corey Ledet Zydeco & Black Magic released the album Live In Alaska on CD, download and streaming. It is the sixteenth record led by Ledet and a solid representation of his band’s chemistry as a performing unit. The recordings were culled from three separate performances during the Anchorage Folk Festival. The songs showcase the collective’s ability to take improvisational passages and the album includes a piece created at one of the shows: “Alaska Funk.” It’s a vibrant document of the vitality of the musical style and Ledet’s band in particular.

Listen to our interview with Corey Ledet on Bandcamp and follow the musician and songwriter at the links below.

coreyledet.com

Corey Ledet on Facebook

Corey Ledet on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E39: Robert Deeble

Robert Deeble is an acclaimed singer/songwriter whose lush and poetic songs have a cinematic quality that bring to his spare, core compositions a stirring, atmospheric quality. Deeble released his latest albums The Space Between Us in August 1, 2025 on vinyl, CD and digital download with the streaming debut set for February 6, 2026. The record gestated from 2020 to 2024 as an expression of and commentary on the “relational dysfunction” (per the artist’s notes on the album) of American society over the past several years even stretching further back than the administrations of the three most recent presidents but brought into more focused intensity since the COVID-19 pandemic. Deeble looks past these conflicts and finds more strength in our vulnerability and our capacity for empathy. The record is an expansion of Deeble’s songwriting without sacrificing the delicacy of feeling that has made his music noteworthy from the beginning. The album came about as a result of Deeble’s partnership with former Over the Rhine musician Ric Hordinski combining Deeble’s work with string players in his new home city of Seattle and Hordinksi’s circle of musicians in Cincinnati. In the interview we discuss among other subjects his roots in Long Beach, California, the impact of his background in psychology on his songwriting and how maybe the political and cultural divide in America might be bridged.

Listen to our interview with Robert Deeble on Bandcamp and follow the artist at the links below.

robertdeeble.com

Robert Deeble on Wikipedia

Robert Deeble on Instagram

Robert Deeble on Facebook

Robert Deeble on Bandcamp

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E38: Captain Buckles

Captain Buckles is a crew of veteran New Orleans sidemen that released its debut full length album Hurry Up on November 14, 2025 on streaming, digital download and cassette. Steeped in the eclectic blend of styles that have come out of the Crescent City with elements of funk, jazz, blues and psychedelic improvisational rock, Captain Buckles’ new album demonstrates the band has a style of their own. The members of the band have played with each other previous in line-ups touring and backing the likes of Samantha Fish, John “Papa” Gros, Russell Patiste and others. The group is comprised of New Orleans natives Rob Davis and Ezell Smith Jr., Floridian Alex Mallet, Los Angeles born Smitti Supab and Phil Breen originally from Pennsylvania but all have been playing professionally in the Big Easy for several years. The record was recorded at Dockside Studio in Maurice, Louisiana where Dr. John and B.B. King once laid down some music onto tape and it captures the natural chemistry and energy between the musicians and their ability to fuse styles and play to an evolving dynamic and organically shifting rhythms. The recording of Hurry Up was funded in part by a grand from the Threadhead Cultural Foundation.

Listen to our interview with bassist Smitti Supab on Bandcamp and follow Captain Buckles at the links below.

captainbucklesband.com

Captain Buckles on Facebook

Captain Buckles on Instagram

Captain Buckles on YouTube

Captain Buckles on Apple Music

Captain Buckles on Bandcamp

Captain Buckles on Amazon

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E37: The Salt Collective

The Salt Collective, photo from Bandcamp

The Salt Collective formed in 2016 with songwriter and guitarist Stéphane Schück, guitarist Ken Stringfellow and lead vocalist and keyboardist Anton Barbeau. The core group was joined by bassist Fred Quentin and drummer Benoit Lautridou and released a debut album The Loneliness of Clouds in 2019. Schück had come up with an appreciation for American jangle rock and power pop and he and Quentin and Lautridou became friends during high school in Caen, Normandy, France. The trio formed a band in their college years but Schück and Quentin went onto careers in medicine and Lautridou in education. In the 2000s Schück contacted one of his musical heroes on a lark and received a letter back. Which is how he came to work with Scott Miller of acclaimed Paisley Underground-affiliated group Game Theory to produce a demo. The two would go on to co-write a few songs brfore Miller died in 2013. But Schück wasn’t done making music and when he started making music with Stringfellow of influential power pop band The Posies and former Miller associate Anton Barbeau it seemed that the songwriter had a knack for crafting songs as well in the vein of the musicians that had inspired him.

The group shrank to a trio by 2022 but by then it had begun working with The dB’s singer/guitarist Chris Stamey, bringing in another circle of the band’s influences. Stamey in turn was able to help bring aboard collaborators for recordings including the likes of Juliana Hatfield, Matthew Sweet. Mitch Easter, Richard Lloyd, Susan Cowsill and Matthew Caws. The group’s subsequent records have continued an ambitious type of pop songwriting and its latest A Brief History of Blindness (released November 21, 2025 on 12” LP, CD, digital download and straming via Propeller Sound Recordings), is a bit of a concept album about how we as humans approach the world we try to navigate as best we can. The contributors to the new album include Lynn Blakey of Let’s Active, Mike Mills (REM), Aimee Mann and Andy Partridge of XTC as well as some of the aforementioned. It is a vibrant record that expands beyond the power pop roots while honoring the level of songcraft of the group’s most obvious influences.

Listen to our interview with Stéphane Schück on Bandcamp and follow The Salt Collective at the links below.

The Salt Collective on YouTube

The Salt Collective on Instagram

The Salt Collective on Bandcamp

The Salt Collective on Propeller Sound Recordings

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E35: The Silver Snails

The Silver Snails, photo by Jasmine Ward

The Silver Snails has been percolating its new album Speed of Light for over a decade since the 2012 release of its debut album The Seven Melodies. The core of the group is husband-and-wife duo Lucas Ward and Elisa Fantini and fashions itself a “glam rock space pop family band.” Even a casual listen to the new album reveals great attention to songwriting detail, performance and production. It has a huge, uplifting, deeply melodic sound and in moments it may remind listeners of something Jeff Lynne and Trevor Horn had their hands in making. In fact, the group covers “Video Killed the Radio Star” by Horn’s New Wave band The Buggles (the video for the original song was the first to be broadcast on MTV) for Speed of Light including a music video made by the members of The Silver Snails. The couple’s three children Jasmine, Celeste and Elias also contribute to the project’s creative efforts including live performances. Long before The Silver Snails became a band Ward was a close friend of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith from whom Ward took some inspiration in his own musical endeavors as someone who writes and records his own songs with keen attention to craft and performance. The album is indeed like a glam rock affair but one that is just as informed by the playful, experimental and imaginative psychedelic rock of Flaming Lips with some sonic resonances with the more space rock end of ELO. Co-produced by Dylan Magierek, mixed by Peter Katis and Adam Selzer and mastered by Greg Calbi and Sterling Sound, its an album that sounds like something from a classic era of pop but with an immediacy that hooks you in with every song. Speed of Light was released on September 5, 2025 on streaming, digital download and CD.

Listen to our interview with Lucas Ward on Bandcamp and follow The Silver Snails at the links below.

thesilversnails.com

The Silver Snails on Facebook

The Silver Snails on Instagram

The Silver Snails on Bandcamp

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E34: PINES

Josh Hight is a former member of post-punk band The Detachment Kit until the mid-2000s when the group relocated to Brooklyn. He operated for a time as a solo artist under the moniker Irons before relocating to the UK and immersing himself in the world of photography, film and soundtracks. The later came about in part after Hight met Richard Norris at a Stone Club event in London. Norris is perhaps best known for his production work with the likes of Psychic TV, Marc Almond, Sun Ra, Robert Fripp and Joe Strummer but also as a member of influential electronic dance group The Grid. In 2025 Hight released his debut EP from his new solo project PINES with In His Wake, produced by Norris. The record as the name perhaps hints at is a product of grief, disillusionment and the soul searching that happens subsequent to hitting life’s low points. But the music that has come about is made up of gorgeously melodic atmospheres and poignant expressions of loss, the dull reality of much of adult existence and its relative lack of inspiration and leaps of discovery, melancholic reflections on past relationships and a yearning for the collapse of the current mode of human civilization and its capture by oligarchic monetization through digital channels and a more transcendent and vital future once that dissolution is well under way. Musically it’s like a cosmic slowcore, pastoral shoegaze form of psychedelic pop that at times is reminiscent of Hawkwind’s more accessible moments and shades of The Zombies. With guest musicians like Andy Bell (Ride, Oasis), Emmett Kelly (Bonnie “Prince” Billy, The Cairo Gang) and Dottie Cochran (Deary) it’s a richly emotional experience and one that seems more complete than EP often does.

Listen to our interview with Josh Hight on Bandcamp and follow PINES on Instagram.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E33: Laveda

Laveda formed as a dream pop band in Albany, New York in 2018. The core duo of Ali Genevich and Jake Brooks released two outstanding albums of deeply introspective, atmospheric and tender records with 2020’s What Happens After and 2023’s A Place You Grew Up In. As though the title of the latter was a prompt to evolve creatively Laveda relocated to New York City the same year and whether it was already happening then or more came together once in the big city the band evolved in a decidedly different sonic direction without losing its instincts for crafting memorable melodies and vivid, emotionally vibrant and immediately relatable lyrics. 2025’s Love, Darla marked a change in style for a more gritty, more angular, almost No Wave sound as though Genevich and Brooks had delved further into the Sonic Youth catalog and found their way to the likes of Live Skull and, perhaps unrelated, The Cleaners From Venus. The new album sounds like the work of people who made the move to pursue their art further and didn’t come out the other side jaded. Instead transformed and challenged to do something to reflect their own development as people and artists.

Listen to our interview with Genevich and Brooks on Bandcamp and follow Laveda at the links below.

Laveda on Instagram

Laveda on Facebook

Laveda LinkTr.ee

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E32: Broken Record

Broken Record is a Denver-based band that formed after singer/guitarist Lauren Beecher and bassist Corey Fruin moved to the Mile High City from Connecticut in 2017. Both had roots in the underground and DIY scene in and around New Haven and in forming Broken Record around some material Beecher had been working on what emerged was music that reflected the influence of punk and hardcore, certainly in the ethos of the group, as well as the atmospheric melodic qualities of The Cure. If you caught the band early on you might be excused to hearing in the music a touch of Hüsker Dü’s emotionally rich and fierce yet gentle aesthetic. The fledgling outfit found a home in the local hardcore scene and played early shows with the likes of then relatively newly founded bands like Destiny Bond and Ukko’s Hammer. And yet Broken Record never seemed out of place even though the catharsis of its music wasn’t formed from the same set of sounds but the emotional core of the songwriting shared a similar vulnerability and intelligence in expressing emotion with a keen sensitivity in the language of emotionally charged rock music.

The quartet released its debut full-length I Died Laughing on April 24, 2020 and of course could not tour around the record due to the global pandemic. But on that album one hears the knack for melodic jangle and shimmer embedded into earnestly energetic hooks with the expert pacing and Beecher’s warmly thoughtful vocals that strike the perfect emotional coloring for songs that are often poignantly melancholic and always deeply observant. For the 2023 album Nothing Moves Me the songwriting seemed to experiment further with tone and style incorporating delicately minimal guitar leads and triumphant choruses while seeming to be able to mine the more interesting ends of adolescent angst as a lens by which to understand the sometimes disillusioning aspects of adulthood. Like an entire record of what your teenage self might have to say about your current adult self. The 2025 album Routine (via the band’s own imprint Power Goth Recordings) and its cover of suburban American would-be normalcy takes the band’s established themes further to seemingly comment with great insight into the compromises and perils of navigating life in late capitalism and how that can cast a pall over your life if you’re not equipped to find some meaning in a socioeconomic environment seemingly designed to erode your joy and ability to live a full and dignified life. But also on the album the band seems to find the threads of psychic resistance to it all in creative acts and writing songs that feel like a shaking off of the gloom with music that feels like an expression of basic human solidarity.

Listen to our interview with Lauren Beecher and Corey Fruin on Bandcamp and follow Broken Record at the links below. The band is celebrating the release of Routine with a show at The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room on Saturday, November 15, 2025 with Precocious Neophyte and Safekeeper, doors 8 p.m., show 9 p.m.

brokenrecordisaband.com

Broken Record on Bandcamp

Broken Record on Instagram

Broken Record on Bluesky

Power Goth Recordings on Instagram