WILTLW: Aug 3, 2025

The American Analog Set - Know By Heart

Got kind of obsessed with this one last week. “Punk as Fuck” is a perfect song, makes me feel like I'm on a roadtrip through the Pacific Northwest circa 2003. I forgot that there was a whole world of this soft indie pop-rock being made around the turn of the century, a simpler time when the aimlessness of your 20s wasn't also paired with the existential threats of impending climate disaster and economic collapse. Shoutout to that ear playlist for jogging my memory and introducing me to this album.

Motion Ward with Joshua Chuquimia Crampton

150 people packed in a gutted and dimly lit retail space, fog pumped in so thick you could choke on it, the pregnant smell of burning incense in the air, cherry-flavored Tolago seltzer behind the bar. The flat black shadow of a man in a cowboy hat is thrown at the front of the crowd, but wait, the shadow’s moving, he’s shredding gargantuan reverb-laden riffs on his guitar, soon they’re consuming the speakers, then the building, transforming particulate matter back into formless waves, pure energy, raw emotion, give in.

Lô Borges - Nuvem Cigana

My Dad has very little patience for anything in a foreign language, it was only a couple years ago that he came around to the idea of watching movies with subtitles, but I bet I could play this for him and he’d be into it. It’s got a classic Steely Dan yacht rock vibe that’s too smooth to deny, plus it pairs perfectly with the summer months. I first heard “O Vento Não Me Levou” on an internet radio broadcast a few years back but the recent heatwave in LA made me turn to it once more.