Wild Heart Club

Credit: Anna Haas

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Wild Heart Club is singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Kristen Castro, a genre-crossing artist known for blending a surprising range of electronic, digital, and analog elements into her dreamy, atmospheric indie-pop. Castro built a name for herself as an independent solo artist with a penchant for electric guitar, a dark sensibility, and a bracing tenderness reminiscent of acts like the Cocteau Twins.

Transforming abstract emotion into compelling music, her early releases feature everything from mandolin to bass, piano to synth, banjo to drum programming, in songs that feel both effortless and complex at the same time. Castro’s latest project, Wild Heart Club, builds off the hybrid style of her solo work, evolving her eclectic foundations into an even more distinct and cohesive sound. The synth-heavy, guitar-driven soundscapes are laced with Castro’s breezy, candied vocals: think Sigur Rós meets Heart. It’s a strange and compelling combination that feels right for the current moment.

“I’ve always been drawn to people who aren’t in the cool club—the weirdos embracing their weirdness. This is music for them, as always.” Written, recorded, and produced primarily by Castro herself, Wild Heart Club’s debut album Arcade Back in Manitou is set for release this fall.

Castro has been creating songs that challenge genre boundaries since the age of ten, combining elements of folk, pop, electronica, hard rock, country, Americana, and punk into her own idiosyncratic sound. She grew up influenced by her brother’s taste in hip-hop and R&B, excited by the way 90s artists often experimented with uncommon methods and strange sounds to make their beats more unique. Her early background playing in metal bands sparked a deep appreciation for powerful rhythms and driving guitar riffs that still inform her music today. Mentored by Matt Bissonette (bassist for Elton John, Ringo Starr) and Sergio Gonzalez (drummer for Jennifer Lopez, Gavin DeGraw), she spent six years touring the country as a founding member and primary instrumentalist for popular indie-country trio Maybe April, and appearing in major publications like Billboard, Paste Magazine, and CMT. In 2019 Castro released a series of well-received solo singles, “Bloom” and “Surrender” (which was praised by Audiofemme for “crystalline and breathy” vocals reminiscent of Dolores O’Riordan and Leigh Nash). 

Castro started writing the songs that would become Arcade Back in Manitou in January 2020, while living with her brother in L.A. and recovering from heartache after a particularly difficult breakup. She was also navigating the breakup of her band and listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Gypsy on repeat. Castro was staying with her sister in Portland when the pandemic lockdown began in March 2020, and there she developed the concept for Wild Heart Club, tweaking the details for her new project’s debut album.

Named for a happy memory (visiting a Colorado penny arcade with an ex), Arcade Back in Manitou is an ethereal and lush collection of melancholy songs with a brilliant gloss of retro sheen. “For me, writing this album was about putting myself in a place of loss, and really feeling it. I wanted to be honest. A lot of the lyrics are self-talk, like yo this is the darkest moment you’ll feel in a while, and you need to get to the other side of it. When we’re miserable, how can we still find joy?” The resulting music feels unexpectedly bright, like walking through a clean, sunlit, white-tiled mall in the glowy light of a sitcom flashback. The opening chords of the track “Unhappy” are anything but unhappy: Castro discovered the beaming, slightly unnatural guitar sound while experimenting with octave and rotary pedals. Throughout the album, there’s a genuine and hopeful engagement with the positive, a buoyant, almost-ironic sense of cheer teeming from the instrumentation, and a spirit of experimentation and discovery, despite the themes of loss the lyrics explore.

Hints of 80s plastic-pop and elements of 90s alternative cool (the Cranberries hit “Zombie” was a big influence) are nestled in the mix, as well as nods to vintage and modern Swedish pop acts like Robyn, Léon, and ABBA. “I want to be the artist who can make you cry on the dance floor. I like songs that pair darker thoughts with happy vibes. Emotions are complex. It feels right to have that kind of complicated juxtaposition play out in music,” she says. “It feels honest.” 

Natalie Schlabs

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Nashville-based singer/songwriter Natalie Schlabs writes songs that explore the complicated emotions and perspective-shifting moments that make up family relationships. Her music often blends sublime vocal harmonies with lyrics about the secret desires and difficulties of living life among loved ones.

Her first full-length album, Midnight With No Stars, was celebrated for its willingness to explore the personal. New Slang praised the album for revealing “a rugged truthfulness we often save for conversations with ourselves.” There’s a richness and clarity to Schlabs’ voice reminiscent of artists like Norah Jones and Jill Andrews, making her a popular choice for harmonizing background vocals and a frequent collaborator with other musicians on tour and in the studio. Her stunning duet with Irish-born artist Ben Glover, “Fall Apart,” features vocals that “ring and resound like a fork tapping crystal” and was chosen as a Song of the Week on The Bluegrass Situation. Schlabs’ introduction to Nashville music came through collaboration, singing background vocals for fellow Texan Ryan Culwell, and performing with Katie Herzig at Paste Studio NYC in 2018. “I think there’s something cool about the act of stepping into someone else’s sound and blending with it,” she explains. “It’s a challenge, and a kind of freedom, too.”

Like many other Nashville musicians, the West Texas native grew up singing in church, but unlike others the majority of her early musical experience s took place at home with family. Her three brothers were musicians—one a pianist, one a guitarist and drummer, and one guitarist and songwriter—her mom sang, and her grandfather, a guitarist and vocalist who performed classics, often invited the family to sing with him. “It was very normal for all of us to be together in a room, playing instruments and singing together,” she recalls. “My love for music comes from my family, and my love for family is often the substance of my songwriting.”

Breaking a bit from her country roots, Schlabs’ new album Don’t Look Too Close, set for release on Oct 9, 2020, steps into indie territory with a compelling mix of instrumentation laced with solo vocals that bloom into easy, delicate harmonies. Co - produced by Juan Solorzano and Zachary Dyke , with Caleb Hickman on saxophone and her husband Joshua Rogers on bass, the album swells and ebbs with elegant, absorbing shapes. The songs are moody, candid, and tender , each featuring Schlabs’ characteristically sleek vocals front-and-center, backed by charming instrumental moments that add form and depth to the melodies. “Juan’s got a great ear,” she says. “He created really original textures with layered guitar. That’s a big part of the sound of the record.”

Recorded the year of her 30th birthday and largely written while pregnant with her first child, the album naturally focuses on tension s between past and present. “I was thinking about how to raise a child, how to pass down values,” she reveals. “There’s a dismantling of what I thought I knew. What do I value in my life and where did those things come from? What do I want to share with my children and what do I want to spare them from?” The tracks on Don’t Look Too Close traverse the spectrum of feelings that tend to coincide with love, from bittersweet consideration of “the wilderness caused by depression or illness” in “See What I See,” to the haunting gentleness of “Ophelia,” written for a friend who lost her daughter. The title song “Don’t Look Too Close” addresses the everyday aches and pains people tend to hide from loved ones. “There were entire rooms of things my parents went through that I had no idea about,” she says. “And my kid will have no idea about a lot of things I experience.” The song reflects on love’s blindness, how “sometimes the ones you love will never know how much you love them.”

The album as a whole represents a place, a time, and a pocket of feelings that are as distinctly human as they are beautiful. “Growing up surrounded by family in the flatlands, there’s not a whole lot going on outside of the people,” she continues. “The climate is extreme, and isolation binds you to the people around you. Everyone’s in each other’s business, and you learn that love can go in many directions. Sometimes it’s about solidarity and sacrifice, sometimes it’s obsessive or painful. This record is about navigating those feelings within our closest relationships .”

MARGAUX

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Margaux Bouchegnies is a singer/songwriter from Seattle, currently based in Brooklyn. Influenced by folk-rock of the 70s, Joni Mitchell, David Byrne, and Lyle Brewer, her guitar-driven songwriting balances lush arrangements and poignant, soft-spoken lyrics. 

At only 20 years old, Margaux writes with a stone-faced maturity far beyond her years. Alongside producer, Sahil Ansari (Slow Dakota, JW Francis), she finished her debut EP, More Brilliant Is The Hand that Throws the Coin, in July 2019, enlisting the help of friends and friends of friends (Reid Jenkins of Morningsiders, and Willem DeKoch of The Westerlies). The EP is due out November 15 on Massif Records.

Although a full-time undergraduate at the New School, Margaux will play a series of NYC shows this Fall promoting the EP, and sharpening new material.  

SPEELBURG

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Speelburg (né Noah Sacré) is in a good mood. Having spent the last few years living in England writing what he calls “pop music for important people,” Speelburg relocated to Los Angeles seeking the kind of weather he grew up with in the south of France. He made quite an impression during his time in Great Britain, earning BBC Radio 1’s Chillest Record of the Week for his single “Headlights” and praise from Clash magazine who described his sound as “startlingly unique electro pop.” Pigeons & Planes took it a step further: “Speelburg...is a force to be reckoned with.”  

In recent months, the Belgian-American musician has completed work on two solo albums, the second of which will confusingly come out first, but only he will ever know the difference. Character Actor (coming late summer 2019) is a sunny collection of ten songs to be accompanied by Arcobaleno, a (very) short film he directed himself, drawn from Instagram and beyond.  

Whether it is paying homage to three Sofia Coppola films in his music video for “Screener Season,” hand-drawing and animating the video for the aforementioned “Headlights” (which Clash called in true English fashion “a corker”) or showing off his fondness for short-shorts and watermelon in the video for his upcoming single “Oxy Cotton Candy,” Sacré is as much a compelling visual artist as he is an innovative musician.  

Having just completed a short tour of the West Coast and with a European trek on deck this fall, Speelburg’s good mood looks like it is going to stick around for awhile. 

Kezar

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Jack Mosbacher has always had music in his heart, but it took enduring one of the most painful experiences of his life to begin writing his own. 

A veteran of the jazz and cabaret scenes in New York, Jack was preparing for his first headlining show in San Francisco when one of his oldest friends was killed in an accident. He was inspired to write his own music for the first time, hoping to provide something for the community affected by the unthinkable loss. He quickly realized that his sudden urge to write songs was just as much for his own healing as it was for others. It was the only way he could cheer himself up. 

“I started making music in earnest in some really dark moments in my life,” Jack explains. “For some people, that might manifest into songs about pain and loss. For some reason, I instinctively wanted to make music that would cheer people up, make people happy; make people dance; make people hopeful.” 

In the years that have followed, the singer-songwriter has been living up to his goal of being a beacon of light in a dark world. His brand of retro soul is uplifting and joyous. He’s had his music played at weddings and at wakes, but now he’s ready to begin a new chapter in his career. And with a new chapter comes a new name. 

Although Jack is still the mastermind behind this project, he wanted the focus to be less on him and more on the music he was making. Hailing from the Bay Area, he searched for a moniker that stood for his hometown and came up with Kezar, taken from San Francisco’s iconic Kezar Stadium in the Haight-Ashbury district – the original home of his beloved 49ers that still stands today, and a music venue that played host to some of Jack’s favorite bands, including Led Zeppelin, Santana, Tower of Power, and the Grateful Dead. 

As Kezar, Jack wanted to take his music in a new direction while staying true to the uplifting nature of his sound. And there’s no better feel-good music than pop, a genre Jack’s always wanted to tap into but never felt he possessed the right resources and tools to do so. One fateful day, he met manager Brad Margolis, who introduced him to a couple of producers that specialize in pop: Nitzan Kaikov (K-Kov) and Jeoff Harris. 

 With K-Kov producing Grammy-nominated albums for Keith Urban and sharing producer credits with Justin Timberlake, Jack knew he was in good hands. From the first day in the studio, the California native made his vision clear: he told the producers he wanted to find a sound that Berry Gordy would sign if he was starting Motown today. He wanted to make hook-dependent, danceable, fun music. He wanted romance, he wanted joy. He wanted to make music that could help people escape their worries, even if just for a few minutes. 

“I’ve always tried to pack as much joy into every measure of my music as I can,” Jack admits. “I didn’t want to lose that by going in a new direction, but I knew for some reason that I really wanted to make a true pop record. I finally met people who were willing to bet on me and give me their time and talent to help make it happen.” 

 While soul is still the backbone of Kezar’s music, it incorporates a wide array of sounds. Using state-of-the-art synthesizer technology, he and the producers added throwback elements from hip-hop’s glory days, like the big 808 drum machines on Run-DMC and NWA records and stacked backing vocals and bass synths reminiscent of the 2000’s Hyphy Movement – homages to Mac Dre, Mistah F.A.B., Keak da Sneak, and Traxamillion. On top, he injected the tracks with the rock-leaning pop sensibility of his hometown heroes Train and contemporary pop influences like Bruno Mars, Sam Smith and Shawn Mendes. The result is a collection of songs that range from sensual, slow-burning R&B jams to funk-laden pop earworms. Partnered for live performances with drummer James Small (Fantastic Negrito), it is obvious that the duo’s sound is defined by the marriage of Jack’s sunny San Francisco pop and Small’s heavier-hitting Oakland rhythm and blues. 

“The possibilities of what you can do with people who possess this kind of technical skill and composition talent is really limitless,” Jack says of K-Kov and Harris. “It’s like a sculptor looking at big piece of marble and realizing, ‘I can literally shape this into anything.’ And you have to figure out a way to carve out something that feels both new and true to you.” 

 Although the way in which this project was created couldn’t be more foreign to Jack—he’s used to writing a song and then recording it with a group of musicians in a big studio, rather than creating everything in a studio between two people—the process has made him more open-minded to new sounds and, quite frankly, a better songwriter. 

“This feels as much like me, if not more so, than the music I’ve made in the past,” the singer-songwriter says without hesitation. “I love pop music, I just never knew how to make it. What I’ve found is that if you know who you are and what you’re trying to do going in, then regardless of your influences and methods, the result will sound like you. That’s the thing I’m most proud of with this music: it’s a completely new sound for me, but it feels genuine to who I am, and I think it is a big step forward for me as an artist and as a human.” 

 With these new tools, the sky’s the limit for Jack—as Kezar or otherwise. And this is just the beginning.