Insights

At a small Montreal venue, Mara Venn arrives with a garment bag, a box of safety pins, and a sketchbook filled with exaggerated shoulders, painted gloves, and…

The harmonica can change the emotional temperature of a song in seconds. A single bent note may suggest an empty highway, a crowded bar, a front porch at dusk,…

Before home recording became a standard part of independent music, a microphone, a borrowed interface, and a basement room could open a door. In Montreal’s DIY…

A music video does not need a large crew, expensive locations, or a carefully built set to feel cinematic. For one independent rock artist, the visual world…

Before Montreal’s independent music scene became easy to find through algorithms and social feeds, discovery often depended on a handbill, a friend’s…

Before the first original song, the room hears a familiar voice. A guitar settles into its tuning, the crowd recognizes the opening chord, and a Montreal folk…

Rain changes the shape of an afternoon. Streets blur behind glass, errands lose their urgency, and even familiar rooms seem to hold more space than usual. That…

In 2014, an independent song could travel without a major label, expensive advertising campaign, or carefully managed social media strategy. It needed a file…

Mara Vane’s The House Is Quiet sounds like a soundtrack discovered in a locked basement: elegant, tense, and faintly dangerous. The Montreal singer and…

A great guitar riff can define an entire song before the first verse arrives. It may be a blunt power-chord pattern, a tense single-note figure, or a bright…