Eliza Niemi / beetsblog / Molly Raben / The Spookfish

Kneading dough is tricky. You should know how it’s supposed to feel, and if you try too hard, you could make it worse. It’s a beautiful practice–creation with a gentle touch. This is the same instinctual skill Toronto-based artist Eliza Niemi has cultivated in her songwriting over decades. Before she became a cellist and vocalist, her father taught her the basics of bass and guitar at home. They would play together by ear, which fostered her deep musicality and a creative ethic that prioritizes joyful collaboration. On Progress Bakery, her second solo LP, her music is at once delicate and playful, with melodies precisely cast like stones across clear water, touching down only briefly with uncommon grace. Niemi slip-slides through words, sounds, and images, delighting in surprise. “A few years ago I sublet an apartment during a pretty heavy time in my life, and right down the street was a spot called Progress Bakery,” Niemi explains. “I would walk by it every day on my way to work, often get a coffee, and chew on its name all morning. I thought it was quite funny and weirdly fitting for where I was at in my life. Their sign out front is half fallen off (it says ‘gress bakery’) and their espresso is amazing–it's like jet fuel. It embodies many juxtapositions and overall has a really warm and heartening feel.”
https://elizaniemi.bandcamp.com/music
Beetsblog seemingly never tires of not knowing. When, for example, composer Taggie Coppins goes to sit on a porch with a guitar and a Connecticut cigar, and she sings a song so quietly you wonder if she can even hear herself, you might project for a few seconds that she’s trying to find some answer. Until you notice that it’s just the morning, and she’s just spending the morning doing something.
And the guitar she’s holding today will not be her guitar tomorrow. Because she bought it for cheap yesterday from the junk room of a music shop, and she never intended to keep it, she just needed something to play this morning. When you spend enough mornings like this with Taggie, it starts to feel confusing why you yourself have owned anything for longer than one day.
https://beetsblog.org/
In the Kingdom of Flowers is the debut LP from Minneapolis-based organist and experimental musician Molly Raben , released in July 2025 on Pennsylvania label Love’s Devotee. A breathtaking set of solo organ improvisations, the album showcases Raben’s technical prowess; her deep examination of the mechanics, history and social context of the instrument; and her knack for crafting melodically and harmonically rich music that is as listenable as it is exploratory. Across the album’s five pieces, Raben probes the mechanics of the organ while employing sonic techniques that bring to mind the hypnotic minimalism of early Terry Riley, the ecstatic resonance of Charlemagne Palestine, or the unpredictable melodic runs of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. Alan Sparhawk of Low has called Molly Raben’s music “immediately captivating and engaging,” and In the Kingdom of Flowers—her first major release—makes this clear to the curious listener from the first note.
https://mollyraben.bandcamp.com/
My name's Dan and I make music as The Spookfish . I am really interested in dreams and nature and other parts of reality that feel magical. I have always tried to share this in the music I make and in the events I put on. I regularly put on concerts on mountains or strange places like on rocks in rushing streams in the dark of night. I recently have become fascinated with indie videogames and the freedom and passion that I see in a lot of work. Some of my favorites are yume nikki, undertale, kentucky route zero, tux and fanny, dark souls, detention, rain world and cave story.
https://thespookfish.bandcamp.com/