Soft and Dumb is an indie anxiety rock duo comprised of Elena Buenrostro and Travis Newgren: two quasi-Chicagoans who met at college in Urbana, Illinois. The band combines love for dissonance and noise to create distinct panic-fueled songs on their new EP. Written and recorded entirely during quarantine, “Out of Bed” reflects not only the collective stress of life in the wake of a pandemic, but individual worries like familial trauma, performance anxiety, and entomophobia. In writing, they attach these fears to concrete instances of assholes (like wasps and playground bullies).

Charlie Recksieck, recording under the moniker of Chuck Charles, is a piano player whose original songs are most compared to Ben Folds, Warren Zevon and They Might Be Giants - or lovingly thought of as "the stupid man's Randy Newman".

He is a co-founder and longtime member of The Bigfellas who are best known for their more humorous tunes such as "I Wish That I Were Gay", "4:20" and the world's only golf rap, "On The Green," all of which are on their schizophrenic debut CD, Chubbed Up.

What do you do with a collection of live performance cuts recorded during a pandemic? You release a live concert album, naturally. Well, sort of live, but not really.

While working to improve the quality of our streaming concerts we wound up with a collection of audio recordings we were REALLY happy with.