The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week: Vulfpeck, 3Steez, RVRISS, Daniel Morris, Fangs and Twang, Bunkerman, Kalron, Dylan Charles, and a Moroccan music mix by Jib Kidder.

After publishing around 30 books together in 15 years as a creative duo, it took Erin and Phil Stead a while to come back to the story that got it all started.

The Ann Arbor couple’s first book together, A Sick Day for Amos McGee, set an impossibly high bar, winning over literary critics as the recipient of the prestigious Caldecott Medal, while becoming a defining children’s book of a generation.

While the Steads worked up the courage to publish a sequel in 2021 with Amos McGee Misses the Bus, putting the book out into the world during the COVID-19 pandemic meant the couple couldn't tour and promote it.

That has made the promotion of the recently published third book in the series, A Snow Day for Amos McGee, all the more gratifying, Phil said, as the Steads have been able to connect with lifelong fans.

“It's just been really, really rewarding to see people's enthusiasm for the book and enthusiasm for the character,” Phil Stead said. “This is the first time that we're seeing grown-ups who had the book as children—college-aged kids that are bringing their battered copies from when they were five or six of the first book, and now they're excited to see Amos back.”

Living in Ann Arbor together since 2008, the Steads will close out a season of promoting A Snow Day For Amos McGee with a special event on December 11 at Literati Bookstore, offering those who attend the ticketed event special handmade, limited-edition woodblock prints the couple is famous for featuring in their books.

I know we were all supposed to be “holding space” for "Defying Gravity" at this time last year, but if I’m being honest, the iconic movie musical moment between two young women that really destroyed me appeared on screens long before Wicked (spoiler alert—if you’ve been living under a rock for quite some time): Anna using the last of her strength to save her sister instead of herself in Disney’s Frozen in 2013.

And thanks to Dexter’s Encore Musical Theatre Company, you (alongside lots of little ones in sparkly blue Elsa dresses) can now see that moment reenacted live via its production of Frozen: The Broadway Musical.

Why did that moment elicit such a strong reaction in me?

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week: David Barrett, Skinned Knees, Omo & Delos Prismatic, Defy Modern Theory, VaporDaze, Studio Lounge, Future Holograms, and Latimer Rogland.

This interview originally ran on October 27, 2025. We're rerunning it because Yun is doing her only book-release event for "And the River Drags Her Down" in Ann Arbor at Booksweet on Thursday, December 18, at 6 pm.

Loneliness and responsibility devastate the older sister, Mirae. Grief and a magical power motivate the younger sister, Soojin. The combination is nothing less than miraculous and destructive.

And the River Drags Her Down, the new young adult horror novel by Ann Arbor's Jihyun Yun, retells a Korean folktale in a fictional coastal resort town called Jade Acre. Water and all its possibilities will never seem the same after reading it.

The Han sisters possess a unique gift. They can bring back dead creatures by following a protocol with the body. The girls discover their powers early on by mistake, and their mother guides them. Later, one of them deliberately and against advice uses her ability for her own objective.

When Mirae drowns unexpectedly after their mother had already also died suddenly, Soojin is bereft. The loss of her sister is compounded by the loss of her mother, so that Soojin “felt wounded by everything beautiful her sister was not alive to see.” In an attempt to seem fine, Soojin makes up stories about having lots of friends for her father, whom she thinks falls for it, but does not believe her for a second.

Throughout it all, “Soojin was sovereign of the nation of never letting go.” She misses her sister too much to see clearly. Her subsequent actions illustrate what her friend Mark Moon’s mother says: “Not letting go is the only prerequisite of a haunting. Our harms never leave us if we don’t let them leave.”

So Soojin does not stop to question whether she should when she has the chance to bring Mirae back to life. The small physical remnant of her sister that Soojin finds quickly grows into a revenant form of Mirae. This Mirae returns with perfect skin, does not seem to bleed with real blood, and unbeknownst to Soojin, gains powers with water. All those warning signs are invisible to the ecstatic Soojin, who feels entirely thrilled to have her sister back. During a belated celebration of Mirae’s 18th birthday, the sisters are “euphoric and drunk on the fact of being alive.”

The issues start piling up and cannot be ignored, though. Mark notices first. At that same impromptu birthday party with the two sisters, he already sees cracks in the perfect front:

Like semesters, student groups come and go at the University of Michigan. Concrete Canoe team? Seems to be on hiatus. Photonix, the Glo-Stick choreography ensemble? Also seems to be taking a break.

But if you're a student interested in diabolo, aka the art of the Chinese yoyo, then Revolution is the group for you—and it's still around, as it has been since its 2009 creation.

The troupe blends a traditional Chinese pastime with modern music and captivating choreography to promote Asian American and Pacific Islander culture. 

On November 23, 2025, Revolution came to the Ann Arbor District Library's Downtown location for a 30-minute performance followed by 10 minutes of Q&A with the audience. 

Below, watch the videos of Revolution's recent performance at AADL as well as the group's presentation outside Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor during the 2020 COVID year.

The Radar usually tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

But for this edition, we wanted to shine a light on some arts- and culture-related podcasts from the greater Ann Arbor area.

This week:
KyLex Voice Adventures, Every Horror Movie on Netflix, Fans With Bands, My Brother & Me, The Frequency Exchange, Sonixcursions, I Love Your Stories, Creative Currents, Sunday Sesh, The Seven Series, Acoustic Alternatives, Cinema Chat, Living Writers, and numerous AADL-produced podcasts.

Despite all attempts to project Norman Rockwell vibes onto Thanksgiving, the holiday has long been associated with stressful travel, flaring tempers, and tears, thanks to relations with diametrically opposed beliefs gathering in close quarters for a long, leisurely meal.

Throw in a conversation about the brutal, non-mythologized history of the American Thanksgiving holiday, and, well, you’ve likely lit a powder keg. Yet this is essentially what two white, politically progressive characters in Larissa FastHorse’s satire The Thanksgiving Play, now being presented by The Penny Seats Theatre Company, aim for: to devise an original holiday play for elementary school students that tells the truth in a culturally ethical way.

As you might guess, this turns out to be a far harder and messier task than they expect.

"Anywhere in the world, farmworkers are always at the bottom of the social strata," Narsiso Martinez told PBS News Hour in 2004. "In my art, I just hope to shine a light to these people."

Martinez's new exhibit, Best Used By, is at the University of Michigan's Institute for the Humanities Gallery through December 19. He creates textured, detailed portraits and muralist-style pieces to honor these workers, incorporating real-world products from the food industry and mixing the materials with his drawings. (Above, you can see the illustrations are atop flattened cardboard boxes, a metaphor for the way the food industry treats its workers as disposable.)

On November 13, Martinez helped launch his exhibition with a talk at the Michigan Theater, which you can watch below, as well as read what curator Amanda Krugliak said about Best Used By.

Detroit's Pavan Kanekal and Salem, Oregon's J.J. Gregg teamed up for an evening of tabla and sitar duets at the Ann Arbor District Library on October 3, 2025. They've been playing together since 2018 and have released two albums: 2024's Ease & Flow and 2022's re-cycling.

Gregg studied in India with Ustad Usman Khan, a sixth-generation musician and third-generation Hindustani classical sitar player who started his studies at age 7. 

Kanekal also began his tabla training at age 7, in Bangalore, India, and continued his studies after a family move to the San Francisco Bay area.

In a performance that lasted about an hour, with introductions from Gregg, the duo transfixed the audience at AADL's Downtown location with a hypnotic performance of South Asian Classical music. Watch their concert and listen to Gregg and Salem's two albums below: