In May 2024, Same Eyes got a golden ticket to TikTok and Instagram fame when a viral video of the Ann Arbor synth-pop group playing “Desperate Others” racked up millions of views. Using the caption “POV: you found a small indie band from Michigan before they blew up,” the clip prophesied what would become a season of virality.

“On this ride I’m sick again / think I'm losing all my friends shit-faced, smoke hash, drink wine, talk smack, and bother everyone,” singer Alex Hughes croons as he paces on stage.

Though most artists dream of a moment like this—when at least a handful of those millions are record label executives looking to offer a deal up on a silver platter—and Same Eyes saw a big bump in concert attendance as well as music and merch sales, core band members Hughes and Chad Pratt were uneasy about the onslaught of attention.

“Labels would ask us things like, ‘What are your dreams?’ and we’d say we wanted to tour a little bit and play all the mid-sized venues,” Hughes said. “That would be great. It forced us to think about what we really wanted in a healthy way. We wanted to just keep doing what we were doing before.”

You might find Ann Arbor’s Dollie Rot in a parking garage stairwell, a lone field, or a dive bar stage.

Those haunting locales serve as the ideal backdrop for the gothic “it girl,” who released her debut EP Survivor’s Guilt in 2017 at age 16 and followed up with a handful of singles and the album Man’s Wrath in 2024.

In May, Rot released her latest EP, Hidden Works, a compilation of estranged tracks from her archives that reflect her signature low-fi sound, which is based around acoustic guitar and heaps of reverb.

“I touch on so many different points of strife in Hidden Works, and I wanted it to be a more well-rounded album than Man’s Wrath, which was a concept album with a theme present in all the songs,” Rot said. “Hidden Works is more mismatched. There’s less of a narrative quality, but it tells a story.”

The Blox, a competitive web show for entrepreneurs, might be closer to Fear Factor than Keeping Up With the Kardashians as far as reality television goes.

The web show’s focus on public speaking, spur-of-the-moment pitching, and an intensive point system are enough to challenge anyone, especially Rick Coughlin.

Coughlin, co-founder and co-owner of Ypsilanti’s Grove Studios, a 24/7 rehearsal space and recording studio, said appearing on season 16 of The Blox was a well-needed “kick in the teeth.”

“You’re standing in front of all your peers, the guy that’s doing $5 million a year, and the woman who just started her dog business, and they’re all looking at you,” said Coughlin, a musician who co-started Grove Studios in 2017 and now runs it with business partner Breck Crandell.

“You have to deliver something that makes sense, and then a coach pokes holes in everything that you said. You get grilled for another half hour or so, and then you rinse and repeat for seven days. And there [are] cameras everywhere all the time.”

“How is our consciousness changing?” is the question Maddy Ringo grapples with throughout her record People of the Earth and Sea, released March 28. The Toronto-born singer-songwriter has established herself as a beacon of Ann Arbor’s music scene, adding her voice to the cultural howl for another folk-music revival, but one that reflects the current reality.

“I think you also have a lot of people who can’t really relate to folk and country songs about plowing the fields or working on the railroad," Ringo said. "That’s not our lives, and I think a lot of people in my space are taking that folk tradition and those things that feel really grounded and familiar and then writing about our modern life.

“I think people are very hungry right now in the aftermath of the pandemic and also in the face of AI. People really want live music, and they’re responding to things that feel real.”

Gregory Alan Isakov often forgets the words to his most commercially successful song, “Big Black Car.”

“If you know the words, sing along,” the folk singer-songwriter begged the packed Hill Auditorium audience on June 17 in Ann Arbor. “Please.”

But unlike some disgruntled artists who refuse to play their hits as they progress in their careers, Isakov is gracious for the work that’s propelled him to perform on different stages.

His plea was more respectful than snarky, and it was a nod to one of his early albums, 2009’s This Empty Northern Hemisphere.

Ann Arbor Summer Fest partnered with The Ark to host Isakov on the University of Michigan’s campus. Established in 1984 by the City of Ann Arbor and U-M, the nonprofit puts on the monthlong arts-based festival each June. 

Nick Shoulders doesn't think the stereotypical images of country music are sexy. 

“We’re living in the same world as red scares, endless wars, pandemics, and bank failures that the origins of country music identified with,” said Shoulders, who's from Fayetteville, Arkansas. “The endless wars and the scary stuff that was forming early country music is far more of the reality I inhabit. That’s what I try to channel through in my craft. I’m not doing this because it's Civil War recreation stuff or because it’s mired in an experience that’s really far away. It’s still with us.”

After going viral during the pandemic with a performance of his track, “Snakes and Waterfalls,” Shoulders has become a beloved token of the best the country/Americana genre has to offer. Having now amassed over 3 million views, the video features Shoulders in his true nature: in the middle of the forest, singing (and yodeling) on a tree stump alongside his dog. 

In 2019, Shoulders released his first full-length album Okay, Crawdad after his 2018 EP, Lonely Like Me. And last year, Shoulder released his fourth record, All Bad, a live-recorded, 14-track showcase of Shoulders at his best. The record was released via Gar Hole Records, the label Shoulders founded and co-owns, and is the first album released with his former band, The Okay Crawdad, since their pandemic hiatus. 

Shoulders is a staple in the current “pseudo-new wave” of Americana/country music that’s been a dominant genre for years now. But with the help of platforms like TikTok, certain songs are lassoing in fans whose only prior exposure to country music might be to the sterile, strangely sexualized tunes that dominate the top charts. But with this success, Shoulders grapples with the cultural challenges the genre faces. 

According to writer and University of Michigan alumna Mary Gaitskill, almost nothing is unbelievable and people are weird. Her work often reflects this notion with morally ambiguous characters, a gritty detailing of misconduct, and a complete rejection of clean-cut, black-and-white narratives. 

Quin, the protagonist of her acclaimed 2019 novella, This Is Pleasure, is one of her weirdest characters. In Quin's mind, his flirtatious workplace actions weren’t all that bad. When women began coming forward about feeling violated, he became caught off guard. 

“There was a cultural landscape for a while at least where he existed—I’m not saying it would be acceptable to everybody,” Gaitskill explained about Quin. “I’m sure he did offend some people, but because of his position, I think he didn’t realize he was offending people.”

Gaitskill shared her latest works and extensive literary experience during a March 21 reading and Q&A at the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s Helmut Stern Auditorium. Hosted by the Zell Visiting Writers Series, an annual showcase sponsored by The Helen Zell Writers’ Program, it brings fiction writers and poets to U-M’s campus to host public readings and lectures.

Initially published in The New Yorker, This Is Pleasure dominated literary circles due to its unlikely telling of a story of the “#MeToo” movement, a social campaign aimed at exposing people, especially those in positions of authority, involved in sexual misconduct. 

It offers a complex narrative about two characters, Quin and Margot, who find themselves entwined with the tendrils of a public sexual misconduct scandal. Quin—a husband, father, and New York book editor—loses his career once young women start coming forward about his wrongdoings. Margot is Quin’s former co-worker, and after rejecting his sexual advances early in their working relationship, the two became close friends in the industry. When Quin’s name hits the front pages of tabloids, the two navigate the complex intersections of power, guilt, and manipulation. 

For the past few years, Kingfisher has balanced college life with band life. But after the University of Michigan’s spring graduation, some members will head off to other Midwestern areas while others will stick around to complete their degrees.

The band might be closing a chapter but Kingfisher’s story will continue to unfold.

“The plan is to keep going,” said Sam DuBose (vocals, lyrics, guitar). “Things will definitely change. I mean, right now we’re all like three blocks from each other. But we had the conversation a while ago about what we were going to do, and all of us want to continue. We all love this group so much.”

Unlike most college bands though, Kingfisher isn’t fond of covers.

“We’ve actually never played a cover song at a show,” said Tyler Thenstedt (bass, vocals). “It’s been original music since the get-go. I would say that’s what people sort of know us for. A lot of Ann Arbor bands are incredible, but what sets us apart is that it has always been original music.”

If you ask the men of Ann Arbor’s Post Eden what their tagline “musical fusion” means, they really couldn’t tell you. More of a tongue-in-cheek umbrella term than an attempt to grasp a genre, the group really only started taking themselves seriously in the past two years.

Just not too seriously. 

“At the end of the day, we’re doing this for fun,” lead guitarist Nick Noteman said. “Yes, we take a lot of the music we write seriously and some of our songs have deep undertones, but music is supposed to be fun—the ‘musical fusion’ is us noting that we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

Former high school cross-country runners Noteman, Pat Murray (lead vocalist and guitarist), Abe Worth (bassist), and Alex Bowling (drummer) started Post Eden after a year and a half of playing together. 

“There’s a lot of time when you’re stuck in the middle of the woods to sit and talk about stuff,” Murray said. “You’re running for miles, and you become really good friends with people.”

Post Eden’s debut album, Solace in Entropy, came out in January. The record was named after the chaos of life, especially during the COVID-19 era, and the comfort that playing together brought the musicians. Solace in Entropy begins with a series of footsteps that guide listeners to 11 tracks that signify months of hard work and fine-tuning. Post Eden’s sound is a mix of Rage Against the Machine, Pink Floyd, and King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard, tied together with ’70s psychedelic and ’90s grunge influences. 

“So we’ll take process over outcome,” Jordan Mosley sings—or rather yells— on the sixth track, “settle,” from Normal Park’s this was it.

Mosley is the lead vocalist of an Ypsilanti fuzz-rock band of three high school friends who have been making music together for over a decade. Mosley is joined by drummer McKinnon Main and guitarist Anthony (Tony) Scott. Last October, the group finally finished the process and seized an outcome: its debut album, this was it.

Nestled midway through the album is one of the group’s favorite and most important tracks, “settle.” Like any great Midwest emo song, it begins on the porch. You can practically smell the American Spirits when you tune in.

“‘Cause staying in is much like going out / at least when we still had the choice / but since we don’t we can just make it easier to / settle the mind behind these red-laced bedroom eyes,” the chorus rings. 

Although it may sound like an ode to quarantine, “settle” raises questions about fate, the promise of temporary relief, and what the future holds. It starts with a dance on the porch, teetering between going out and staying in, and by the end, you’re invited inside.

“It was kind of a lynchpin where it seemed to connect all the songs around it,” Scott said. “But it also felt like a real step forward lyrically for us. To step out of our comfort zone instrumentally was also a driving factor, and we really felt like we had something at that point.”