Ypsilanti’s true believers The Velvet Snakes slithered into view in 2021, storming the dives of mid-Michigan in a blur of hair and paisley. As they pursued a path of ecstatic rock 'n’ roll raunch with frequent left turns into psychedelia, the band quickly found a home amongst connoisseurs of the Dee-troit/Ann Arbor/Ypsi underground rock axis.

After a handful of lineup changes, today The Velvet Snakes are Logan Belz and Gage Rettinger on guitar and vocals, while Tyler Love handles bass and Noah Wright holds down the tubs. The band recently completed their debut album, a collection called FIRST STRIKE, and The Velvet Snakes are making it official this Thursday, July 31, with a record release event at Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti. (The band also headlines night three of Fuzz Fest 2025 at The Blind Pig on Saturday, August 23.)

The title of their song “Gorilla on the Beach” makes the best description of the Snakes’ sound, a flailing, fuzzy garage-rock stomp warped by the otherworldly bend and twang of surf guitar and soaked in a bath of Blue Cheer. With their broken blues riffs and acidic fretboard freak-outs, the Snakes produce the kind of budget-label psych-noise that should excite fans of bands like The Stooges and The Seeds (or any of their myriad progeny).

The stories in Dylan Strzynski’s new book-like zine, Guadalcanal 2006, notice oddities and make up stories about them.

What if an old car was eulogized like a human?

Would the last man alive eat cockroaches?

Why does that person have lunch alone in their car every day?

Are lizards the squirrels of Florida?

What if a painting of Guadalcanal took on a life of its own? How does Guadalcanal live on in the psyche? What if plane travelers were transferred to a submarine en route to Guadalcanal?  

A mix of fiction and nonfiction, these 26 stories of varying lengths do not provide answers to all the questions but rather observe and, in some cases, expand on what is possible. This approach aligns with how Strzynski describes his visual art.

“I’m always using my artwork as a way to tell people about where I’ve been and what I’ve seen,” he said. “Even if it’s funny and weird, it’s usually referencing something I experienced. … Rather than try to solve every problem within everything I make, I recognize everything is of a piece.”

Dexter-based Strzynski is not only a writer but also a visual artist and musician. Yet, his writing has not been featured until now.

“Writing has always been a part of my life, but I kept it a secret,” he said.

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.”

In his new film, Zach Damon shares the rich history of disability advocacy in Ann Arbor.

The director explores 70 years of local advocacy in Resilience Revealed: Ann Arbor’s Disability Legacy, which highlights the city’s foundational role in shaping the broader disability rights movement.

“Honestly, disability is something I have a great deal of experience in,” said Damon, who was born with cerebral palsy and grew up in Ann Arbor.

“And as a filmmaker, when an opportunity comes along to make a film about what you know, you have a duty to make work that can give a glimpse into what that is and what came before you to enlighten others.”

Through personal narratives, historical accounts, and expert insights, the 24-minute film examines the building blocks of Ann Arbor’s disability rights legacy, emphasizing its significance within the community and its impact on future generations.

The first tale in Dr. Ursula Whitcher's novella-length short-stories collection, North Continent Ribbon, offers a striking example of the sci-fi author's poetic prose:

I stepped toward him with a hanging parry, crystal chiming as our blades met. That brought my left hand near his hilt. I pressed his wrist back just long enough to raise my sword and strike his face. My arm absorbed the shock of cutting bone. He slumped and fell. No longer my opponent; no longer caught in the current of our dance. The golden ribbon in his hair was streaked with blood.

The Ann Arbor-based author and mathematician's debut book, which came out in 2024, is being recognized in the industry, too. It was short-listed for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, with the committee writing:

Whitcher elegantly weaves a complex picture of the cultural and political history of the planet Nakharat—home to assassins, judges, sex workers, teenagers, and sentient starships—building a nuanced, tender understanding of how the politics of power plays out through the lives of individuals, and how collective resistance evolves within intimate relationships.

The architects of Dr. Whitcher's world-building are the queer characters she portrays across North Continent Ribbon's six stories. Yes, there are spaceships imbued with the human consciousness of prisoners, crystal swords, and artificial-intelligence books spouting poetry, but we mostly learn about Nakharat across 400 years through the eyes of its individuals, not its technological marvels. The private sides of these star-faring people are defined by the ribbons braided into their hair, which are then buried in a veil. These strips of fabric represent spouses, friends, family, work, contracts, gods, and more, tracing the wearers' histories but masking the information behind a head covering.

I spoke with Dr. Whitcher about North Continent Ribbon, what brought her to Ann Arbor, and what it means to be nominated for one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction.

During the Civil War, the United States was “a nation that was still younger than its oldest citizens,” writes University of Michigan professor Scott Ellsworth in his new book, Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America. This young country was figuring out what it was just as much as it was figuring out what it wasn’t. This dilemma, as history shows, was divisive.

Midnight on the Potomac supplies a plot-driven, nonfiction account of the people involved in the Civil War, both famous and not, and how their actions influenced the trajectory of the war. Ellsworth examines the leadership during the war, as well as the conspiracies, attacks, weapons, and battles.

Most centrally, the book focuses on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln through profiles of both John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln. Ellsworth juxtaposes Booth’s acting career with his support of the Confederacy. Ellsworth also discusses Lincoln’s habits and moods. For example, a description of Lincoln notes his features:

Kelsey Detering has found her groove.

The Ann Arbor indie-rocker recently started playing bass and features new wave-inspired basslines on her four latest singles.

“Musically, I feel like I found myself starting at the end of 2023,” said Detering, who’s traded her previous Ceolsige (pronounced see-ole-sidge) artist moniker for Kelsey. (pronounced Kelsey period).

“I found myself as an artist and as a person, and everything locked in. That’s what happened to me, and I thought, ‘This is so different than Ceolsige, and it feels different.’ I’m hearing music differently since I started playing bass, and I’m writing and approaching it differently.”

Initially a pianist, Detering credits Duran Duran bassist John Taylor with inspiring her to pick up the bass—a Rio Dream bass.

“I learned all the [Duran Duran] basslines and started to branch out to other basslines and players, too,” she said. “That’s really the foundation of my playing. The first [bassline] I wrote was for ‘Throw the Stone,’ and you can hear [John Taylor’s influence] all over that. He was inspired by [Blondie], it’s a thread that goes through it.”

This story originally ran on May 21, 2025. We're rerunning it because "Hometown Summer" will be at the Michigan Theater again on Saturday, July 12, with screenings at 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm.

Comedies come in cycles. There was a time in the late 1990s and continuing through the early 2010s when movie theaters regularly welcomed rated-R-for-raunchy flicks with over-the-top humor. 

But as social mores changed, and movie theaters struggled to get people into their buildings, many of those movies went straight to streaming.

Wolverine Productions' Benjamin Vomastek misses when salty comedies with no-holds-barred japes populated the cineplex, and the University of Michigan grad is doing his part to bring them back.

Vomastek's film debut, 2024's Rosetta Stoned, filmed in Ann Arbor on a $30,000 budget, features a pothead who convinces a socially awkward classmate to exchange homework answers for weed. 

The new Hometown Summer, also filmed in Tree Town, premieres at the Michigan Theater on Thursday, May 22, at 7:30 pm. The cast and crew will appear after for a Q&A session.

In Hometown Summer, three young pals spend the warm months in Ann Arbor, and all kinds of mayhem happen when they get mixed up in a crazy business plan and indulge in all sorts of vices.

Vomastek makes no secret that his films are indebted to outrageous comedies of the past, such as Superbad and There's Something About Mary, so I asked him to discuss some movies that were direct influences on Hometown Summer.

"Each of these films carries a theme of human authenticity and realism that has inspired me as a filmmaker," Vomastek said.

In Nothing Special, Callie has been surrounded by magical artifacts and creatures her entire life, but there's nothing special about that. She knows she's not human—after all, she can see and commune with the spirits of vegetables—but beyond being part daemon on her dad's side, she hasn't a clue what else might be in her lineage. That begins to change when Callie and her boyfriend Declan embark upon a rescue mission past the town gate she had been forbidden to cross, joined by enigmatic companions including the demon prince Lasser and a dead radish named Radish.

Created by Ann Arbor artist Katie Cook and originally serialized online on the Webtoon platform, the third volume of Nothing Special is now available in a chonky print graphic novel. Cook's artwork is fresh and bright, complementing her surprising, laugh-out-loud humor. Yet some of the conflicts these characters encounter speak to heavier, darker themes. 

I spoke with Cook about Nothing Special, its inspirations, and how it compares to her work on Star Wars and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

On Sunday, July 6, two doctoral candidates and one newly minted Ph.D. from U-M’s School of Information (SI) will appear at hear.say brewing + theater, a westside Ann Arbor venue that's become a haven for improv.  

When Hana Chung, Hibby Thach, and Dr. Sylvia Darling take the stage, they won't be creating the improv—a trained troupe will be on hand, and the School of Information folks will appear as subject experts. That’s because college professors and grad students provide prompts for the improv players in a new kind of show they've dubbed Extra Credit.

On the first Sunday of each month, experts give 10-minute lectures, which are often humorous takes on serious subjects. These become the springboards for improvised sketches, and Q&As follow. While the improvs are funny, the Q&As deal with the substance of the research.

Gabriela Marcu, an SI professor, discovered an improv show at the Philadelphia Science Festival that began with talks by researchers. “I had always dreamed of making my own version,” she says.