Identity and self-empowerment imbued with fast punk-tempos and ferocious guitars: it’s “Zeros & Ones,” the brand new single from Detroit-based singer-songwriter Jon Mikal-Bartee, who leads the long-running genre-defying-yet-rock-adjacent project know as The Idiot Kids. That song is officially out this Friday, but WDET listeners got a sneak preview this week during MI Local.

Bartee joined me in studio to talk about the inspiration for the new single and why the conversation it strives to inspire around/about gender binarism was specifically planned for the start of Pride Month. Bartee also revealed that the band is in a period of transition; it’s been in existence for more than 12 years and inevitably band members’ lives change or new responsibilities crop up, thus Bartee is moving forward with writing and recording (he actually mixed the group’s 2nd full-length album, 2023’s Chapels, by himself).

You can see the Idiot Kids perform live, with a round up of talented local musicians backing up Bartee, including this Saturday over in Kalamazoo at Bell’s Brewery — for their Pride After Party — and then closer to home, at the Lager House in Detroit on Friday, June 20, with SeaHag.

Bartee co-founded the group in the early 2010s with high school friends, Nick and Ryan, drawing on a blend of punk, glam, and seminal rock ‘n’ roll, with a focus on cathartic crescendos, intricate solos, and high-energy live performances.

In late 2023, the Idiot Kids performed live, on-air, right here in WDET Studios. Along with “Zeros & Ones,” Bartee performed the title track from “Chapels” live, right here in-studio with me during this week’s MI Local, and we also re-spun one of the Idiot Kids live recordings from 2023, which you can find here.

Another highlight, this week, was the song “California” by the Ethan Marc Band, from that group’s debut album, “Bad Days,” which is out this week, with vinyl sales benefiting mental health nonprofit Common Ground. That fundraising intention is deepened by the lyrics of the Detroit-based singer-songwriter, Ethan Marc, with his candid reflections on his own battle with mental health and how making music helped him find clarity, strength and hope-threaded, as you’ll hear, over a rich mixture of indie-rock and pop influences. The Ethan Marc Band perform an album release party for “Bad Days“ on July 11 at El Club; you can also see them next Saturday, June 14, at Motor City Sound Board.

This week also featured exclusive premieres of local indie-rock groups like Ricochet the Kid, with a summer ballad titled “June.” The dynamic sister-duo of Jackamo also released new music, a poignant Americana-folk ballad titled “Second Best.”

As always, we get a rundown of can’t-miss shows happening around the region, in tandem with further premieres of new local music, including hip-hop artist Jah Connery, who you can catch next Saturday at Trixie’s in Hamtramck. 

Connery, aka Joshua Davis, released a new album this week titled “The Delicate Art of Love.” This week’s playlist also featured songs from Chirp (performing at Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti next Friday), Sonic Smut (performing at Outer Limits Lounge this Friday), and Ladyship Warship, who just released a brand new single ahead of their upcoming show at the Lager House, this Saturday.

See the playlist below and listen to the episode on-demand for two weeks after it airs using the media player above.

MI Local Playlist for June 3, 2025

• “June” – Ricochet The Kid
• “Second Best” – Jackamo
• “Renalien” – Grief
• “California” – Ethan Marc Band
• “Potters Wheel” – Ananda Murari
• “Tapiola II: Lord of the Forest” – Elyvilon
• “Clams” – Jah Connery ft. Pseudo Slang
• “Move” – Chirp
• “Mark the spot” – Ladyship Warship
• “Earache My Eye” – Sonic Smut
• “Zeros & Ones” – The Idiot Kids
• “Chapels” – Jon-Mikal Bartee (live on MI Local)
• “Nothing” – The Idiot Kids (live in WDET Studios, 2023)

If you seek a pleasant peninsula — look about you! But also, if you’re seeking out sensational singer-songwriters, then just stream the latest episode of MI Local, because there’s several new releases out this week by solo musicians and band leaders that you can catch live in the weeks ahead, including a stellar showcase coming up at Detroit House of Music.

But first: Neu Blume! The Detroit-based group is led by Mo Neuharth and Colson Miller, and this week they’re releasing their new full-length album, Let It Win. The duo are typically perceived as hovering near-and-around the genre terrain of Americana and alt-folk, but often leaning into an exploratory compositional style with melody-driven songs, coated with warmth and brandishing unvarnished lyrics that are varyingly poignant, provocative, or conjuring some ponderous fever dream. See them live this Saturday night at UFO Bar with singer-songwriter Conor Lynch and alt-country indie-rockers Bonny Doon.

We also had, as mentioned, quite a few songwriters on display this week, including my favorite song by Detroit-based folk balladeer Libby DeCamp, who you can see live on Sunday evening at the Detroit House of Music for the ongoing showcase series known as “Queens of the Song Age,” curated by Marbrisa and featuring WDET favorites like Audra Kubat.

Meanwhile, out in Ann Arbor, you can catch indie-neo-soul/blues-rock hybridist Phillip-Michael Scales at The Ark on Thursday, June 5 as he promotes his new album, Good to Be Here.

While these aren’t brand-new songs, I was excited to feature recently-released tracks by solo folk singer-songwriters like Kora Feder, who recently released a full-length album titled Some Kind of Truth, and also the mystic-ethereal stylings of singer/musician/artist Tess Clark, who performs on Saturday at Turnstiles, over in her home town of Grand Rapids.

Also, Bluhm and Same Eyes, two of my favorites in the new-new-wave/electro-pop realm, both had new singles out this week, and they paired together perfectly in the mix!

One other new release of note is the recording project out of Ann Arbor known as Suburbo, from singer-songwriter Michael Burbo, who collaborated with Fred Thomas of Saturday Looks Good To Me, tapping in to, once again, some of those alt-country vibes. We start the show with the song “Showmanshipwrecked,” from Suburbo’s new album, Braving the Musktrat.

See the playlist below and listen to the episode on-demand for two weeks after it airs using the media player above.

MI Local Playlist for May 27, 2025

• “Showmanshipwrecked” — Suburbo
• “Punched Out Luck” — Strange Witch
• “High Beams” — The Lasso
• “Low Light” — Bluhm
• “Those Around You” — Same Eyes
• “Something Bout You” — Phillip-Michael Scales
• “You Wanna Beat Him Up?” — Dear Darkness
• “Moon Water” — Angel Of Mars
• “Mitsubishi” — Neu Blume
• “You, Like Sunshine” — Tess Clark
• “Torch” — Libby DeCamp
• “Elementary Queen” — Kora Feder
• “Gestalt” — Nigel & the Dropout
• “In The Early Morning (feat. Lily Nyooni)” — Ancient Language

One of the top reasons to tune in to MI Local every Tuesday is the live energy! Sometimes even I, as the host, can’t be totally sure what might happen!

This week, for example, I was contacted by an esteemed Ypsilanti-based singer-songwriter, Kylee Phillips, who has been featured on WDET recently for her last album, “The Good Parts,” — turns out Phillips has a new song, “Devil I Know,” dropping on Friday paired up with a music video and, naturally, MI Local listeners were treated to an exclusive sneak-preview listen, finding the heretofore folk-associated songwriter leaning into a heavier, ballady indie-rock vibe.

I rearranged the playlist in time for more brand new music from local artists, including a single from the Pontiac-based brother duo, Pancho Villa’s Skull, with Tino and Ronaldo Ybarra bringing their Mariachi-punk energy with “Resistiré Existiré” — which the brothers said was “all about being unapologetically YOU in a world that wants to weed out any sort of otherness.”

We also looked ahead to the upcoming Movement Electronic Music Festival happening in Hart Plaza this holiday weekend, with tracks from producers/musicians like Whodat and Ladymonix (the latter is set to perform with WDET’s own Waajeed). Full schedule.

Along with Movement, we listened to artists who have upcoming shows around the region, like Ypsi-based experimental indie-pop group Kind of Animal, and the prog-rock super group Troy Gregory & the Mercury Gauntlett!

The feature of the night was a visit from the Grand Rapids-based indie-rock/alt-pop quintet Phabies. The group was formed by multi-disciplinary artist Laura Hobson, who has continually brought a vibrant, painterly-sensibility to her songwriting, blending moody and dynamic folk sensibilities with emphatic, serotonin-surging pop balladry. Hobson has been writing, recording and performing with her ensemble since 2018, featuring Garrett Stier, Joshua Holicki, and Max McKinnon, along with newest member Andrew Deters.

Remarkably, and charmingly, despite the rain and construction, both Hobson and Stier drove all the way into Detroit from Grand Rapids to visit WDET Studios for an interview and an exclusive premiere of a song from their forthcoming album, “The Curse of Caring” — which comes out June 13. We were able to give listeners a preview of a new single which is officially out next Tuesday, May 27: “I Care For You.”

As you can see, Hobson brought along a Polaroid camera! While in the studio with me, Hobson and Stier performed a pared-back acoustic version of their song “Green Cement,” yet another unreleased track from “The Curse of Caring.” This forthcoming album is their second full-length release, following 2022’s “Fire Seed,” along with several singles and EPs.

Stay for the music, but listen close for the quirky, almost Moth-esque mini-story-slam that Hobson delivers to explain the origins behind their name: Phabies!

See the playlist below and listen to the episode on-demand for two weeks after it airs using the media player above.

MI Local Playlist for May 20, 2025

• “Devil I Know” – Kylee Phillips
• “it’s the weekend” – Kind of Animal
• “Eat the Plants” – Ideeyah & Meftah
• “Temperature” – Isacc Burgess
• “Resistiré Existiré” – Pancho Villa’s Skull
• “Good Mourning” – Whodat
• “High Notes” – Ladymonix
• “Mindchime” – R. Solomon
• “Our Laundry Day” – Troy Gregory
• “Stargazer” – Obsrvr
• “I Care For You” – Phabies
• “Green Cement” (live in WDET Studios) – Phabies
• “The Bloodletting” – Phabies

Singer-songwriter Ryan Allen has never stopped, literally. The metro Detroit-based multi-instrumentalist has never stopped writing, recording and performing.

Even when his primary band, Extra Arms, is on hiatus, he’s at it again with a new solo album that drops this weekend, capped off by a show at Bowlero Lanes Lounge on Friday. Allen and I go way back; we were both scrappy music journalists in our early 20’s when we first met — albeit even back then it was something more of a side-hustle, but I digress…

You can hear Allen and I not only talk about the broad subject of nostalgia, but also hear us drill down on how it informs and inspires the music we love and the music we write! Allen’s new album, “Livin’ On a Prayer on the Edge,” taps into that singular exhilaration we all felt as teenagers when we were discovering the music that would come to define us, while also ruminating on the way music can sweetly sculpt our memories of those formative days.

I am a nostalgic person,” Allen said, “as much as I wish sometimes that i wasn’t. But I’m not someone who wishes it was like the old days…”

As mentioned during the interview, there’s an underlying theme of enduring, that prevails throughout the album, and what better to endure than timeless music?

“Like Teenage Fanclub and those other ’90s bands like Matthew Sweet records, which all had that kinda jangly, open chord, big sounding poppy rock sound, that was what I really was drawn to as a teenager,” he said. “Just something about that warm blanket of distortion and melody — that is that sweet spot for me musically. And [“Livin’ On a Prayer on the Edge“] definitely is an homage to all of that stuff!”

While Allen was hanging out with me in-studio, he also performed an acoustic version of “When I’m Gone,” off his new album!

Along with Allen’s interview, I also premiered lots of new local music — particularly leaning in to indie-rock vibes with Zastava‘s “Truth,” a lead single from their forthcoming album; and Gloomco, with ‘Wake Up,’ the second single from their forthcoming release, “Nothing Left to Say.”

Another local group with an album out this weekend is the dream-pop/shoegaze ensemble Origami Phase. I premiered a new song from their EP “Ostara,” which has its release party this Friday at Small’s in Hamtramck.

But wait, there’s more! We also heard from Ann Arbor folk/Americana/jazz singer-songwriter Jess Merritt, who has an album release show this Sunday at The Ark.

Another reliable facet of MI Local is that you’ll hear from artists based all around the state of Michigan, including The Charlie Millard Band, who came out of the “northern” part of the “lower” peninsula — they have a new album out soon titled Pilot Boy, and we heard their new single, “Wedding Bells.”

See the playlist below and listen to the episode on-demand for two weeks after it airs using the media player above.

MI Local Playlist for May 13, 2025

• “Wake Up” – Gloomco
• “Fake Lives” – The Messenger Birds
• “Wedding Bells” – Charlie Millard Band
• “Lakeside” – Jess Merritt
• “Complicate Me” – Outrageous Cherry
• “Truth” – Zastava
• “I’m Team Edward” – drive safe!
• “Lilith” – Origami Phase
• “Sober” – sock jock
• “I Should (But I Don’t Really Wanna)” – Ryan Allen
• “When I’m Gone” – Ryan Allen (live in WDET Studios)
• “So What Who Cares” – Ryan Allen

We love having local musicians hang out in-studio during MI Local, and this week I have to appreciate how Elisabeth Pixley-Fink made the late-evening drive in from her homebase of Ann Arbor so that we could talk about her new album, “Heartskin.”

Pixley-Fink is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, band leader and poetic lyricist who, on her latest album, has woven together a particularly scintillating swath of guitar riffs and cathartic phrasings that taps into seminal riot grrrl energy, mixed with ballads that dynamically soften the sonic terrain with poignant lyrics sung in versatile vocal ranges that draw inspiration from queer Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, which we discuss during our live on-air interview!

Next Friday, May 16, at the Outer Limits Lounge, Pixley-Fink performs for an album release show that also features Kalamazoo-based indie-rockers The Go Rounds. Speaking of Kalamazoo, that’s actually Pixley-Fink’s original hometown; she’s been touring in, around, and outside of the state of Michigan over the last decade, and released her first recorded music back in 2012.

Pixley-Fink said “Heartskin” has been in the works for eight years.

“The process of making an album is the process of learning something,” she said. “So I took a long time writing the songs on ‘Heartskin’ and getting them to a place I wanted. Meanwhile, I have a day-job I work to support myself, and I think that’s an important part of myself as an artist: it’s cramming art into my daily life — having it be part of every day.”

Regarding the inspiration for the album, Pixley-Fink said she came across a collection by the late poet/playwright while she was living in Mexico City.

“I fell in love with (Lorca) as an artist,” Pixley-Fink said, “and felt a connection through time as a kindred spirit. There’s a poem called ‘Corezon Nuevo,’ that says ‘…my heart is like a serpent that has shed its skin / I hold it in my hands / heartskin of honey and wounds…'”

Just before we played Pixley-Fink’s title track song live on the air, she said “…it was the last song I recorded for the album and it just summed up the whole point of it — of looking at the beauty and the pain and the gooey goodness and the wounds, and I’m singing about all of that on the record.”

Speaking even further on the sense of “shedding,” Pixley-Fink posited that it ties in to a sense of recovery, “…of going through a lot and making sense of it — making sense of your part in it and accepting yourself, accepting all parts of yourself and not through someone else’s eyes.”

Among many other facets of the record, including a touching track titled “The Coffee Is Cold,” we also touched upon how many talented collaborators — all of them Michigan artists — contributed to the making of “Heartskin.” Even that, Pixley-Fink said, tied into a sense of shedding, perhaps “any protectiveness” that she may have felt, about the nature of opening up to collaboration, and the rewarding results that were rendered because of it.

Read back to a previous feature, when WDET premiered the music video for Elisabeth Pixley-Fink’s “Fearless & the Pure.”

Per usual, MI Local strives to deliver a sonic tour of the state, and this week we took listeners over to Grand Rapids to hear the latest from indie-rockers Low Phase, with their new single, “Reason,” which will lead into a forthcoming full-length album later in the summer. We also heard new music coming out of Kalamazoo, with songwriter (and librarian) Jay Alan Kay, delivering an EP of stripped-down acoustic ballads regaling nostalgia that’s endearingly tied to professional wrestling. Kay has a show this Thursday night at the Pyramid Scheme in Grand Rapids. Speaking of live shows, you can see indie-art-punk singer-songwriter Henry Walters live at Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti this Friday — we heard a new song by Walters titled “Don’t Care.”

Another big premiere, this week, featured a new-ish Detroit-based indie-pop trio, Pretty Island, featuring Linda Ann Jordan, Lauren Milia, and Dina Bankole, each talented and harmonious singers and respectively songwriters who initially joined together a year go to flesh out solo songs by Jordan.

See the playlist below and listen to the episode on-demand for two weeks after it airs using the media player above.

MI Local Playlist for May 6, 2025

• Reason – Low Phase
• Country Girl – Greet Death
• Put Me Over – Jay Alan Kay
• Don’t Care – Henry Walters
• Wild Child – Pretty Island
• Remnants – Lester
• 400 Horses – Death By Lions
• Stupid Luck – Addicus
• Get Back Up – TY
• What Were We Thinking – Tyvek
• Heartskin – Elisabeth Pixley-Fink
• Coffee is Cold – Elisabeth Pixley-Fink
• Those Were The Days – Elisabeth Pixley-Fink

Singer-songwriter Valerie Salerno started her ambient noise-rock/alt-country solo project — Dick Texas — about five years ago, building up to this Spring’s release of her debut full length LP “All That Fall“ (on Fred Thomas’ LifeLike Records). Salerno visited WDET Studios to talk about the new album and her upcoming show at Third Man Records next Saturday, May 10, with Winged Wheel.

Prior to Dick Texas, Salerno was in the Grand Rapids-based alt/noise-rock group Sojii (which recorded its debut album with the late Steve Albini). Salerno started Dick Texas when she moved to Detroit in 2019.

“Catharsis is in almost everything that I make,” Salerno said, remarking upon one of the most distinctive qualities of “All That Fall” — which involves reverb-splashed guitars that go from resonant twangs into purposefully dissonant crescendos. “And that’s what draws me to a lot of the music that I like. I think in this project — and especially what comes out on this album — my biggest goal as an artist is to just write better and better songs…and I think a lot of that came out in my guitar playing.”

“All That Fall” certainly has some elements of alt-country-conjuring twang to it, and a proclivity toward some grittier textures, but I’m hooked by these primal and honestly satisfyingly abrasive circuitous guitar phrases that singe the edges of each composition. Most of all, the album attains its radiance from the subtle yet spellbinding lead vocals of Salerno, weaving gracefully through those stormy guitars.

Put succinctly, Salerno said: “I do like exploring the extremes of dynamics…”

But we also asked about how these songs, in the best way, seem to take their time — following slowed tempos that stretch tracks into the six-minute mark. “I have low blood pressure” Salerno said, following with a self-aware chuckle. “And I think that slow…it’s a good experience to explore. And if you listen to my old band, Sojii, it was hard and fast and intense, and I think that was a big energy to my early 20s. And, now, I think life in the last few years, I dunno, this slow universe has been really nice…”

Salerno was joined in studio by band member, multi-instrumentalist/audio-engineer Adis Kaltak, who added more anecdotal exposition about the recording process, particularly the vocals for a track we listened to, “Flies,” from “All That Fall.” Stream it for the full interview.

Along with an interview with Salerno, we premiered a lot of new music by local artists this week (as we often do, on MI Local). We started the show with the brand new single from Grand Rapids-based indie-pop ensemble Phabies, along with the Detroit-based alt-country duo Neu Blume, who have a release party coming up on May 31 with Bonny Doon and Conor Lynch at UFO Bar.

Speaking of new releases, we heard the latest from indie-rock/power-pop auteur Ryan Allen, who has an album release party coming up on May 16 at Bowlero Lanes Lounge, and the four-piece ’70s-tinged psych-rock band The Dusty Rose Gang also premiered a song on this week’s show — they have an album that’s also out on May 16 titled “A One from Day One.”

And that’s not all! We heard a new industrial-leaning goth-shoegaze soundscape from Stormfeldt, the latest dream-pop ballad from the duo known as Bluhm, and an indie-rock cut from the band My Time In The Arctic who — like so many other locals of late — have a new album out in the world!

See the playlist below and listen to the episode on-demand for two weeks after it airs using the media player above.

MI Local Playlist for April 29, 2025

• “Bloodletting” – Phabies
• “Cold Strange” – Neu Blume
• “Preybirds” – Rabbitology
• “Take It Back” – Jake LeMond
• “When You Come Over” – Bluhm
• “Eastern Palace Identity Crisis” – My Time in the Arctic
• “Lost in a Daze” – Ryan Allen
• “Low Animal” – Stormfeldt
• “Person of Light” – The Dusty Rose Gang
• “Flies” – Dick Texas
• “Long Dirt Driveway” – Dick Texas

Singer-songwriter Carmel Liburdi joined me in the studio this week during MI Local to talk about her busy Spring, full of upcoming live performances, Tarot and more!

Liburdi is a crafty wordsmith with a knack for dynamics and vocal inflection, along with a sensibility for uniquely toe-tapping alt-indie-folk arrangements; she’s been writing, recording and performing around the local scene for more than a decade (she got started in high school!) and has released several albums since then, including last year’s “Linwood.”

But Liburdi, like so many creative residents of metro Detroit, is a multifaceted artist who works in more than one medium; she’s also an artist, particularly in illustration and graphic design, and she’s one of 22 artists featured in an upcoming group show inspired by the mystical divination of Tarot!

The House of Tarot is an immersive art installation featuring the work of 22 artists, each offering a unique representation of one of the 22 Major Arcana Tarot cards.​​ The opening reception is this Friday night, beginning at 5:25 p.m., hosted at Building 7 within the Herman Kiefer Complex, featuring the recently opened Container Globe performance space. Visitors to the House of Tarot will receive a reading upon arrival and set off on a unique Fool’s Journey through the works, from room to room across four floors. It is an invitation for reflection, disorientation and reorientation.​ The formal art reception wraps up by 8:30 p.m., but live music will proceed throughout the night until at least midnight.

I was also joined by Tim Price, who’s been around and passionately involved in the Detroit art and music scene for decades. He’s currently working with a number of organizations, like Passenger Recovery in Hamtramck, and the Detroit Music Conservancy. Price described his role in The House of Tarot as one of wearing many hats, but predominantly fitting under the banner of production manager and “guy behind the scenes.” Both Price and Liburdi shared a lot about what to anticipate at The House of Tarot this Friday; find more info here.

Another treat during this week’s show was Liburdi’s live in-studio performance of “Hell’s Bathroom Floor,” which, as you’ll hear during our interview, has a connection to Tarot.

I also premiered brand new music from Detroit-based four-piece punk-rock group FEN FEN, from their upcoming full-length vinyl LP “In Yer Sights,” but that energy was mixed with the softer folk vibes of other premieres from local artists like folk singer Anthony Retka!

I also gave a spotlight to two big local music events happening this weekend, including the Detroit X Detroit showcase at the Loving Touch in Ferndale, where local bands perform cover sets of any artist that came from Detroit, be they contemporary, or past legends!

It’s going to be a busy weekend! Have fun out there!

See the playlist below and listen to the episode on-demand for two weeks after it airs using the media player above.

MI Local Playlist for April 21, 2025

• “Shellshockt” – FEN FEN
• “Seeing Double” – C.A.D. & the Peacetime Consumers
• “Cool Guy Walk” – meek
• “scry” – Fling II
• “Something” – Vaega
• “MasonJars” – The Vig Arcadia
• “Realities” – James Simonson & Blair French
• “Disappearing Things” – The Codgers
• “Grateful” – Anthony Retka
• “First Day of Spring” – Carmel Liburdi
• “Hell’s Bathroom Floor” – Carmel Liburdi
• “Ceti Alpha Six” – Disc System