Chasing Fridays: EsDeeKid, KMRU, ideasforconversations Q&A, more

Alright, this week I do have one thing to plug at the top. My podcast Endless Scroll, which I co-host with my four wonderful friends Eric Bennett, Miranda Reinert, Michael Brooks, and Grace Robins-Somerville, is back! We were on hiatus for the first couple months of this year, and I haven't been a regular host on the show for basically a full year now, as I was taking time off to work on my book. But now Endless Scroll has returned and we have new episodes coming at ya every week, and a longform bonus ep in our Patreon every month. Go listen wherever you get your podcasts.

And now for this week's newsletter. As I mentioned in the previous couple editions of Chasing Fridays, I've been hard at work putting the finishing touches on my forthcoming shoegaze book, and will continue to be in grind mode up through the remainder of the spring. In the meantime, I probably won't be consuming as much new music as I usually do, so the format of this newsletter might shift a little bit in the interim. This week, I'm trying out a new approach where I decided to write about whatever I was listening to over the last week, regardless of how new it was. I explain my process a little more down below, but it was a fun break from the usual format and I think readers will enjoy the slightly more casual voice.

Of course, I still have a Chasing Down Q&A for all my paid subscribers, and this week's features the Brooklyn electro-dance-emo duo ideasforconversatoins, who put out an EP last month that I simply cannot stop listening to. It was a great interview with some funny musicians who clearly don't give a fuck about projecting a "professional" image in their media engagements, which made it a fun one for me to read back. They're not a big band yet, but that's why you're reading Chasing Sundays: to stay six months ahead of the zeitgeist.

What I've actually been listening to lately

A lot of times I write about stuff in this newsletter that I find interesting or have something to say about but don't actually listen to all that frequently. A spoiler alert about my listening habits is that I don't actually listen to anything all that frequently. Largely due to the nature of my job, and also because I feel compelled to always be moving forward in my lifelong quest to hear everything that piques my interest, I don't linger on releases for very long. Sure, I have my all-time faves that I return to regularly, and there're always 10-20 albums in a given year that haunt my rotation for weeks or months on end. But typically, I engage with something for about a week or so, write about it here or for another outlet, talk about it on my podcast, and then move on.

But in between all that stuff I consume for work, I'm listening to stuff that I typically don't bother writing about for this site. Either because it doesn't feel relevant or because I don't know what to say about it. This week, I continued plugging away at my forthcoming book and didn't really make time to listen to any brand new releases. I wasn't sure what I was going to write about for this newsletter, and then I decided that I'd make a concerted effort to log what I actually found myself reaching for during car rides, while reading, while walking, and when I'm sitting at my desk staring at a Google Doc trying to come up with something intelligent to say. Below, are some brief thoughts on some music, both new and old, that's soundtracked my life during times when I'm "off the clock," I.E. when I'm listening to something without the express intent of writing about it....except now I'm writing about it.

KMRU - Kin

This is probably the 2026 album I've listened to the most this year. I listen to a fuck-ton of ambient and down-tempo electronic music when I'm reading and writing, and this record is great because it provides total psychic obliteration through granular, pictorial drones. Fennesz has a guest feature on the second track, "Blurred," which I didn't even notice for weeks until my friend Devon pointed it out. That's because I'm never looking at the track titles or even really considering when songs end or begin when I'm listening to Kin. I put this album on for total immersion, to drown out the road noise outside my apartment and soak my ears in sooty, salty waves of glacial ambience. I love Fennesz and this fits right into that pocket of moody, melancholy, yet ultimately hopeful and restorative distortion-based dronery. The 20-minute closer "By Absence" is tremendous and I feel a pang of sadness in my chest every time it ends.

Canaan Amber - CA

I was in a bagel shop last month when I heard a song coming over the speakers that sounded a lot like Duster, but not like any Duster song I'd ever heard. I quickly yanked my phone out and Shazam'd what ended up being "Days Rewinding," a solo track by Duster co-founder Canaan Amber that was originally released on a five-song EP in 2012. A few years back, Numero reissued CA as a full-length with a bunch of bonus tracks added on, and I'll be scooping up the vinyl the next time I have $15 bucks to spare.

It's crazy that I've heard so many of the Duster side projects but never this, which departs from the smudgy, galactic yearnings Amber is known for and lands in this twangy, breezy, stoned-on-the-beach surf-psych zone that I find utterly enchanting. I love the band Pure X, particularly their early 2010s fare, and these instrumental tracks – especially "Days Rewinding" and "Runaway" – are the closest I've ever heard someone sound to Pure X's desert-daze genius. Valium Aggelein remains my favorite Duster side hustle, but this is a close second.

Rio Da Yung OG - F.L.I.N.T (Feeling Like I'm Not Through)

The 2025 album I'm most embarrassed to have slept on is Rio Da Yung OG's F.L.I.N.T. (Feeling Like I'm Not Through). As a child of the Lil Wayne era, I'll always have a soft spot for punchline raps, and Rio Da Yung OG delivers an hour's worth of snort-inducing non-sequiturs that somehow remain funny, exhilarating, and surprising the whole way through. No hooks, no radio ploys, just bars and that one damn flow that Rio rides over 20 different Michigan-style beats that only get better, harder, and stickier as the album goes on.

What I love about this record is that you can pick any one song and know exactly what Rio sounds like, but you can only truly appreciate the record's gut-busting humor once you've soaked in songs like "Different Music" and "Another Story," where the potty-mouthed Rio sobers up and gets genuinely vulnerable about the horrible shit he's seen on the streets, the tears he cried in prison, and the memories that haunt him. The buddy comedy back-and-forths with Rmc Mike and YN Jay are so much more joyful when put in context of the larger, more nuanced story Rio tells with this record.

03 Greedo - "Twisting the Lens"

I posted on my IG story the other day that 03 Greedo will forever be one of my favorite vocalists. I intentionally chose the word "vocalist" instead of "rapper," because although Greedo is an incredibly dexterous rapper, I'm always amazed by the shapes he's able to contort his voice into when he's singing through auto-tune. In "Twisting the Lens," he latches onto the titular phrase and bleats the words so many times over that they lose all textual meaning and instead become a sort of inane mantra. Each time he exhales "twisting the lens on my camera, " the line takes a different form, as Greedo alternately draws out "cameraaaa" or condenses it to a curt, two-syllable "camra." In the verses his nasally squeals are so smothered in auto-tune that his lines are practically unintelligible, his words slipping and slurring like tennis shoes on an oily kitchen floor. And yet, he always stays standing.

EsDeeKid - Rebel

EsDeeKid is probably someone I would've written about outside the confines of this exercise, given he's one of the trendiest up-and-coming rappers in the world right now. But I'm including him here because I've mostly been rinsing his 2025 debut when I just need something that's going to sound cool and enervating when I'm driving around the block. His lyrics aren't particularly imaginative and his flow gets one-dimensional after a while, but when he's on, he's on.

My favorite track on Rebel is "Mist," a deeper cut featuring the project's resident guest Rico Ace where EsDeeKid boasts about having "long black hair like an emo" and putting five racks worth of cash "on me wrist." His scouse accent is what makes even his most ordinary flexes sound delightfully peculiar, and on "Mist," the Wraith9 beat makes me want to stand up while I'm gripping the wheel, carve a sunroof into my Corolla, and bob my head up and down like a gopher. Give it a listen and you'll see what I mean.

Chasing Down

Mollie Gilbertson and Emmerson Fossett
of
ideasforconversations

Their name is a mouthful and I misspell it almost every time I type it out, but that hasn't stopped me from listening to ideasforconversations ad nauseum over the last couple weeks. I was first made aware of them on the three-way split they did last year with Holidays in United States and Branching Out, which are two second-wave-style emo bands. ideasforconversations aren't that kind of emo band. The best way I can describe their addictive new EP, No Bad Words, is Dan Deacon for the age of The Hellp. Some of their songs are instrumental dance tunes that sound straight out of 2007, while others, such as my favorite track, "Needle," are perfect pop tunes sung with an amateur shakiness that only elevates the feeling of what they're singing about. I'm pretty much obsessed.

For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked ideasforconversations about the origin of their name, their proximity to emo, the music on No Bad Words, where they fit in the Brooklyn scene, and much more. Read the full interview below.