In The Recap this month- big sculptures, murals, portraits, music, and more art. Check it out here and subscribe!
Jan 062026
Jan 052026
Alex G- Afterlife
This song is from Alex G‘s 2025 album, Headlights.
On Saturday, 1/10/26, he will be one of the artists playing at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for Artists for Aid‘s benefit concert. All proceeds from this show will support the Sudanese American Physicians Association and the Palestine children’s relief fund equally.
Dec 312025
Every year I put together a list of my choices for the best songs released this year. These are songs I went back to repeatedly, even while checking out other artists for the monthly playlists.
The playlist includes some familiar favorites like Big Thief, Panda Bear, Ty Segall, and Open Mike Eagle. Older bands like Swervedriver made the list, along with younger artists like up-and-coming New Orleans rapper La Reezy. This time around jazz fusion also made an appearance with a song by Thundercat, and one from British band GoGo Penguin featuring Daudi Matsiko.
2025 was an intense year for many people. Depression and anxiety are topics in the lyrics of several of the songs. But there is also plenty of joy in this playlist too, or at least, making the best of it when you can. I hope you will check it out and make some new discoveries!
Dec 302025
Wet Leg- catch these fists
Every month I listen to the majority of bands and musicians who are playing in Los Angeles and select some for a monthly playlist. It includes a variety of genres and usually newer work by the artist.
The song above is from UK band Wet Leg‘s 2025 album, moisturizer.
Below are December’s selections-
Dec 292025
Automatic- Black Box
This song is from LA band Automatic‘s 2025 album, Is It Now?.
On Sunday, 1/4/26, they will be part of a lineup of bands playing at The Regent Theater in Los Angeles for LA Fights Back- a benefit concert for CHIRLA.
Dec 242025
The Ronettes- Sleigh Ride
This song by The Ronettes is from the classic 1963 holiday album- A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector.
Dec 232025
Jordan Patterson- Racecar
Every month I listen to the majority of bands and musicians who are playing in Los Angeles and select some for a monthly playlist. It includes a variety of genres and usually newer work by the artist.
The song above is by Jordan Patterson, from her 2025 debut album, The Hermit.
Below are November’s selections-
Dec 152025
Electric Guest- Stand Back For You
This song is from LA-based band Electric Guest‘s 2025 album, 10K.
They are currently on tour and playing The Regent in Los Angeles on Thursday, 12/18/25, with Snacktime.
Dec 102025
Alim Smith, “Floating” and “Thought A New Dress Would Make it Better”, 2025, Oil on canvas
Paintings by Alim Smith
Taylor Gordon, “To Be A Black Woman”, 2023, Oil on canvas
Taylor Gordon, “Dear Tay”, 2023, Oil on canvas with cardboard
Manuel Ramos, “Abuela Gorin”, 2025, Oil on canvas
Manuel Ramos, “Abuela Olga”, 2025, Oil on canvas
Currently on view at John William Gallery in Wilmington is Colorful Voices: Taylor Gordon, Alim Smith, Manuel Ramos, featuring unique paintings by the three Delaware artists.
From the gallery about the exhibition-
Colorful Voices: Taylor Gordon, Alim Smith, Manuel Ramos brings together three distinctive practices that articulate the richness of contemporary community life through color, portraiture, and cultural reference. The exhibition seeks to foreground the vitality of local voices while offering a space in which viewers might consider how identity, humor, and heritage are translated into visual form.
Taylor Gordon’s paintings situate themselves within the lineage of Black contemporary art, yet remain deeply personal. Her chromatic sensibility infuses each figure with layered emotional resonance, encouraging conversations around beauty, resilience, and the multiplicity of Black experience beyond reductive narratives. Manuel Ramos, or “RAmos ART,” approaches portraiture with a keen attentiveness to light and surface, imbuing his sitters with an understated dignity that resonates quietly yet powerfully. Emerging from a self-taught practice shaped during the pandemic, his canvases record moments of presence that hover between the intimate and universal. Alim Smith, or “Yesterday Nite,” works in a spontaneous visual language, fusing surrealism, popular culture, and sly humor. His rhythmic compositions and vivid palette translate music, memory, and cultural archetypes into forms at once playful and incisive.
Together these artists propose color as more than visual pleasure: it becomes a conduit for empathy, critique, and joy. Colorful Voices invites us to engage with works that are celebratory yet searching, attuned to both the textures of daily life and the broader currents shaping our communities. In gathering their practices, the exhibition hopes to affirm art’s capacity to nurture dialogue and to render visible the stories that animate shared experience.
This exhibition is on view until 12/18/25.
Alim Smith’s work may look familiar- he created work for the television series Atlanta and the cover art for Mac Miller‘s second posthumous album, Balloonerism, released earlier this year. Miller reached out to him in 2018, after finding his work on Instagram. Smith was recently nominated for a Grammy award for “Best Recording Package” for this album.
Mac Miller’s “Balloonerism” cover art by Alim Smith
Dec 082025
Fime- Better Half of a Dollar
This song is from LA band Fime‘s recently released second album, Just Can’t Win. The album was produced by Melina Duterte aka Jay Som.
The band is part of a great lineup of bands playing at The Echo in Los Angeles on Sunday, 12/14/25, for No Ear Buds Fest. Also on the ticket- Prince Daddy & The Hyena, JER, yungatita, Bones Shredder, Glass Generation, Soft Blue Shimmer, and Hudson Freeman.