When "Just Like Me" begins playing, the room gets colder because of the song's emotional impact. Before you understand it, you have already felt it.

You can feel El Drifte's presence before he gets into the venue. The room shifts as soon as he enters with his coat and the outside cold comes in and after the door closes, the cold is gone and there is warmth again.

In the "before" you have hot Texas days. Days that are ordinary and stretched out in thin wispy small minutes on the clock; Days with a guitar resting on the wall in a position of authority, like some old man glaring down at you.

Just like many other major characters in literature, the heroine of Ava Valianti's song "Hot Mess" enters the story via an admission rather than through violence.

The songs by Chloe Hawes have always been about someone trying to make sense of all the chaos from partying hard, being out too much living in crappy places, and dealing with the mental anguish they have experienced while growing up in a dysfunctional household.

As the band walks through the door they approach the warmth and comfort of analogue tape. Initially a slow and slightly staticy buildup, but eventually there’s a sudden explosion of energy in the room.

Alex Riddle's writing style continues to be characterized by a sense of urgency that restricts his emotional processing and creative expression; however, with the release of Evelyn's first single, Grace - Act One, he has been liberated from this limitation.

While the latest single from Clinton Belcher, "Save Me From Myself," doesn't have a very distinct lyrical quality to it, you can certainly feel the weight of the song before actually hearing any of the lyrics.

Mardi Gras has never come across as a band that intends to fit in the marketplace. They have always chosen to play by their own rules: beer-stained rehearsal spaces, concrete floors, and the familiar moan of static in the monitors—a legacy defined by grit, not shine.

The latest single from Amelina titled "A New Year Wish" scintillates brilliantly and buzzes with the same holiday static we have all heard before, that space between hope and fear, silently live fireworks and the silence just before they go off.

There is a special type of silence that sets in after you have been let down — the static fizz that trails after we decide to put the project to rest but you haven't quite decided what to do yet. That is where CATSINGTON was born.

There is a certain charm in the off-kilter concoction that is Reptile Tile; the Virginia Beach collective often even feels more like a fever dream in motion than a traditional band.

Dancing On A String arrives like a flare in a fog — The Bateleurs pulling a thread until something honest snaps. It’s the kind of single that smells of beer and cigarette ash, of backstage static and concrete floors.

There is something raw and quietly cinematic about Less. The artist born in Naples has a knack for taking life's static — the noise, the ache, the ash of growing up — and folding it into sound.

Bill Barlow’s world has a cinematic feel, a realm of concrete sky and lights in a bar and conversations happening at unnecessarily late hours that barely leave a static residue.

In American rock, there is a pulse that never really goes away — a heartbeat made of static, steel strings, and smells of beer and concrete.