ifitbeyourwill Podcast

A wide-ranging conversation with Michael Feuerstack that traces the arc from Snail House bedroom recordings to a decades-long solo practice shaped by collaboration and quiet persistence. He reflects on how songs emerge—sometimes as fragments, sometimes as loops you can’t shake—and what it means to stay open enough to follow them. Moving through Montréal’s indie community and his own shifting identity as an artist, the episode lands on a simple throughline: make the work, finish it, and put it...

More than a decade into Common Holly, Brigitte Naggar still writes the way she did as a teenager — quietly, in her bedroom, not quite ready to let anyone hear. On this episode, Chris sits down with the Montreal songwriter to talk about Anything Glass (June 2025) and its companion EP They Will Draw Halos Around Our Heads (February), two records that feel like siblings. Brigitte talks about going back to the piano for the first time since she was a kid, letting poems turn into songs without for...

Bristol's The New Cut have built their grungy, clunky, twangy world from the outside in — and frontman Henry Gerrard wouldn't have it any other way. On this episode, he sits down with ifitbeyourwill to trace the band's DNA: OCD, social anxiety, and the particular relief of finding your people in a room full of outsiders. They dig into the new EP, the strange paradox of performing your most vulnerable self to strangers, and why their live show hits hardest when there's nothing left to prove. S...

Episode 168 — Jay Hammond brings Trippers & Askers to the show from Durham, North Carolina, ahead of his May 2026 album Tried to Do's — a record about grief, healing, and what it means to put things back together. Drawing from indie folk, jazz, and experimental textures, Hammond's sound resists easy categorization. We talk growing up in Jackson, Tennessee, finding his songwriting footing in his early twenties, and why music remains his most honest outlet. East Coast tour dates and a handf...

The Flip Phones write songs like they're in no hurry to impress you—and that's exactly the point. On this episode, the married duo breaks down Spinning Adrift, an EP that trades algorithmic urgency for melodica hum and earned harmonies. They talk craft: how classical instincts and Britpop muscle share the same arrangement, why the best lyric sometimes waits years to finish itself, and what it means to close a record on its darkest, most necessary note. Send us Fan Mail Support the show linktr...

A packed car pointed west, and a travel-size instrument wedged between sleeping bags—this is how records get made when life is crowded and the need to create won’t wait. We sit down with Brian Russ of Hand Gestures to trace the long arc behind a self-titled album that sounds lived-in, melodic, and unforced. Russ maps a route from college shows in Philadelphia to AmeriCorps on Pine Ridge, then into Brooklyn’s warehouse-show ecosystem, where CMJ weekends blurred into community and bands kept ea...

A name can work like a north star. Jason P. Woodbury and the Nightbird Singing Quartet points straight toward songs built for company—melody-first, ensemble-minded, rooted in the desert but restless for elsewhere. We sit with Woodbury to trace the long arc from church songleading and clarinet rehearsals to record-store immersion, music journalism, and a self-titled album that wears its influences lightly and its confidence quietly. He talks about the records that calibrated his ear at Zia Rec...

Snow hushes the streets; songs do the same to the head. We open on a coast-to-coast weather check and drift into a story that starts in Philly basements and only really clicks once Emily Yacina loosens her grip. Confidence, she says, was something the scene lent her early on—small rooms, big hearts. Most songs still arrive as a fragment: a phrase, a melodic flicker. Writing becomes a place to set feelings down when there’s nowhere else to put them. There’s a pivot here—from hardline DIY to le...

HighSchool formed during Melbourne’s lockdowns, making songs fast and with intention. In this episode, they talk about starting with images and mood before melody, recording wherever they could, and keeping tempos high so the songs stayed sharp and emotional. We get into how Lily’s shift from drums to synth helped shape the band’s sound, why restraint matters more than polish, and how Sony Ericsson came together in a single day after nearly being dropped. From writing in London to releasing a...

From a shy kid singing Christina Aguilera behind a bedroom door to teaching voice at Concordia, Alexandra Levy the power behind Ada Lea has lived every side of finding your sound. In this episode, she talks tendonitis, creative do-overs, and the three-day songwriting challenge that sparked When I Paint My Masterpiece. We dig into mentorship, Montreal roots, and the art of building a music career you can actually live with. If you’ve ever felt late, stuck, or told you’re “not a singer,” this o...

Dream pop isn’t about turning everything down — it’s about tuning everything in. That’s the pulse of our talk with Mirrorball, the Los Angeles duo behind those lush, cinematic songs that somehow still feel like they’re whispering right to you. From the first late-night demo to a surprise label release, their story drifts through noisy beginnings, an obsession with sound, and the quiet confidence that comes with learning when not to play. We get into how they write: Scott starts with grooves, ...

A deluxe release hits different when the songs feel like they’ve been kicking around in the dirt for years. On release day for Tear Your Heart Out (Deluxe), we sat down with villagerrr to walk the long, crooked road behind it—a story that starts in a small town, rattles through a red Pontiac Sunfire, and settles into the stubborn, hand-built joy of figuring out recording alone. Mark Scott talks about how long runs in cold air, odd hours cutting concrete, and a phone overloaded with gritty voi...

A Canadian indie original walks into a Berlin studio and comes out with a record that swaps pews for pulse without losing its soul. We sit down with Joel Gibb of The Hidden Cameras to explore Bronto—how it was written across years and cities, why new instruments still spark his best songs, and what it takes to reinvent a beloved project without erasing its DNA. From the first gallery shows and that infamous “tones and drones of gay folk church music” tag to a slow-build electropop finale that...