Absent Sounds Archive

We are hours away from the last day of summer. Outside, the cicadas are dying, but they seem to have taken up a new home racketing around inside my brain. Dealing with clogged ear canals and a surge of internal tinnitus has made me feel that my universe will never truly be quiet. On this episode of Absent Sounds, we explore how Josaleigh manages to capture that external noise, machines, and physical distance to speak with a deep vulnerability. Together, we go track-by-track through If I Let It Quiet by the Salt Lake City native. The record is a testament to collaborating across massive distance after their production partner, Jordan Watko (Crowd Shy), relocated to Japan. We talk creating otherworldly "third spaces," reimagining friendship, and studio accidents that morph into core meanings across the album. Full transcript available here.

With a voice as sweet as a cherry and jagged layers of guitar ruptures that could pick you up and throw you across a room, Cherry Pick finds us in the incessant unravellings of anxious thoughts, disappointment, and the muddiness of it all. When it comes to artists pushing the scene forward on the west coast, it's hard to miss Cherry Pick. Cherry Pick is a Vancouver based grungy shimmering project of Cherry. In our interview we talk about protecting your peace, conflict, shroom trips, life, love, and death.Catch Cherry Pick again in Toronto for the Second Summer Festival! Full transcript available here!

Today's episode finds us mid-brunch, mid-tour with youbet — Nick Llobet and Micah Prussack, joined by Jolie Gordon and Adam Berkowitz — walking through their self-titled record from top to bottom. It's been a whirlwind year for the band, so we dive into how it reshaped and untangled them while writing the record, living "Undefined," and the riff they stole from a cut track to close the whole thing out.Catch Youbet again in Toronto for the Second Summer Festival!~~~> Sept 24 @ Drake Underground. Full transcript available here!

Jed Arbour is a force to be reckoned with. We caught them in Calgary during Sled Island, a day after they played a set concussed — bucked in the face by their neighbour's horse, yet soaking in the magic from their favourite festival of the year. Jed talks about their work as a therapist and what it means to walk toward pain instead of around it, moving to an unincorporated hamlet in BC, the naming of Disappointing Dog Park, a stolen clarinet that has turned into a kind of medicine for their concussion (give it to the horn!), and the unreleased album they wrote from two years on the frontline of Calgary's opioid crisis.Listen live on Met Radio (Toronto) and CJAM 99.1 FM (Windsor/Detroit). Full transcript through our website here!

Today on Absent Sounds we're talking to Salami Rose Joe Louis — the project of Lindsay Olsen — at Sled Island, playing through her 2025 record, Lorings. If you know her earlier work, Lorings might catch you off guard compared to her previous albums built on elaborate concepts and world-building, Lorings strips it all back into something closer, quieter, journal-like between the middle of a couple of years through a hard stretch, and back again. We talk through the little moments of creative chaos, collaboration and instinct that craft Lorings into the beautiful world that it is. Listen live on Met Radio (Toronto) and CJAM 99.1 FM (Windsor/Detroit). Full transcript through our website here!

We caught up with SamWoy — the project of Juno-winning musician and producer Sam Woywitka (Half Moon Run, Patrick Watson, Teke Teke, Luca Fogale) — at Sled Island in Calgary, where he was in town for two sets — one at Dandy Brewing, one at midnight at the Legion — off the back of his sophomore album, Even Sad Boys Like To Have Fun. SamWoy is an enigma, that became more layered with each minute spent unravveling. We talked about chaos as a way of life, the strange grief of looking at your past self, a debt collector rap battle, and what it means to actually believe in the thing you've given your life to. Full episode transcript available here ! Listen live on Met Radio (Toronto) and CJAM 99.1FM (Windsor/Detroit)

In today's episode of Absent Sounds, we sit down with jc, the brain behind the beast that is friends&, to talk through folx. It's the 2026 record from the Toronto collective sprawling 112-tracks, and eight years in the making. We get into the terminally-online roots of the project, the genre term "laptop twee," what it means to let a track live it's full absurdity, the file-management discipline it takes to survive a record with this many discarded versions a cappella and all. Full episode transcript available here ! Listen live on Met Radio (Toronto) and CJAM 99.1FM (Windsor/Detroit)

Greg Mendez's Beauty Land circles back to the same place again and again: forgiveness, offered and asked for, like a practice. This week on Absent Sounds, we sat down with Greg on the grass outside of the Sound Garage to talk about being a friend, the strange comfort of graveyards and hospitals, the difference between loving someone and loving them selfishly, and what tricks are still left to pull before the candle goes out. Full episode transcript available here ! Listen live on Met Radio (Toronto) and CJAM 99.1FM (Windsor/Detroit)

It has been a long time coming for Hikes to release new music. In every way, Winnower finds them stripped down to the truest version of themselves — built around the folk practice of separating grain from chaff. It's a record that lives in a meditative space where questions of belonging, of place, and of vulnerability slowly come into focus. This week, Nay and Chris of Hikes walk us through Winnower track by track, and talk about how their time away transformed not just their sound, but the way they hold the work altogether. Find the full episode transcript here!