There is a banner plane making loops over downtown Boise, as we showed up to record this episode. It says USA LOVES TRUMP. Below it, Treefort music festival is happening. This is the first of four episodes Absent Sounds made at the fest in March 2026 — a docuseries built from ten artist interviews done over five days in Idaho. Each episode weaves between voices, asking some version of the same question: what is your music trying to answer right now?
Episode one: we're sitting with Dan English, Jo Passed, and VERTTIGO. Together we move through the moral weight of crossing the border to make music during political collapse, the eight years it took Jo Passed to come back to releasing, the fifteen years it took VERTTIGO to become the band they are now, and the particular shame and relief of making something anyway. Is any of this enough? Is showing up enough?
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