Andrew Bird is an internationally acclaimed, Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, whistler, and songwriter who picked up his first violin at the age of four and spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear. Since beginning his recording career in 1997, Bird has released 17 albums and performed extensively across the globe. He has recorded with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, appeared as “Dr. Stringz” on Jack’s Big Music Show, and headlined concerts at Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and festivals worldwide.

Bird performed as the Whistling Caruso in Disney’s The Muppets movie, scored the FX series Baskets, and collaborated with inventor Ian Schneller on Sonic Arboretum, an installation that exhibited at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Boston’s ICA, and the MCA Chicago. Bird has been a featured TED Talks presenter, a New Yorker Festival guest, and an op-ed contributor for the New York Times.

More recently, Bird released a series of site-specific improvisational short films and recordings called Echolocations, recorded in remote and acoustically interesting spaces: a Utah canyon, an abandoned seaside bunker, the middle of the Los Angeles River, and a reverberant stone-covered aqueduct in Lisbon. Additionally, Bird hosts an ongoing series of live-streamed performances called Live from the Great Room, putting the creative process on display for fans as he collaborates and converses with friends in a candid, intimate setting.

Shortly after receiving his 2020 Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album, with My Finest Work Yet, Andrew Bird made his professional acting debut in the cast of Fargo’s fourth installment, which concluded on FX in November 2020 and is currently streaming via Hulu. In June 2022, Bird released his latest album, Inside Problems, on Loma Vista Recordings.

Calexico’s Joey Burns and John Convertino return in 2022 with their luminous 10th studio album, El Mirador; a hopeful, kaleidoscopic beacon of rock, bluesy ruminations and Latin American sounds, to be released on April 8. Convening at longtime bandmate Sergio Mendoza’s home studio in Tucson, Arizona, the ensemble recorded throughout the summer of 2021, crafting one of their most riveting and whimsical productions to date. Convertino, who now resides in El Paso, and Burns, who relocated to Boise in 2020, channeled cherished memories of Southwestern landscapes and joyful barrio melting pots into an evocative love letter to the desert borderlands that nourished them for over 20 years.

“El Mirador is dedicated to family, friends and community,” says Burns; singer, multi-instrumentalist and co-founder of Calexico. “The pandemic highlighted all the ways we need each other, and music happens to be my way of building bridges and encouraging inclusiveness and positivity. That comes along with sadness and melancholy, but music sparks change and movement.”

Oscillating between haunting desert noirs and buoyant jolts of cumbia and Cuban son, the album is permeated by longing. The title track conjures images of a lighthouse, beckoning to lost souls in the night with hypnotic bass lines and cascading percussion. That same search for meaning and safety carries over onto “Cumbia Peninsula,” a soaring dance floor epic about confronting our fear of the unknown. The song weaves themes of immigration, a world in turmoil, and the virulent manipulation of information; never offering a diagnosis but wholeheartedly advocating for unity and compassion as a treatment for our social ills.

“El Mirador” features gossamer vocals from Guatemalan singer-songwriter Gaby Moreno, while Spanish rocker Jairo Zavala brings his signature bravado to “Cumbia Peninsula.” By working with friends and recurring collaborators, Calexico also highlights the unique social and linguistic intersections at the US-Mexico border and the magnificent possibilities of a borderless world. “The album is trying to convey openness,” adds Burns. “Look around you. If you’re in the North, you need a South to live in balance. We’re all breathing together.”

“There is romance in this music,” says Convertino, Calexico’s drummer and fellow co-founder. “When I was driving out to Tucson to work with Sergio and Joey, I didn’t have any specific song ideas in mind. I was searching for a vibe and a mood.” The instrumental “Turquoise” perfectly captures El Mirador’s atmospheric universe, where swirling rhythm guitars and distant horns recall dark, heavy skies, almost echoing the record-setting monsoon season that engulfed Arizona during their studio sessions.

Burns and Convertino have been performing together for over 30 years, sharing a deep love of jazz and usually building songs on a foundation of bass and drums. But all these years later, Calexico is still breaking new ground. El Mirador showcases a sunnier side of the band, cutting through two years of pandemic fog with a blast of danceable optimism. Writing and recording alongside Sergio Mendoza (keys, accordion, percussion), the album expands on long running influences of cumbia, mariachi and the plethora of diaspora sounds flourishing throughout the Southwest.

“I’ve been playing with Calexico for about 15 years, and I admire Joey and John’s constant search for new sounds,” reflects Mendoza, who’s newly built home studio became a refuge for the band and reduced pandemic risks while fostering a more organic creative process. “After so many albums,” he adds, “I’m really proud we were able to achieve something so fresh together.”

Mendoza was born and raised in Nogales, where he soaked up the classic cumbias, rancheras and corridos that soundtrack daily life at the border. This rich melange of influences translates into the effervescent “The El Burro Song,” complete with mariachi strings, slide guitars and zapateado performance that transports the listener to a papel picado-decorated backyard party. On “Liberada,” piano and Cuban percussion provide an exuberant canvas for a universal tale of resilience, where even in the face of adversity, celebrating your uncle’s 80th birthday always comes first.

Calexico delivers one of their most loving desert anthems on “Cumbia del Polvo,” enlisting a production assist from frequent collaborator Camilo Lara, who infuses the song with his signature wizardry of electronic beats, organic instrumentation and otherworldly backing vocals. El Mirador‘s all-star guest list is rounded out by poet Pieta Brown, who wrote “El Paso” and “Then You Might See,” as well as Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam, who provides backing vocals on the fluttering choruses of “Harness The Wind.”

El Mirador stands both as a lookout point and beacon in the dark; an opportunity to search inwards, ponder our connections to the Earth and its people, and hopefully illuminate a path forward. After decades on the road Calexico’s music remains boundless and romantic, still gazing upon the horizon in search of their next adventure.

2014 was the year The Handsome Family (aka husband and wife Brett and Rennie Sparks) became visible to millions. It was the year the TV show True Detective used her song, “Far From Any Road” as its opening theme. YouTube counts for The Handsome Family’s ‘hit’ song climbed from two million to ten million, twenty million and more. The song was in the top 10 in US and UK Spotify charts and spent months in iTunes top 100 in countries as far-flung as Vietnam, South Africa, and the Ukraine.

For almost as long as they’ve been married (26 years) Brett and Rennie have written songs together (Brett, music; Rennie, words). Their finished work is never fully one or the other’s, but lives in unseen space between them. William Burroughs claimed he walked busy streets without being seen simply by seeing everyone else first. This is similar to the Sparks’ approach to songwriting and why Rennie embraces her power to vanish. You have to willingly disappear in order to write lyrics for someone else’s voice or to write music for someone else’s words. Invisible songwriters are happiest when their songs outshine them, leaving their creators unseen in the dust.

The Sparks have released 10 albums since 1995’s Odessa. Their songs have been covered by countless YouTubers and well-known artists like Jeff Tweedy, Amanda Palmer, Christy Moore, Cerys Matthews and Andrew Bird (who released an entire record of HF covers). Guns ’N Roses used, “Far From Any Road” as stage entrance music for a South American tour and both Bruce Springsteen and Ringo Starr are fans. Decades into their careers, after winning the TV theme-show jackpot— the Sparks still find their greatest reward in disappearing into new songs.

The Sparks’ music is steeped in the western gothic of New Mexico life. The unseen is powerful here. Nothing rusts, but entire oceans have disappeared. Ski masks mean robberies, but in the slow dive of the sun enormous bugs awaken in thorny yards and unseen sirens and coyotes cry out to the purple sky. Just about anywhere you stand there’s been some blood drawn.

In 2016, The Handsome Family continue to sell out venues worldwide that they couldn’t have filled before TV fame. Live, Brett (guitar/vocals) and Rennie (banjo/bass/ vocals) are joined by drummer Jason Toth (worldwide) and multi-instrumentalist Alex MacMahon (USA). Their shows are full of humor and chit-chat. The Sparks aren’t afraid to reveal their ordinary humanness. The invisible couple is also very happy to be seen.