ifitbeyourwill Podcast #188 • Max Subar

Chicago singer-songwriter Max Subar joins If It Be Your Will to discuss his stunning debut album, Anything Could Be, released on Merge Records. We explore the quiet power of solitude, trusting instinct over perfection, and how a frozen lakeside retreat became the foundation for an intimate, expansive record. Max reflects on collaboration, vulnerability, and embracing uncertainty, revealing how the album became both a personal transformation and the beginning of an exciting new chapter in his career. 

linktr.ee/maxsubar

Anything Could Be was recorded across ten days of solitude, but featured additional sessions with his brother Sam Subar on drums, Case Oats bandmates Spencer Tweedy (additional drums),Jason Ashworth (upright bass), and Scott Daniel (violin), as well as frequent collaborators Chet Zenor (electric guitar), Kelly Hannemann (piano), and Sarah Weddle (vibraphone, organ, and electric piano). thelineofbestfit

ifitbeyourwill Podcast #187 • Jaco Jaco

Jaco Jaco's music exists in that rare space where groove and introspection become inseparable. Formerly of the Oklahoma indie-rock band Sports, Jacob Theriot has steadily carved out a solo identity rooted in warm bass lines, psychedelic textures, and songs that wrestle with uncertainty without ever losing their sense of joy. On the heels of his new album, On the Levee, Jacob joins If It Be Your Will to talk about leaving behind the only band he'd ever known, rebuilding his life in Philadelphia, finding confidence as a vocalist, and why the meaning of his songs often reveals itself only after they're written. It's a conversation about creative reinvention, trusting instinct over certainty, and discovering that the best records aren't built on answers—they're built on curiosity.

jacoja.co

ifitbeyourwill Podcast #186 • Widemouth

Chicago's Widemouth joins the podcast to explore the friendships at the heart of their remarkable debut, No Gasoline. Mak Carnahan and Jamie Eder reflect on finding collaborators through a simple flyer, writing songs rooted in memory and community, recording with trust instead of perfection, and why the quiet moments between people often make the most enduring music. It's a thoughtful conversation about growing up, staying grounded, and building a band that feels like home.

https://bfan.link/no-gasoline-album

Ostrea Lake • Wild Flowers • 2014

Django Django • Cameos • 2026

 

"Cameos" captures themes of grief, isolation, memory and the fleeting nature of human connections present in the record. "Like a lot of the album, the lyrics are much more inward looking and about journeying through grief and how important people are only there for part of your story,” says Jim Dixon of the band and the single’s lyric writer.

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ifitbeyourwill Podcast #185 • Knife in the Water

Some records don't age—they deepen. Nearly thirty years after Knife in the Water quietly reshaped the edges of alt-country and slowcore, Aaron Blount joins ifitbeyourwill to revisit the landscapes that first inspired the band and the memories that still echo through its songs. It's a conversation about Austin before it changed, music that refuses easy categories, and the strange privilege of watching old songs find new lives in new listeners.

https://www.knifeinthewater.net/

Ada Lea • copycat • 2026

https://adalea.scfm.me/theendisawave

 

For this EP, I wanted to combine songs that were cut from when i paint my masterpiece, as well as the ones I’d recorded a million years ago when I was just a child. It was to test their fragility. How would they behave next to the other? The old and the new? The brave and the haunted? The impression and the finely sculpted. I also decided to mix three of the songs myself (was it a mistake? you tell me…I says). I’ve been thinking of the kind of artist I’d like to be, and how I’d like to see all artists treated. I am most at home when I am creating and performing, it is what I was born to do. These worlds are opposites. 12th house and 6th, 4th & 10th, the story goes on. I can imagine a future where artists are supported by UBI and they do what they want. A kind of welfare for the serious artists that are not afraid to play. It serves the betterment of society to support artists this way. I know there are others out there, like me, that feel little purpose in their life when they’re not working toward making things. But it’s also near to impossible to make things when you are fighting to protect your energy at every turn, feeling burnt out. stereogum

Utopia PKWY • I Knew You Were Trouble • 2026

"Beckmann’s latest project favors hooks and immediacy while remaining delightfully strange and somewhat damaged" 
-Magnet

"‘I Knew You Would Be Trouble’ introduces the project as something melodic and immediate, but still carrying Beckmann’s taste for warped detail and cinematic atmosphere."
-Psychedelic Baby Mag

linktr.ee/mortalprophets

Fuses • Drive It Into The Ground • 2026

Born out of a long-distance correspondence, Sweden/New York-based transatlantic duo Fuses craft songs that feel like signals sent across oceans. Their debut album ,Sawdust in the Transmission out June 26 via Having Fun Records, the rock imprint of Toronto’s We Are Busy Bodies, bridges geography and emotion with a sound steeped in 60s folk rock and classic country. Echoing the timeless jangle of The Byrds, the pastoral storytelling of Fairport Convention, and the bittersweet warmth of artists like Gram Parsons and Jason Molina, the record connects the Swedish urskog with the Canadian muskeg. Lush vocal harmonies and reverb-soaked steel guitar create a sound that is both melancholic and hopeful, timeless yet uncommon.

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Taxi Girls • Midnight Mixtape • 2026

Montreal's TAXI GIRLS arrive with Static, their debut full-length album, out June 26 on Stomp Records. If the first two singles introduced the band, Static is where the full picture develops. Across ten tracks, TAXI GIRLS pull together giant hooks, sharp songwriting, dual-vocal chemistry, and a deep appreciation for the women who made rock and roll dangerous, stylish, and impossible to ignore. There are flashes of The Runaways, Girlschool, Nikki Corvette, The No Talents, and the melodic punch of classic power pop throughout the record, but never as imitation. These songs feel less like homage and more like continuation.

 Order Taxi Girls’ Music and Merchandise

Max Subar • Anything Could Be • 2026

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On July 17, 2026, Chicago singer-songwriter Max Subar joins the Merge Records roster with his debut full-length album "Anything Could Be." Laid down on a mobile recording rig in a house on the shore of a frozen lake in Wisconsin, Max emerged after ten days of solitude with a record of neither fallow nor verdant earth, but, staggeringly, one that occupies the threshold between the two, a space that accommodates the potential for stagnation and growth: their hopes, their worries, the time it takes to arrive at an unknown destination, and the courage to accept what’s there, waiting to be realized.

ifitbeyourwill Podcast #184 • Mallory Hawk

Some debut albums arrive with the urgency of a first statement. Chinook feels different—it carries the weight of years spent listening, collaborating, and quietly becoming. On this episode, Mallory Hawk reflects on a childhood soundtracked by records and military helicopters, the winding road through New York's DIY underground, and the moment she stopped writing for everyone else and trusted her own instincts. It's a thoughtful conversation about memory, resilience, and the beautiful uncertainty that fuels great songs.

https://www.malloryhawk.art/

To produce Chinook, Hawk tapped like-mindedly omnivorous musician Sam Acchione (Alex G, Jessica Lea Mayfield), whom she’d befriended during her tenure in Customer. The two often spent hours trading liner notes minutiae, resulting in a collaboration that weaves songwriting idiosyncrasies with two lifetimes of radio scholarship. Hawk joined Acchione in Philadelphia to track at storied Headroom Studios (Hop Along, Algernon Cadwallader). There, she contributed tons of layers to Chinook—bass, drum machine, organ, rhythm and lead guitars—while Acchione encouraged unexpected overdubs like flugelhorn and djembe.