Live music to soothe the soul

Thu Apr 02 2026

Something I think about a lot is how the internet is changing our relationship to each other and culture. Often, I feel a sense of despair about how the internet is becoming increasingly hostile. I've read a couple of indie bloggers post about feeling similarly and how the Indie Web is returning some of the joy they formerly experienced when using the internet.

There are a few kinds of media on the internet that still sparks joy for me. These include podcasts (I've linked to a few of my favourites on my links page (opens new window)) and long-form articles (like on Longreads (opens new window)), amongst other things.

Recently though, I rediscovered a joy in finding music I like on YouTube, especially live music. It started with this beautiful live performance by Hermanos Gutiérrez a few weeks ago:

Then, came up a performance by the ever popular, Jacob Collier, my personal style icon and someone who recently came to perform in South Africa at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. It felt like a big moment for South Africa to host him. I loved what he said in this interview (opens new window) with Texx and the City (opens new window) when he was here:

The mother land of all of music is Africa.

The following performance of his hit differently than his usual home-made (opens new window) style videos:

Recently, one of the first bands I first heard about via YouTube back in around 2012, namely Mumford & Sons, did a cosy-vibes performance on Tiny Desk:

I was an acoustic guitar player back in high school, so it was my dream to play like Marcus Mumford in their old song, Little Lion Head (opens new window).

The commenters in the Mumford & Sons Tiny Desk performance pointed me to Caamp's Tiny Desk performance — (not an AI-generated em-dash) which turned out to be beautiful in and of itself:

Bonus rec

If there's one man who can make soul-soothing indie folk music and who has a cool name too, it's Gregory Alan Isakov: