We’re just releasing our June mixtape and, with it, a new look—we like the old one, but it was starting to feel a little stale. Evolve or die, mixtapes!

This month features new work from Australia’s DD Dumbo; a new track from our favorite Canadians, Braids (who we interviewed at month’s start); a catchy glitch-rock from Philly’s Son Step; beautifully jangly pop from NYC’s Sunflower Bean; an undeniable anthem from LA’s own Gothic Tropic (shout-out to Cornbread on drums); some really nice white boy R+B from newcomer Tuskha (solo electronic project of Phil from Raleigh’s Bowerbirds); a sample-heavy track from the duo Lewis Del Mar outta the Rockaways;  a brand new track from Beth Orton that takes her in a great direction; Icelandic electronic pop from the trio Samaris; and, as always, a lot more.

Check it out + enjoy.

Last week, a good friend sent through an email to Katie + myself with the subject line: i thought this was really cool….

The ‘this’ was a video which she instructed us to start from minute mark 11:26. We did so, and were totally blown away.

The video is that of a masterclass for music students hosted by none other than Pharrell Williams. Organized by The Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Pharrell listens to students’ projects, offers constructive criticism, and discusses the nature of the creative process.

No disrespect in skipping the group + song the first half of the video focuses on (they’re called CAFUNÉ and we’re actually featuring them on the coming monthly mixtape), but the second half is simply awesome—the song being discussed (by Maggie Rogers), Maggie’s set-up and explanation of it, and, maybe most of all, Pharrell’s reaction to it once he hears it.

I’ll say no more—watch + listen below.

And if you know what’s good for you, follow Rogers on Facebook and/or SoundCloud. I cannily assume she’ll soon be one of our favorite artists.

Also, how cool is Pharrell?

Thanks to Kristen for sending this through to us. Photo by Katia Temkin.

Yesterday, like many others, we woke up heartbroken.

By now, all of us know of the tragedy that transpired yesterday—a man made the decision to drive an hour and 45 minutes to a prominent gay club in Orlando on Pride Weekend to kill as many people as he could. He sadly accomplished that task.

Even writing about this I feel conflicted, giving more exposure and voice to this far-too-widespread, vitriolic hatred of The Other that exists in the world today, especially in our own, very flawed country.

Yet I feel that I can’t write anything today without talking about this tragedy.

And so I’ll simply write this:

From what we know now—and, granted, that may well change any second now—the suspect’s father told reporters that his son was angry after seeing two men kissing.

Fine.

Be angry. Whether I condone your anger or not, anyone out there is welcome to be angry at two men, two women, a man and a woman, a black man and a white woman, who-the-fuck-ever doing what-the-fuck-ever together. Be-the-fuck-angry.

Just don’t gun us down. Just don’t end 50 lives or 20 lives or one life because you don’t like what’s going on—because it’s not what you believe in.

Those are lives.

Lives.

Not voiced differences of opinion—lifetimes of voiced differences of opinion, lifetimes of progress and lack-of-progress and who-the-fuck-cares because we’re not the judges of how people live their lives and never should be, so long as they don’t walk into a building and gun down scores of people they never knew and likely never would have killed—never—if they had taken the time and had the courage to stop and talk with any one of them.

I know stricter gun laws would help by making it harder for people to kill other people, but at the end of the day, I just wish we all had better ways to deal with anger and disagreement and lack of understanding each other than this.

We’re out of words; we just hurt.

Please, peace.

Happy fucking birthday to Katie.

Vegan chocolate cake with chocolate icing and filled with vanilla icing and homemade cherry jam by Clara’s Cakes, who’ll be at Vegan Beer Fest next weekend. Word on the street is she’ll have mac-and-cheese waffles again and peanut butter cannolis.

One artist who didn’t make the cut for the coming June mixtape is newcomer Kino Kimino.

These mixes are almost as much about the flow and gestalt as they are about the worth of individual songs and, whereas we really love the debut full-length from NYC’s Kino Kimino (AKA Kim Talon), the tracks that make up the album are so stand-out-noticeable and unlike anything else we’ve heard of late, it was akin to entering a lion in a cat show.

So, instead, we’re featuring a stream of the album, Bait is for Sissies, out now on Wavve’s Ghost Ramp label.

Kino’s on tour overseas now and coming stateside for more shows in late June, but no dates for any west coast shows have been announced as of yet. She told us via Instagram she’s hard at work to make that happen soon though. We can only imagine her live show’s pretty stellar.

Enjoy.

Again, we’re making some much-needed additions to our design portfolio of late, most recently with the work we did for literacy non-profit First Book and their visual take on an annual report, their 2014 Impact Report.

The report takes a wealth of facts, figures, and concepts and translates them into 39 pages of data visualizations and illustrations we did to help communicate the work of First Book and the quantifiable impact it’s had on their audience—kids and communities in need.

You can see more of the report in our portfolio; we’ve got a link to the full PDF there too.

Just a heads-up that we recently got a whole new batch of shirts made as part of our Kindness Collection, which we’d announced last fall. Animal-friendly, worker-friendly, and earth-friendly, the shirts are made of sustainable materials here in LA (some out of recycled bottles) at fair-wage factories and then printed at a local shop not far from our studio.

You can see them all at MooShoes LA or the original MooShoes in NYC and online at mooshoes.com. And plans for more soon.

Given the abundance of Bernie signs I’ve seen, the door-hanger I just came home to, and the impressive push Sanders’ campaign and volunteers for it have been making on the ground here in California (see text to the right), I have to say that I am cautiously optimistic about his chances to take our fair state tomorrow. All that despite the NY Times alert I literally received as I was typing this that Hilary now has enough delegates to be considered the presumptive nominee.

Obviously, vote your conscience, but the main thing is to get out and vote—the more people  voting, the better the system works…and the more likely Bernie is to get in the White House.

As the volunteer reminded me today, turnout is going to be YUGE! So fingers crossed!

Let’s hope 2016 ends up being the year we remember for electing a Democratic Socialist to the highest office in the land, not the year we lost all of our cultural icons.

Below, “Black Superman (Muhammed Ali)” recorded in 1975 by Johnny Wakelin.

We’re doing some much-needed, wildly overdue updating of our online design portfolio in the next few weeks.

First up, the new lookbooks for MooShoes‘ house brand of vegan, ethically made shoes, Novacas.

For this most recent book, we got a batch of samples from the factories in Portugal and did a few shoots to give some real world feel to these publications, which, at their simplest, can often come across as dry or flat.

You can see more of this book and past ones on the portfolio side of the site, where you can also download the full PDF.