Christmas music, it's everywhere this time of year and the holiday season would not feel quite the same without it. In this episode, John talks about why Christmas music matters.

This week's episode features student and musician, Ale Crevier. Ale talks about her song, "Fern," and the inspiration behind it.

Kicking off our new season of Calvin Popcast, John talks with MSDO Program Coordinator, Martin Avila, on hip hop and the Netflix original series, The Get Down.

This episode includes insights from musician Adia Victoria involving her work with the blues and Black Lives Matter, featuring "South", "Dead Eyes", and "Seas Of Sand." In light of Dialogue magazine's upcoming release, our next segment includes a conversation between student Patrick Jonker and editor of Dialogue, Jack Van Allsburg, about the latest issue. Featured songs from last fall's mixtape include "The Gray Somewhere" by Monty.e , "No Need For That" by Ben Cooper, and "Again (This Is A Dream)" by Cotter Koopman. Our last segment includes a conversation between student Daniel Hickey and student senior Johnson Cochran, who has just released his first album, Rice Cakes For the Unsettled this spring. Johnson speaks of his experience with music as well as the work of his album. Songs include "Country Rock Purgatory", "Idolatrous Biologists", "Ohio Psychos", and " Lane Boy."

Our third episode features discussions on the Mountain Goats, Gallant, and Adia Victoria; while Kendra attempts convincing Patrick why he should go see Noah Gunderson.

Featured songs:

This Year - The Mountain Goats

No Children - The Mountain Goats

Woke Up New - The Mountain Goats

Up the Wolves - The Mountain Goats

Weight in Gold - Gallant

Blue Bucket of Gold - Gallant, Sufjan Stevens

Dead Eyes - Adia Victoria

David - Noah Gunderson

This next episode includes an interview with Joel Gustafson about The Lone Bellow band, a discussion about why music matters, as well as excerpts from a conversation with Ben Rector after his recent performance here at Calvin.

In our first episode we discuss our recent concert with the band Oh Wonder, interview SAO Director Ken Heffner about his first live music experience, and preview our upcoming show with the UK band Daughter.