Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Andrew Feinberg. Andrew is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist whose coverage of the White House, Capitol Hill, and other political venues and matters of import has appeared in The Independent, Newsweek, Breakfast Media, and Politico Magazine. Follow him on Twitter at @AndrewFeinberg.

Is this your celebrated summer? You might not think so given the state of the world in 2020, but Political Beats is here to convince you that it still could become true if you immerse yourself in the music of one of America’s most fearlessly inventive, creative, and critically adored indie bands, Hüsker Dü! (Don’t let the exotic-sounding name throw you off: These were three Minneapolis-St. Paul kids naming themselves after a Scandinavian board game from the 1970s.) The Hüskers — Bob Mould (guitars, vocals, songwriting), Grant Hart (drums, vocals, rival songwriting), and Greg Norton (bass, peerless mustache) — emerged from the MSP-area D.I.Y. punk scene to first become the most fearsome hardcore band on the planet, and then swiftly developed into one of the most ambitious and melodic groups of the entire 1980s. From their early years as punk neophytes to their era as the world’s most intensely ear-shredding hardcore band to their creative zenith to their legendarily bitter collapse and break-up, the Hüskers blazed a path through rock music that remains unique to this day, and left behind some of the finest music of the decade. Searingly personal, buoyantly poppy and melodic, skin-rippingly hardcore . . . and often all three of these things simultaneously: Join us on a journey beyond the threshold as we (most likely) introduce you to the work of Hüsker Dü (and also quite a bit of solo Bob Mould).