Pomplamoose

Simple usually wins. That’s what made Tetris work, and it’s why Pomplamoose stuck with me the second I found them on YouTube. Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn from California just sit there with a piano and guitar doing covers—Beyoncé, Nat King Cole, Simon and Garfunkel—and somewhere along the way the whole internet discovered them. No production, no layers, no image. Just the two of them playing.

Nataly’s voice is the thing. It’s not trying to do anything. There’s a sweetness there that doesn’t feel calculated, doesn’t have that fake-intimacy thing where you’re supposed to believe she’s singing to you personally. She’s just singing. Jack plays like he means it. The whole thing moves because they actually know how to play, and they picked songs that matter instead of whatever was trending that week.

I bought their album. I’ve watched the covers maybe too many times. There’s something about watching someone be genuinely good at something without any of the noise around it—no brand, no story, no aesthetic strategy—that makes you feel less insane about everything else. It’s a palate cleanser, I guess. When everything in pop music is screaming for attention, a duo on YouTube playing instruments sounds like relief.

Jack Conte unsettles me a little, honestly. I don’t know what it is. But that’s beside the point. The point is they’re good and simple things usually are.