PEOPLE Collective Launches Website With Tons Of New Music From Justin Vernon, The Dessner Brothers, & More
PEOPLE is an artist collective where Justin Vernon and the Dessner brothers serve as the ringleaders. There’s a festival component, which takes place in Berlin this August and will feature over 150 artists performing and collaborating together. And there’s a new website, which was just launched with a ton of new music that you can listen to right now.
“We are a steadily growing group of artists, freely creating and sharing our work with each other and everyone,” a statement on their website reads. “We call it PEOPLE. It was born of a wish to establish an independent and nurturing space in which to make work (generally around music) that is collaborative, spontaneous and expressive in nature and where all unnecessary distractions or obstacles that get in the way are removed.”
The website features a database of new and unreleased music. It features songs and contributions from the likes of Vernon, the Dessners, Nico Muhly, Poliça, Francis Starlite, and many more.
There’s a new EP from Big Red Machine — Vernon and Aaron Dessner’s project together — that features four songs with contributions from Phoebe Bridgers, Richard Reed Parry, Lisa Hannigan, and more.
There’s another EP from a project called Red Bird Hollow, which is Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s collection of songs recorded in backstages and hotel rooms on tour.
There are instrumental sketches recorded by the National after and during the writing sessions for pretty much all of their albums.
There’s recorded versions of Long Count, the song cycle collaboration from the Dessners and visual artist Matthew Ritchie that was performed in 2009 but never recorded.
There’s a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Memories” featuring Sufjan Stevens, the Dessners, Matt Berninger, Thomas Bartlett, and more that was recorded as a wedding gift for Bryce Dessner and his wife Pauline in 2016.
There’s a lot from Justin Vernon, including an unfinished song called “Wicker,” an untitled demo, and a one-off project called 3:14 Boys that Vernon made in 2017 with a bunch of people. There’s also a rambling talk from Vernon titled Thoughts On People 1 recorded in May 2018 about the act of creation, the press process, and much more.
There’s a lot more, too! Most releases come with some short description of what it is and photos showing its creation behind-the-scenes.
Check everything out here.