Every month or so, I sit down with Cam Dawson of Newedge and Matt Zeigler of Sunpointe and Perscient, and we just record an hour of us talking as if the camera wasn’t on. Mostly we talk about markets. We also tend to talk a lot about music — before, during and after pressing record.
You can read the official ETF.com version over at … ETF.com, but here’s the same big ideas more as a musical vibe than market intel:
“We’re in this environment where something that’s like a fake ceasefire or not a real ceasefire feels like a relief because we’ve been so conditioned to expecting much worse news.”
— Matt Zeigler
🎶 “Trickle Down“ — Sprints (Spotify)
A fake ceasefire headline or a 90-day tariff pause isn’t good news. It’s just less bad news, and after months of being conditioned to expect worse, “less bad” is enough to send everything ripping higher. The bar is underground.
Dublin post-punkers Sprints may hit the nail a little too much on the head with their teardown of trickle-down economics and empty sentiment. Their Sub Pop debut is three minutes of fury about being told to stay patient while systems fail in slow motion — housing, climate, costs, all of it. Patience is not a strategy when the jukebox is broken.
“The third time it happens on a weekend, we’ve got to start saying somebody is front running oil. At some point we have to say this is no longer a rational market. This is a gamed market.”
— Dave Nadig
🎶 “Liar’s Tale” — Kneecap (Spotify)
At some point you have to stop calling it “smart money” and start calling it what it is: Crime. The pattern is too clean, the timing too precise, and the regulatory response too completely absent to pretend giant anonymous prediction market and oil winners are a coincidence.
So forgive me for leaning on highly-caustic Kneecap (Belfastian angryboys who rap in Irish and English). You can hate their politics, but they got charged in the UK with Terrorism for flying the wrong flag at a show. Given the state of things I’m feeling pretty OK standing on a few planks like “you shouldn’t throw people in jail for a flag” and “financial fraud is a crime” and “victimless crimes rarely are.”
“You can make a very strong argument that this economy has never been more leveraged to the fate of the S&P 500 than at any other time in history.”
— Cameron Dawson
🎶 “Flood the Zone” — Sleaford Mods ft. Liam Bailey (Spotify)
The implication isn’t subtle: the U.S. as a system can’t take an extended bear market anymore. The economy and the S&P are the same trade. It’s one giant THING — market and economy.
Sleaford Mods are a super acquired taste, but their latest, The Demise of Planet X, is actually LESS angry than a normal Mods album. “Flood the Zone” borrows its name from the Steve Bannon playbook: overwhelm the system with so much noise that nobody can tell what’s real. Here’s what AI suggested I should put here while checking for typos and links: AI SLOP: “Flooding the zone isn’t just a media strategy. It’s monetary policy.” Thanks Claude, I got this.
“I think that as time goes on, you should effectively have a decay curve of what the peak valuation should be. If the peak valuation six months ago was 28 times forward, think six months forward that should be 27 or 26 times, because every six months you’re getting closer and closer to the end of the cycle.”
— Cameron Dawson
🎶 “What’s Right” — RatBoys (Spotify)
At the end of the day, it’s always about valuations, and Cam’s point here is a good one: if 28 is the right PE now, what is it next year? Even if semiconductor earnings are still accelerating, the “right price” should be declining — because every quarter that passes brings you closer to the end of this cycle. Time itself is a valuation headwind. “Time is actually your foe, because you just get closer and closer to the end and further and further away from the beginning.” Banger
Ratboys are from Chicago and I think of them as kind of “MillenialCore.” Really just a classic indie-rock 4-piece with a great vocalist asking the same question: how the heck do you know what the “right” answer is? Don’t sleep on Ratboys 2026 album in it’s entirety: Singin’ to an Empty Chair. It’s diverse and fantastic.
“The digital world is actually far more physical than we thought... Are we in episode 3 of Revenge of the Real World? And does this suggest that we are going to have a prolonged upcycle in more physical parts of the economy?”
— Cameron Dawson
🎶 “Cruise Ship Designer” — Dry Cleaning (Spotify)
Every AI chip requires rare earths, water, electricity, and a fabrication facility that costs $20 billion and takes four years to build. The digital world runs on atoms. And a LOT of copper. The break between “real” and “digital” is getting bigger, and we’re going to see the real world side — all the STUFF — become more important than it has been in decades.
Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw is nearly as much an acquired taste as Sleaford Mods. On “Cruise Ship Designer” from Secret Love, they wrestle with this balance of real and fake. “I make sure there are hidden messages in my work,” she says, as if the only way to justify building something tangible is to smuggle meaning into it. Are we facing the same real/virtual dichotomy with AI right now, where we'll be smuggling Art into the Artifice every chance we can?
“It’s very difficult to say that the economy of the United States is growing if we are not hiring any new people. That just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me... Can Meta fire another 15% of its employee base and increase its valuation? Another 15%? Another? At some point that starts straining credibility.”
— Dave Nadig
🎶 “The Old Law” — Father John Misty (Spotify)
The party in power argues we don’t need new jobs because we’ve deported enough people. I find that largely a BS answer. At some point “fire people, stock goes up” stops working. I just don’t know when.
Father John Misty has built an entire career on the ominous self-interrogation of a man who suspects the old rules (like these) might not apply anymore. “The Old Law” is classic FJM: religion, ego, and a weird sense of unreality. FMJ may be one of the most quintessential “now” bands out there. They tell stories about an insane world that seems all to real, and yet still drench it all with nostalgia. I wanted pick “Screamland” — which is even more of the moment, but it’s not actually a new song. But listen to it anyway.
“I look in my area, my funny corner of northeastern Pennsylvania, where the increase in wages really helped push this area forward... A lot of people got nicer cars than they should have gotten. This is a couple more layoffs or a few less available jobs from having something that takes much longer to resolve itself.”
— Matt Zeigler
🎶 “Masquerade” — Cardinals (Spotify)
The car payment doesn’t go away when the job does.
Also: Cardinals rock. They’re an Irish post-punk band whose debut Masquerade is eponymously descriptive: peeling back layers to find the raw truth underneath. When the masquerade ends in NEPA, the cars will still be in the driveways and the bills will still be due.
“I can’t imagine being one of these guys who’s been having grand slam after grand slam for all these years and now has to make this decision. I feel like you’re in a lose-lose situation right now.”
— Matt Zeigler
🎶 “Sevastopol” — Mandy, Indiana (Spotify | Bandcamp)
Announce layoffs and you get hammered in the press. Say nothing and you look like Kodak in 2005.
Mandy, Indiana are (delightfully) not from Mandy, Indiana, but are a Manchester-based quartet who scream in French over industrial techno-noise. “Sevastopol” — named for the besieged Crimean city — captures a world where you’re under fire from every direction and there’s no safe position to take. Here’s Claude’s AI SLOP take on Mandy, Indiana: “It’s not music you put on to relax. It’s music that sounds like what it feels like to be a CEO right now.” ... Sigh Claude. Sigh.
“For a thousand bucks a month you can give five people superpowers in your organization that’s probably worth $10,000 a month — that’s being funded by venture capitalists. It’s a huge wealth transfer to small businesses... Everybody’s got to go abuse the heck out of it while the venture capitalists are still paying.”
— Dave Nadig
🎶 “Good For You” — Tuesday Night Curry Club (Spotify)
It’s the same pattern as Uber rides that used to cost $10. The subsidy won’t last forever, but right now, it’s the biggest wealth transfer to small business since the SBA loan program, and nobody’s talking about it.
You’ve never heard of Tuesday Night Curry Club. I feel confident saying so because their tracks have hundreds of listens. This is a mistake, and one you should fix. They’re reminiscent of the same UK Janglerock from the Kooks first Album, Inside In/Inside Out. I know of very few superlatives higher than that.
There you go. Eight ideas. Eight songs. See you next time.