NYC Scene Report – Elle Winter, Safer, & more

This week’s NYC Scene Report features pop artist Elle Winter suggesting you “Do You,” Safer’s pop-rock ode to new love, hard rock outfit A Deer A Horse continuing to live the tour life, and Lightning Bug getting ready to light up the fall.

* Most of the time, an artist who is still in their teens is considered a newcomer to their respective scene, but in the case of 19 year old pop artist Elle Winter, she’s a lot closer to veteran status.

Stepping into the entertainment world at the age of seven – which is when she took her first acting course – and having been a part of Radio Disney’s “Next Big Thing” program, the New York City native is currently poised to take the pop world by storm.

Winter’s latest single is “Do You,” a radio ready song that you could easily imagine being on the Billboard Hot 100, or your favorite Top 40 station’s playlist.

Give the bouncy single a spin, and add some Winter to your summer.


* Summer is often a time of new love, and that’s exactly what Safer’s latest single, “All My Life” was inspired by.

Safer is the latest project from Brooklyn-based artist Mattie Safer, who is known in the scene from being in the bands Poolside, and The Rapture.

He explained his process for creating the perfect sound for “All My Life,” saying, “‘All My Life’ started with the bass and piano riff. Vocally I wanted to do something very simple that felt like something that Otis Redding could sing, but with more of a disco-not-disco, New York kind of an edge to it. I asked Casey Butler from Poolside to play sax on it and try to get the bridge to reflect that psychedelic dream state when you are falling in love with somebody for the first time.”

Click play on this feel-good jam. It’s a perfect song for the season.


* Brooklyn-based hard rock band A Deer A Horse are currently out on tour – this is a sentence that applies to the band the vast majority of the time, as since 2017 they’ve hit the stage nearly 250 times at venues all over the country.

Their current tour concludes at the end of August with two hometown shows at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus on August 29th and 31st.

This time A Deer A Horse are touring in support of their recently released EP, Everything Rots That Is Rotten, the latest single off of which is “Smokejumper.”

“Smokejumper” has an awesome feel that’s like a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song with a harder edge. It’s the kind of song that will make you want to bang your head and let out a few primal screams. Click play, and hear for yourself (although any primal screams you make at work are not the responsibility of Adam’s World, or A Deer A Horse).


* Lightning Bug – the recording project of NYC’s Audrey Kang, along with friends Kevin Copeland and Logan Miley – is ready to light up your indie-pop playlists with “October Song, pt. ii.”

Kang tells the story behind the creation of the song saying, “One night last year in Spring, I was caught beneath a storm of doubt. My idea of what was right morphed as I asked question after question, like a child. In the morning, the birds moved soft and easy through the tree. The buds at the tips of the branches quivered with the yearning to be realized. Then, I wrote this song.”

“October Song, pt. ii” is off Lightning Bug’s sophomore album, October Song, which was written over a four year period, and is due out September 6th via Marbled Arm Records.

Get a little October spirit in the summer by clicking play on this beautiful indie-pop gem.


For more of the best of NYC’s indie music scene, come back next Wednesday, and check out the archives for previous columns.