NYC Scene Report – Mima Good, Caveman, & Sam Himself

This week’s NYC Scene Report features Mima Good redefining “Cool,” Caveman getting a feeling, and Sam Himself looking inward for some self-care.

* Forget what the media wants to sell you, Brooklyn-based artist Mima Good has created her own definition of “Cool.”

“I’ve always had trouble fitting into one genre, one crowd, one look,” she explains, “When I wrote ‘Cool’ I was sarcastically attempting to simplify myself into a neat little indie bubble. It started out as a joke, but as I layered on new instruments I peeled back the onion to more sincere feelings about accessibility to community and image. When I wrote the second verse and the line, ‘Their sneakers look just like yours, but from a different place,’ I was thinking about how much capitalism controls coolness. At the time, everyone was wearing the same white sneakers. Some were hundreds of dollars, and some were $40 ripoffs, but everyone was attempting to belong to the same clean box.”

After listening to “Cool,” Mima Good is pretty cool in my book.


* Last month NYC indie rock veterans Caveman released their first new music since 2016, an EP titled New Sides. The latest single off the effort is the emotional “You Got A Feeling.”

Singer Matthew Iwanusa explained “You Got A Feeling” saying, “This song is kind of about the anxiety of feeling trapped in a situation. Sort of a cabin fever type thing.”

The video for the song was filmed in Brooklyn, but Iwanusa was able to get a friend who was staying in a cabin to contribute footage, as well. Iwanusa notes, “(It) seemed fitting for how the world is right now.”

Check out “You Got A Feeling,” and I get the feeling you’ll be feeling Caveman.


* Brooklyn-based alt-indie artist Sam Himself is looking inwards, hoping to treat himself “Like a Friend.”

The latest single off his new EP, Slow Drugs, Sam Himself explains the song, saying, “‘Like a Friend’ is about coming to terms with an ending and admitting to yourself that an era of your history is over, that you’ve exhausted some defining idea of who you are, or thought you were. If you’re truly trying to accept that and move on, you need a brief truce between the various warring factions inside you. Part of the song is an internal plea to be on your own side and cooperate with yourself in letting go.”

The video for “Like a Friend” was shot in his native Switzerland, and you can check it out right here.


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