Weird Nightmare Colin Medley/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Colin Medley/Courtesy of the artist

Alex Edkins fronted the long-running punk band Metz for two decades. The trio may have gone on hiatus in 2024, but Edkins has stayed busy with his solo project, Weird Nightmare. Citing influences like The Replacements, Elvis Costello and Teenage Fanclub takes some swagger, but Edkins delivers, especially on his sophomore solo album, Hoopla. While his debut channeled lo-fi, underground energy, Hoopla embraces full-on power pop, thanks in part to production from Spoon's Jim Eno.

On tap today: a mini-concert with the band, recorded at our home base in Philadelphia during Non-COMMvention. Enjoy!

This episode of World Cafe was produced by Will Loftus. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our senior producer is Kimberly Junod.