Kevin Basko has a suggestion: Music might make everything better.

“If you don’t know what to do because you’ve never been this sad before,” Basko sings. “You don’t feel those problems when you’re singing the songs you love.”

That lyric about music’s comforting and healing power is from “Songs You Love,” the closing track on Bloodwork, the winning new album by Rubber Band Gun, Basko’s primary vehicle for the many, many songs he loves to write.

It’s been a good year for Historic New Jersey, the label that — somewhat confusingly — is based in South Philadelphia and whose emergence is one of the most heartening indie rock stories of 2026.

Basko and his Historic NJ pals Emily Moales, who records as Star Moales, and sibling act Sam and Louise Sullivan have been producing a steady stream of retro-leaning but wholly in-the-moment high-level songcraft for a few years now.

Since the spring, the national and international music press has caught wind of what makes Historic NJ special, praising the warmth and camaraderie that comes through on Star Moales’ Highway to Hell and the Sullivans’ Love & Devotion.

Now, it’s Basko’s turn. Rubber Band Gun’s Bloodwork, like all of the other Historic NJ projects was recorded and produced at Basko’s home studio in South Philly, with Moales and the Sullivans contributing musically and vocally.

The newest of the dozens of streamable releases on Rubber Band Gun’s Bandcamp page showcases Basko’s canny, inviting songwriting. Tunes like “Love Me Dawg” and “Money on My Mind” consistently offer subtle surprises and are never merely clever, even when Basko is punning on Rihanna and Rage Against the Machine lyrics while singing about feeling out of place in America in “Zombie in the Country.”

— Dan DeLuca

In 1835, showman, businessman, and politician P.T. Barnum bought an elderly enslaved woman, Joice Heth from a Kentucky enslaver, added her to his circus, and falsely claimed she was George Washington’s 161-year-old nursemaid.

His advertisements described her as weighing 46 pounds and being blind and toothless — supposed evidence of her extreme age.

To reinforce the trope of the frail, subservient, illiterate Black, Barnum insisted she regale the audience with stories about her relationship to Washington in poor southern dialect.

Heth died in 1836 at 80 and Barnum even exploited her in death, charging circus goers 25 cents to see her dead body, an experience he marketed as a public autopsy.

A Philadelphia Fringe Festival performance underway at Crane Arts’ Icebox Project Space is running hot hula hoops around Barnum’s narrative of Heth. Strange Root, Or the Murder of P.T. Barnum by Joice Heth stars Chicago-born circus performer and acrobat Julia Baccellieri as Heth and New York-based actor and teaching artist Lex Alston as P.T. Barnum.

Baccellieri created the work.

Baccellieri doesn’t portray Heth as a weak woman beaten down by her circumstances. Instead, they use dance trapeze, aerial apparatus, Chinese pole and hula hoops to give Heth power, agency and beauty.

The music is contemporary and soulful, weaving in Nina Simone’s jazz with Kendrick Lamar’s bars. Baccellieri dons a clown mask during the performance. They affix it as the audience listens to Maya Angelou read Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 1896 poem “We Wear the Mask,”which speaks to Black Americans’ dual consciousness.

Alston’s portrayal of Barnum as a buffoon gives voice to the stupidity of racism, speaking truth to power: racists who refuse to see the evil in their actions will cause their own demise.

Strange Root is short — it runs under 45 minutes — but it’s powerful.

“Strange Root, or the murder of P.T. Barnum” will be Saturday, Sept. 12 at 6:30 p.m., Crane Arts building, 1400 N. American Street. Tickets are $25. Ticket information is here.

— Elizabeth Wellington

South Street’s Magic Gardens are often packed with tourists and fans walking through its outdoor mosaic labyrinth of mirrors, glass bottles, clay sculptures, and ceramic tiles lovingly built by South Philly legend Isaiah Zagar. Inside, though, the building hosts rotating exhibits from other artists; currently on view is “Living Through Death” from Puebla artist Ivette Chaires, who spent time working in Philadelphia as part of the Julia Zagar Residency for Women Artists.

Using papier-mâché, Chaires crafted 36 skeletal figures in the Mexican tradition of cartonería, often seen during Día de los Muertos celebrations. Her skeletons are strikingly animated, decked out in funky modern clothing and thick-rimmed glasses or posing cheekily. There’s a Frida Kahlo figure and an Edgar Allen Poe — and a football fan with an Eagles cap. Several works depict the Zagars, like one with Isaiah and Julia wearing colorful mosaic outfits. The show debuted five months after Zagar died, making it a powerful tribute to his legacy.

Each delightfully spooky sculpture contains incredible layers. Tejedora (Weaver) features a bony woman bending over a loom that she attached to a tree trunk on one end and wrapped around her waist on the other. The details are so carefully crafted, from her twisted belt to her intricately weaved gold earrings. Nearby stands a sweet little chicken with a living head and a dead underbelly. It was a fascinating, fully-formed scene that accomplished Chaires’ goal — for the viewer to feel deeply connected to the dead.

“Living Through Death: Works by Ivette Chaires” is on view through Nov. 8 at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, 1020 South St., Philadelphia, 215-733-0390 or phillymagicgardens.org.

— Rosa Cartagena