When you go out dancing, how much time do you spend dancing versus recording your surroundings to show your social media following how fun of a night you’re having?

Sibling DJs Christina and Josef Lorenzo, better known as Tinzo and Jojo, wanted to bring the focus of dance parties back to dancing, so they banned phones from the dance floor for all shows through their New York City-based collective, Book Club Radio.

“Book Club Radio is inspired by how we like to experience a night out: no phones, not facing the DJ, just hanging out and dancing with each other,” the collective’s website says.

During their party at the Varsity Theater Saturday night, the siblings’ latest stop on their Dial Up Tour, not a single person on the floor had their phone out. They just bathed in the flashing blue light and swayed to the steadfast four-on-the-floor beat. 

Instead of actually taking people’s phones, everyone got a sticker to put on their outward-facing camera.

At first, I thought the stickers wouldn’t be able to hold people accountable, but Tinzo and Jojo make their parties so fun that no one will feel like they have to go on their phones.

Plus the stickers are a fun souvenir, especially because non-tour Book Club Radio parties are invite-only. The exclusivity is for logistical and safety reasons, given that Book Club has no larger sponsor and is entirely donation-funded and community-based.

The Dial Up Tour is a testament to both the collective’s success and its ethos — to connect everyone to the transcendental qualities of dancing to live music, not just those lucky enough to get invited.

The shows are meant to transport partygoers “back to a time when the internet was wild, unfiltered, and free from social media,” with “(Four) hour-extended sets of that classic house sound that’ll keep you moving all night long, accompanied by sights and sounds that’ll transport you into a pre-Y2K computer screen,” according to the Tour’s website.

Those visuals were projected onto a massive screen throughout the night and included spinning, three-dimensional geometric heart shapes, flashing black and white tunnels and various points from their manifesto, such as “Be open to unfamiliar music and sounds.”

Tinzo and Jojo spun in a barricaded area in the middle of the floor, and many people still watched them spin together and separately. Each sibling commanded the array of lit-up buttons and knobs like the captains of a space shuttle.

The Saturday night show was extra special for the Lorenzo siblings because they were born in Minneapolis. Their older brother, Fino, opened for the pair, and they took the time to thank him between the two halves of their set.

The siblings paid homage to their birthplace with an energizing house remix of Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” Naturally, small spotlights on either side of the screen glowed purple during the song.

Leaning my head back and swaying to the music felt like my hair was being pressure washed at a hair salon.

In other words, it was a cleansing experience.

Other partygoers leaned heavily into the music, too. A man in a neon yellow jacket and white Adidas sneakers cleared a 10-foot radius around him as he danced, effortlessly twisting and stepping to the beat.

Later in the set, he stepped in place and held his arms out wide, as if he were surrendering himself to the music.

It was also surprising to see a number of Gen X and older people at the party, too — the old guard of the dance scene.

House music itself originates from Chicago’s underground club scene during the early 1980s when DJs started altering disco songs to give them a more mechanical beat, according to Lynnée Denise for Harper’s Bazaar.

Not only is it a Midwestern genre, it’s a Black and queer one, too. According to Denise, the genre sprouted from the mixes DJ Frankie Knuckles, now known as the Godfather of House Music, spun at the Warehouse, a Chicago club for predominantly Black gay men.

A packed house took refuge from the cold in 7th St. Entry Monday night for the sunny stylings of indie pop artist Jordana.

The 24-year-old was a vision of spring with a bleached-blond bob and a floor-length floral dress with puffy short sleeves, perhaps in hopes of manifesting an end to the brutal cold that has been punishing the Twin Cities lately.

“It’s so cold! God dammit,” she joked. “Why do ya live here?!”

Minneapolis was Jordana’s fifth-to-last stop on her “Lively Premonition” tour in support of her latest album, which came out in October. 

Its highly saturated, fantastical cover featuring rainbows and unicorns hints at the record’s bright, funky, 70s-inspired sound, a departure from her airy bedroom pop start.

Jordana started her front-to-back playthrough with “We Get By,” an upbeat tale of a finely aged relationship with a sound that calls to mind “Les Fleurs” by Minnie Riperton. Jordana leans into a vocal strength and range not seen much in her previous work, and it carries the verses in “We Get By” into a chorus that bursts like sunlight through clouds.

She showed off her multi-instrumentalism with an impressively expressive violin solo, her bow gracefully flowing across the strings. Even with the impressive musical chops, watching her perform felt like showing up to see a friend of a friend’s band. In between songs, Jordana was silly, goofy and charmingly awkward.

“My last show here was crazy,” she said, her smile infectious. “There was shit everywhere, and I mean shit from a butt!”

Later, when someone asked about her dog, Ducky, Jordana explained he was with her mom in her home state of Maryland.

“He loves his grandma,” she said with the nasally tone and expressive hand gestures of a Donald Trump impression. It was well received by the young crowd, laughing at our terrifying political climate to cope.

The sunny sound of the first half of the album kept the energy up throughout the night alongside the artist’s ceaseless humor.

Even the slower ballad “Heart You Hold” encouraged swaying as Jordana gracefully rattled her tambourine and sang about not taking life for granted.

“Run while you can still carry all of the heart you hold,” she crooned. “Hey, grow into someone who you’ve never seen before.”

After another groovy love song, “This Is How I Know,” Jordana shifted gears into the psychedelic with the album’s strangest track, “Multitudes of Mystery.”

With her back turned to the crowd, Jordana spoke to an imaginary sniveling guy on the backing track who invited her and her friend “back to the pad” for a party.

The song about doing drugs with weirdos just for the high is fittingly the album’s most psychedelic and dreamy, but the dream is shattered with a fart joke halfway through.

Though inane on the recorded version, Jordana’s personality made it charming during the performance.

She also created fun vocal effects by waving the microphone back and forth in front of her mouth at the end of the song simulating the feeling of drugs hitting.

“Raver Girl” is a fun, disco-sapphic anthem that got big cheers from fans, though it stood in stark contrast to the sad breakup songs populating the album’s second half, which were emotional yet sonically one-note.

The encore included a cover of Steely Dan’s “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” and a selection of songs from the “Summer’s Over” EP she released with TV Girl, undoubtedly her most popular songs.

Jordana teased her fans about the trilogy being the only thing they came to see.

“I’ll feed ya your ‘Summer’s Over,’” she sighed playfully as she strapped on her guitar.

And while the songs’ groovy, summertime melancholy did not disappoint live, Jordana had cemented herself at the very beginning of her set as an act worth seeing. Her newer, less familiar tracks were just as good, and her personality guarantees laughing along with dancing.

It certainly made the cold outside less biting.

The energy of more than a hundred people powered up the small side room at Mortimer’s bar and restaurant in Minneapolis for the Twin Cities United Performers (TCUP) Power Up! show on Sunday.

With no cover fee, the show had something for everyone, regardless of TCUP affiliation. Three local indie projects of various musical styles created a mini snapshot of the Minneapolis music scene as a diverse, burgeoning community worthy of recognition and support.

“We truly believe in the power of collective action,” Space Monkey Mafia lead singer Dante Leyva said to raucous cheers, many from TCUP members.

Power Up! was to garner support from local musicians and performers in the form of pledges to join TCUP, with a goal of 500 total pledges signed.

According to lead organizer Nadirah McGill, drummer of local indie rock outfit Gully Boys, TCUP is already over halfway to that goal.

The first act was Ghosting Merit, a dreamy indie pop band with similar stylings to Slow Pulp, another Midwestern indie darling.

Their first songs were slower jams, the perfect soundtrack for people watching from the corner seat in the side room. For their final two songs, Ghosting Merit invited the crowd to “boogie” with them to the upbeat dance tracks from their latest album, “Little Rituals.”

Still, tucked into the corner in a packed house, I was not roused.

After a soundcheck that felt about 30 years long, I was about ready to leave without sticking around for Butter Boys and Bunny Blood.

I admire the talent and dedication it takes to play music consistently, but at a certain point — typically 9 p.m. on a Sunday night twisting off of a Hamm’s tall can with three deadlines in three days looming ahead — all indie acts start to sound the same, and all of their names become trite.

Then, as Sunshine Parker of Sunshine and the Night Walkers introduced Butter Boys, I was drawn back to the main room. 

“When we lose performers to burnout, to stress, to addiction, to lack of money, all of the reasons why this line of work is unsustainable, is that a net gain for the rest of us?” Parker said. “But the truth is, we lose out on all the amazing art that they could have made.”

The people at the bar stopped chatting, and a hush fell over the entire room as Parker continued. “It will always haunt me that it’s possible that we wouldn’t have lost them if our industry was more sustainable and more equitable. That’s what pledging to build power together in solidarity means to me.”

The speech gave the show a dose of reality, reminding everyone in the room just how much music could mean to people.

“It’s saying that yes, this is work that must be valued, but no, we’re not going to tear each other apart looking for individual success,” Parker said.

Parker’s words spoke to something much bigger than a free Sunday night indie show in a crowded bar. They broke through my boredom and lack of shared experience and tapped into something all of us want — security in doing what we want with our lives.

“TCUP was born out of a historic campaign to organize and unionize workers at First Ave venues during the fall of 2023,” McGill said. “Over 300 musicians organized in solidarity alongside venue workers.”

Over a year later, workers at First Avenue and its network of clubs ratified its first union contract just last week.

I still left after Butter Boys started, even though their silly garage punk jam “Clothes Don’t Fit” that opens their album “After Hours Super Powers” endeared me to them while preparing for this story.

The Minneapolis indie music scene is worthy of our support and our listening ears, even if it’s only in the hope that making music can one day be a viable career path.

TCUP has big dreams, namely making Minnesota “the best place in the world to be a performer.” 

If the successes of UNITE HERE Local 17 and Parker’s words show anything, it’s that TCUP believes in itself. And that’s worth a listen.

As Celisia Stanton pieced together cat puzzles in the bleak midwinter of 2020, she listened to hours of true crime podcasts, like many of us.

While the stories were addicting and interesting, Stanton said many still lacked crucial details.

“I felt like they were never talking about race, gender, sexuality, the root causes of crime or why crime happens,” she said.

Stanton, at the time, was defrauded of her savings, a crime she said was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After urging from her husband, Stanton started her own true crime podcast, “Truer Crime.” More than four years later, the show is in its second season, and Stanton hopes to shift the genre.

“It’s not a bad thing to say that true crime is entertaining, or that I want my stories to be entertaining. That’s how you get buy-in from people, that’s just psychology,” Stanton said. “It’s really just about what you’re using that entertainment value for.”

“Truer Crime” uses its gripping entertainment value driven by Stanton’s engaging, debate-team-trained narration to reveal the systemic injustices behind true crime cases, ranging from wrongful conviction cases that fell through the cracks to gendered violence on college campuses. Stanton also talks about the injustice in infamous cases like Jonestown.

“Most people don’t know the majority of the people who died in Guyana at Jonestown were Black folks, particularly Black women, and that Jim Jones really forwarded this message of racial and class justice,” Stanton said.

The “Truer Crime” formula is grounded in acutely emotional stories, a far cry from the sensationalized, abstract retellings that are all too common in true crime media.

Another compelling aspect of “Truer Crime” is the inclusion of action items at the end of each episode related to its case or subject matter.

The most recent episode covers the story of Toforest Johnson, a Black man currently on death row for murdering a police officer despite a litany of contradictory evidence. Stanton includes a petition listeners can sign to get Johnson a new trial.

“It’s literally life or death for (Johnson), the best thing we can do is raise visibility for his case,” Stanton said. “Those sorts of things really do make a difference because they put pressure in the right places.”

The realness of “Truer Crime” means each episode is somewhat a heavy listen, but Stanton, a welcoming and kind host, puts content warnings at the beginning, urging her listeners to continue with care.

It starkly contrasts the true crime content on YouTube that University of Minnesota sophomore Ruweyda Ali said she would encounter as a teenager.

“Why are you talking about someone being cannibalized while you’re literally eating something,” she said of the videos.

Ali found herself more fascinated by documentary and forensic aspects of true crime than any sensationalized retelling on YouTube, which she often found weird. She added that victims’ family members would comment on the videos asking for privacy, which was often not respected.

Still, Ali said, “It would be a lie to say that (true crime) isn’t interesting.”

Ultimately, Ali agreed that it matters how true crime stories are told, echoing Stanton in saying many case outcomes depend on who has the resources to solve them, often the police.

“I feel like as Gen-Z, we’ve grown up not to trust cops, but it’s always been a problem,” she said.

Ali also said true crime fans should pay attention to why they’re drawn to that content in the first place.

“I still have a lot of learning to do,” she said. “How you consume true crime matters. There are still humans behind these stories.”

Former University student Summer Knopik said their interest in true crime was an avenue to process their related trauma head-on.

“When I started getting into it, my purpose was ‘How can I protect myself better? How can I be more aware of my situations,’” they said.

Still, Knopik said a lot is still missing from discussions of true crime, particularly the topics Stanton seeks to address in “Truer Crime.”

“It makes me feel better knowing that podcasts like (‘Truer Crime’) exist and that there’s an option to consume media that tells it like it is,” they said.

As humans, we’re naturally drawn to storytelling, particularly individual stories. A morbid fascination with deviance is also a common phenomenon — the chaos of unexpected death and the drama that both precedes and follows it, as Stanton said, is addicting to hear about.

What’s groundbreaking about “Truer Crime” is it seeks to create more trusting communities instead of dividing them through fearmongering.

“I hope true crime can be more nuanced and careful,” Stanton said. “How can these stories be told in a way that guides us towards safer, more trusting communities?”

Despite the word “joy” in its title, Camden Stevens wants visitors to his latest gallery show to leave their optimistic expectations at the door.

“Joy in the Next Room,” the University of Minnesota alum’s latest artistic endeavor, seeks to explore a feeling just shy of melancholy and nostalgia that’s neither happy nor sad.

“It’s like you see a father reading to his child on the train,” Stevens said to the crowd at the show’s opening night on Friday. “It’s such a sincere and special moment that you’re just a little bit removed from. That’s just such a relatable feeling and nobody talks about it or has the words for it.”

Stevens enlisted fellow Twin Cities artists Jack Drummond, Maksym Khutorianskyi, Lee Noble and Vernon Vanderwood to help visually articulate that indescribable feeling.

Their attempts at capturing it range from a woven geometric tapestry by Vanderwood to Drummond’s paintings of compressed and blurred dashcam stills to a painted scene of Stevens’ iconic character “STARGAZER” pushing itself off of a cliff, framed within an iPod.

The latter piece, titled “Post,” embodies Stevens’ permission to himself to take a step back from the character that began his artistic career.

“I told myself that I need to move on from this idea and that I’m OK moving into a new one,” he said in an interview.

The iPod evokes skipping a song that you’ve loved for years but perhaps just isn’t right for the current mood. The figures’ shattered heads are like idea light bulbs that got too hot and burst, leaving only the darkness of “What now?”

The show inhabits the Landmark Gallery of Schmidt Artist Lofts in St. Paul, a stark, white rectangular enclave carved out of the gargantuan former brewery that’s as liminal as the show’s subject matter.

Stevens said he and his fellow artists used the odd space to their advantage during installation.

Vanderwood’s tapestry, “Boundary Weavings,” is suspended between two white vertical beams, its black background and white patterned side facing into the gallery. The inverted opposite side faces the front wall.

Its placement allowed for the experience of sneaking between the beam and the tapestry, an action that felt almost elicit but which Stevens delighted in.

“That’s just such an odd experience, but I love when people get to have new experiences with the work like that,” he said.

The experience of “Joy in the Next Room” also went beyond the visual for Em Inserra, a University senior who briefly worked with Stevens at Radio K.

Inserra said she introduced Stevens to the music of Cindy Lee, whose experimental album “What’s Tonight to Eternity” acts as the show’s score.

Despite not knowing each other well, Stevens sent Inserra a personal note about how the music, along with Inserra’s poetry, inspired him and shaped “Joy in the Next Room.”

“It was surprising to hear someone I was removed from was inspired by my art,” Inserra said.

Removed community, or being affected by someone or something you don’t know, is a recurring theme throughout the show. University fine arts student Drummond evokes the feeling through digital stills from his dashcam represented in paint.

Drummond said last May he started going through the footage of the camera every two weeks and selecting what he would like to work with.

“It’s exploring moments past and translating them into painting,” he said. “You may not have the feeling anymore, but it’s nice to know that you felt it.”

Drummond never paints an image exactly how it appears — there’s always some deep frying, cropping and compression that occurs. 

“I don’t want them to look exactly like the image, because then what’s the point,” he said.

Not to mention the camera films through his dirty windshield.

The result is blurry, garbled paintings that are both strikingly familiar and absolutely anonymous.

Having moved to the U. S. from England as a child, Drummond described being fascinated by Midwestern culture — especially big lifted trucks — while still seeing its absurdity from an outsider’s perspective.

According to Inserra, who was at the show’s opening, people kept guessing where the location in fan-favorite “Handystop” is, but no one got it right.

After a second successful show and more than a year after college, Stevens was frank about his current feeling of artistic limbo.

“There’s a bit of mourning that takes place after college. You lose all of these resources and a free studio space you can use whenever you want,” Stevens said. “I’ve found that I need to make space for my creativity.”

A valuable tool for Stevens has been “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, a self-help book meant to help with artist’s block by intentionally making time to be creative.

Stevens’ practice of intentionality is imbued into every aspect of “Joy in the Next Room,” from the arrangement of the pieces to the music on the promotional Instagram stories to the all-black outfit he sported at the opening.

“I was really inspired by the show,” Inserra said. “You can do creative things. It can mean something to you that it doesn’t mean to others. That’s really the point.”

“Joy in the Next Room” will be up until Wednesday, Feb. 19. Gallery visits are by appointment only and can be made by emailing stargazerbyc3@gmail.com.

As its name suggests, the new “Vibrant Traditions” exhibit at the Norway House shows how time-honored Scandinavian weaving practices are still full of life.

On display in the cultural center’s bright and airy Mondale Galleri until April 6, the exhibit puts contemporary twists on an assortment of traditional weaving techniques from Norway and Scandinavia.

“The graphic beauty of traditional Scandinavian textiles will never go out of style,” Robbie LaFleur, curator and longtime weaver, said. “This exhibition shows how artists are making it new and fresh. It’s not just old and historical.”

“Vibrant Traditions” is the result of a partnership between Norway House and the Scandinavian Weavers Study Group of the Weavers Guild of Minnesota, of which LaFleur has been a member for 25 years. Many of the exhibition’s works are by Study Group members.

LaFleur’s recreation of Edvard Munch’s iconic 1893 painting “The Scream” in the shaggy rya weaving technique welcomes visitors into the Galleri, an homage that is playful and eye-catching, but not scary.

With their intricate patterns and vivid colors, it’s difficult not to examine every detail of every piece in “Vibrant Traditions.”

Many pieces display geometric patterns more aligned with traditional Nordic sensibilities.

Others are more illustrative. The first piece to the right upon entering the Galleri by textile artist Mandy Pedigo is a rag rug depicting a flowing river that curves into an oxbow lake among a landscape of greens and browns.

The bumpiness of the weave evokes the unevenness of nature, absolutely perfect in its chaos.

There’s also a tapestry of a cat holding a machine gun.

Called “Terrorist Cat,” it was created by LaFleur’s mentor Lila Nelson, who passed away in 2015.

LaFleur said Nelson often brought humor and sharp political wit to her tapestries.

“We all know what a gun looks like, even if we don’t think about them or like to think about them,” LaFleur said.

The yellow tabby cat with stark brown stripes has an unnervingly unreadable smile, evoking the absurd and desensitizing nature of hyperviolent American culture.

It’s perhaps the most contemporary message conveyed in an exhibition filled with reimaginings of ancient craft forms.

The oldest of these forms is the warp-weighted loom that acts as the exhibition’s centerpiece.

On a warp-weighted loom, rocks are tied to the ends of the vertical threads to maintain equal tension throughout the piece being created. The earliest evidence of the loom’s existence dates back to 7,000 BCE in Palestine, according to a Galleri placard, and is thought to have arrived in Scandinavia by the third century C.E.

LaFleur said the loom will be used for periodic demonstrations by Study Group member Melba Granlund, to whom LaFleur originally sold the loom after it was made for her.

“A lot of people don’t even understand weaving in its simplest form, that over-under motion,” LaFleur said. “The demonstrations will make the process less mysterious.”

A smaller form of the loom that uses deer antlers as supports can be found on a table on the left side of the Galleri, hearkening back to the craft’s de-established roots.

Overall, LaFleur said she hopes “Vibrant Traditions” will inspire young people to explore the real world, outside of the digital.

“I spent my life sitting in front of a screen (as a reference librarian and Director of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library),” she said. “Working in the real world with real materials saved me. It’s something that has been serving me my whole life.”

Norway House has hosted two previous exhibitions with the Study Group and is a natural home for “Vibrant Traditions,” as a cultural center that strives to connect people with contemporary Norway, not just the history of Norwegian immigration to Minnesota.

“Norway is a very forward-thinking country,” Hallow Maren Frid, Norway House’s communications coordinator, said. 

Frid said the works in “Vibrant Traditions” could be “challenging your preconceived notions (about Norwegian culture) or broadening your horizons.”

Those preconceptions could be about who Norwegian people are and what they look like, but the Norway House makes it clear that everyone is welcome, regardless of heritage.

“Many East African people use our space,” Norway House Chief-of-Staff Max Stevenson said. “And there’s a big East African population in Norway. People from Somalia often go to Norway for school and then return, so we’ll have Somali people here who speak Norwegian or who maybe have a relative in Norway.”

Norway House is located in the Ventura Village neighborhood, a historically immigrant community where many Norwegians settled in the early 20th century and that is now home to East African and Latin immigrants too, as well as the American Indian Cultural Corridor.

Overall, Stevenson said that what makes Norway House special is their dedication to building a strong, diverse, egalitarian community that celebrates Nordic culture in Minnesota and beyond.

“What we want is for people to find their inner Nordic,” he said.

If you’re a university student, you’ve probably been interviewed for a job, and perhaps you’ve worked at an office before. But once it’s time to look for that “capital-j” Job, some of us might panic at the state of our wardrobes.

“Oh no, my Speech suit no longer fits, I only own beat-up Converse and I don’t have the money to buy clothes right now!” you might say.

Take a deep breath and look closer. There might be professional wear possibilities that you don’t yet see.

According to CLA Career Services, the trick is to “choose clothing options that reflect your desired personal brand, make you feel confident, and respect the cultural norms and expectations of the setting you are engaged with.”

After reading that advice, your instinct might be to buy a whole closet’s worth of new clothes just for work, but that is not without its consequences. You’ve probably heard time and again about the negative environmental and human impacts of fast fashion.

Thrifting, though a better alternative, is not without sin. According to earthday.org, only 10-30% of donated clothes are actually bought from thrift stores. Excess textiles are then shipped to less-developed countries, giving us a “safe place” for them to go, keeping them out of our landfills while stunting domestic textile industries elsewhere.

These impacts have given rise to social media trends like the 75 Hard Style Challenge on TikTok, which show us that styling without buying is very much possible and will help us curate our own style — the very “personal brand” we’re after.

Paige Miller, a senior accounting major at the University of Minnesota, said she had to buy quite a bit of new clothes for her previous hyper-professional job at an insurance agency.

“I don’t think my work outfits really reflected who I am,” Miller, who has a more lowkey personal style involving jeans and sweaters, said. “It did not feel like me.”

However, Miller observed that the business environment is becoming more casual, straying away from the “monotonous” suits of 20 years ago and embracing sweater-and-jeans looks.

Miller also said she’s becoming more conscious about her shopping habits, such as buying only closet staples and unique items.

She said she uses Pinterest to style her own clothes, asking herself, “How can I wear this differently?”

Ava Sahin, co-creative director of Golden Magazine, recommended dressing with thought and intention and said layering and wearing neutrals are good strategies.

“You could take blue pinstripe trousers and layer a skirt over it to create a look that’s modest but still distinctive and trendy,” she said.

Sahin also said to find your niche. Hers is pairing a simple, sophisticated look with chunky jewelry.

Golden co-editor-in-chief Alexa Yung said she already likes to dress down business casual items like button-ups in her everyday style and layer jewelry.

Both Sahin and Yung echoed Miller, saying that professional environments becoming more casual is a good thing.

Sahin recounted a recent internship experience that had a more relaxed dress code — casual, but still polished — and said it made a huge difference in morale.

“It didn’t feel like a timid environment,” Sahin said. “You could get a better read on people and let your guard down. Dressing up makes me feel confident and do better work.”

Yung added that interesting office outfits can be good conversation starters, and having to dress, and thus become, a completely different person at work would be like real-life “Severance,” in which people’s work memories are surgically separated from their personal memories.

Once you do have the extra cash to buy something new, Yung said the key is “investing” in a piece that will last instead of buying a lot of unnecessary items.

“The real question is, What’s gonna last you?” Yung said.

Yung and Sahin provided a Google Doc and Pinterest board for further inspiration, which you can find here.

FKA twigs’ can energize the bleakest of winters with her highly-anticipated dance album “EUSEXUA.”

Despite “EUSEXUA” being only her third studio album, twigs shows off her well-defined artistic muscles by hopping onto the dance music trend in her signature sparkly and otherworldly way.

The 11-track journey through the world of “EUSEXUA” — a word twigs coined herself — peels back the layers of the human soul to reveal the pulsing beats and distorted vocals at its core.

“‘EUSEXUA’ is the pinnacle of human experience,” twigs wrote in an Instagram post announcing the album in September. “It is my opus and truly feels like a pin at the centre of the core of my artist.”

The title track and lead single is a gateway from a horrifyingly dull world into one of transcendent authenticity. 

Its steady heartbeat pulse pulls you in before twigs’ tender voice cradles you in its chorus: “Do you feel alone?” twigs sings, alien-like coos echoing through the background. “You’re not alone.”

The song has had four months to enchant us, eager to discover the latest world twigs created, and that world is sonically rich and endlessly deep.

All of the songs on “EUSEXUA” will have your head bobbing and will energize your walks through the bitter cold.

The third track, “Perfect Stranger,” released as a single in October, is more sonically grounded in club music, reminiscent of Kylie Minogue’s 2001 hit “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.” 

But there’s a reason why that song has stood the test of time — it’s catchy.

FKA twigs doesn’t stay grounded for long as “Perfect Stranger” gives way to the unintelligible, distorted sounds and heavy beats of “Drums of Death,” featuring British DJ Koreless.

As implied by its title, “EUSEXUA” deals with sex, but it elevates its meaning instead of deflating it, as popular music often does.

“Feel hot, feel hard / Feel heavy, f— who you want / Baby girl, do it just for fun,” twigs sings on “Drums.” 

It’s an erotic statement that feels empowered and hungry, not pornographic and oversaturated like it’s trying to sell you something.

Even when twigs does talk about submitting to someone in “24hr Dog,” she’s choosing to do so out of her own desire for vulnerability, not because of any external force.

Twigs evokes the original weird music girl Björk in “Room of Fools” with emphatic growls and yelps and a wide vocal range.

The track’s pitched-down crooning, swaying to a gentle beat in the outro, sounds like nothing twigs has ever done before.

The only questionable point comes with “Childlike Things,” featuring none other than Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s 11-year-old daughter North West.

West raps in Japanese during the second verse, introducing herself and then professing that “Jesus is the one and only true God.”

The embedded Christianity, while not problematic on its face, feels oddly out of place yet also fitting, given the album’s spiritual themes.

As we depart “EUSEXUA” with the gospel-like “Wanderlust,” the album’s ethos is put in plain terms.

“You’ve one life to live, do it freely,” twigs tells us. “I’ll be in my head if you need me.”

Ultimately, “EUSEXUA” is yet another record that adds depth to dance. Dancing is more than what we do during our hard-won downtime. It’s how we can leave the drab office that is our current world and rediscover our bodies and spirits.

“EUSEXUA” means peeling off your clothes with a stranger, and it means letting someone peel back the layers of your mind.

Over the years, twigs has traversed several styles within the electronic genre, from baroque in “Magdalene,” then to hip-hop in “CAPRISONGS,” and now to dance in “EUSEXUA.”

Many artists have so-called “eras,” but twigs’ have always felt authentic, drawn from a deep well of creativity that appears to be never-ending.

Every Thursday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., the Walker Art Center opens its sleek glass doors to one and all for Free Thursday Nights.

As well as knocking the student ticket price down from $12 to $0, the Walker allows visitors to make art and view it through their Art Club program, which promises a new, unique art making activity each week from September to May.

Art Club came from a need for a program dedicated to consistent artmaking for adults as opposed to occasional one-off programs, according to Director of Public Engagement Megan Leafblad.

“It gives us a chance to be together in space, making with our hands,” Leafblad said in an email interview. “It’s something that is a really beautiful balance to the fast paced online world we live in.”

Some intriguing upcoming events from Art Club include journaling on Dec. 26 and music sampling on Jan. 16.

This Thursday’s Art Club activity was “punk-inspired patches,” which piqued my interest as a punk-adjacent person with a penchant for patches.

So, finally done with my second-to-last semester of college, I trudged through the snow under a dark early evening sky to make the 30-minute bus ride from Marcy Holmes to Lowry Hill (which felt more like 40 because of the roads).

I expected kitschy scrap fabric, embroidery, pop tabs and safety pins. What visitors got was plain black muslin and paint markers.

I understand the no-sharps safety precaution, considering Art Club activities are designed for ages 4 and up, but nothing felt particularly punk about the activity.

Instead, a young family with four kids crowded around one table, and yuppies chatted and drew at the tables on either side of me with lo-fi indie music playing softly in the background.

The Walker missed the perfect opportunity to educate people of all ages about the DIY punk subculture and its art. There could have been an overview of punk art history alongside the activity instructions.

What’s more, with their library open in the next room for their Open Stacks event, they could’ve laid out magazines and periodicals discussing punk and punk-adjacent art like Michael Shamberg’s “Guerrilla Television,” which argues for people to use cameras and cable television to create social change in response to the omnipresent 24/7 news cycle.

But of course, you can’t have people thinking too hard about how much the museum director is paid or why the Walker won’t let its gallery attendants sit during their shifts.

At one point an older man who, with his long silver hair and beard looked like the dictionary definition of a hippie, arrived, stoked to be at his first Art Club since May.

He looked like the kind of person who had made his fair share of patches and even had a large red patch with a black design emblazoned on the back of his denim jacket. I wasn’t able to get a closer look at the design.

I asked to look at his finished patch, and beaming with pride, he slid it in front of me. In pink, green and orange letters, it read “Art Club is WAC.”

I wondered if the double entendre was intentional, despite his clear enthusiasm for Art Club.

“Time to go look at some art,” he said, but then noticed the open library and made a beeline. I followed silently behind him.

If it weren’t for my headache and my empty stomach not helping matters, I could’ve sat in that library for hours, pouring over literature about art of all movements and media.

While perusing “Guerrilla Television” and any other book that caught my eye, I thought about how powerful it would be for everyone to be able to read about art, whether physically accessing it or being able to understand it.

I thought about how art, the very essence of human expression, is locked away behind the Walker’s sharp, contemporary walls for six out of seven days in the week. The Walker can only allow “punk-inspired” creation, because as an art center that makes millions in revenue each year, it stands squarely opposite the punk ethos.

It’s only fitting for a movie titled “Queer” to tell a queer love story in the least straightforward way possible.

Fresh off his sultry summer success “Challengers,” Luca Guadagnino plays fake-out with the audience, suggesting something similarly steamy with “Queer,” but delivering so much more.

On its face, “Queer” presents a story of American expatriates living in 1950s Mexico City embroiled in a cat-and-mouse situationship — a story first told by William S. Burroughs in his 1985 novel of the same name. 

Before you know it, Daniel Craig is leading Drew Starkey through the jungle to drink ayahuasca, a psychoactive beverage, to achieve telepathy. 

And that’s not even the strangest part of the movie.

“Queer” is a refreshing take on the adaptation, not only visualizing the novel but doing so through wild experimentation and surrealism.

Daniel Craig delivers raw, queer realness as the closed-off but deeply lonely William Lee, an older gay man living mostly among people younger than him. Donning a gray fedora, sunglasses and a white suit, Lee’s nights consist of throwing back shots of tequila, smoking cigarettes and trying to pick up men who will temporarily fill the void.

Guadagnino hits the audience over the head with queer narrative tropes and stereotypes in the beginning. After leaving a business deal, the two men Lee leaves behind whisper about how he’s always trying to get guys in bed.

The next scene is a continuous slow-motion shot of Lee walking through a chaotic nighttime street with Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” playing in the background.

At the climax of the scene, Lee locks eyes across a cockfight with Eugene Allerton, played by Starkey, and is immediately smitten with the younger man.

The next day, sitting with friends at their usual restaurant, Lee asks his friend Joe if he thinks Eugene is queer.

Joe tells him he could always just ask, but Lee refuses incredulously. The antics begin from there.

Eugene beats Lee at his own game, revealing little about himself in the few instances he does speak. Lee’s loud humor meant to entertain Eugene constantly falls flat, creating scenes that are almost painful to watch.

What little detail is shared about each character also creates confusion. It took about half an hour of watching to know what Eugene’s name was.

Eugene allows Lee to seduce him, but still doesn’t reveal his sexuality and lets Lee see him hanging out with a woman.

During intimacy scenes, what starts with moments of tenderness turns into disjointed imagery set to Trent Reznor’s unsettling, cacophonous score, leading us to question just how authentic Lee and Eugene’s connection is.

It’s bitterly humorous to watch Lee invite Eugene on a trip to South America and take him to a reclusive botanist to trip on ayahuasca to achieve telepathy before asking Eugene anything about himself.

During their trip, Eugene tells Lee via telepathy, “I’m not queer.” His figure starts to appear transparent.

Lee says he knows, also starting to fade, but then Eugene finishes his sentence — “I’m disembodied.”

The phrase is a striking metaphor that equates queerness with true, physical existence. “Queer” as a film is so chock-full of metaphors that captivate you just as easily as they fly over your head.

If the summer was for the sultry, energizing polyamorous romp that “Challengers” gave us, then winter is for the mind-bending interrogation of identity that is “Queer.”

Though queerness has become more prevalent in the media, many queer stories are preoccupied with sex, exchanging in-depth exploration of their characters for heart-wrenching romances we’ve all seen before.

While gay sex is certainly titillating, “Queer” reminds us that queer is another word for strange.

True queerness is beyond sex. It’s beyond situationships that forbid communication. It’s beyond ayahuasca trips in the jungle.

You will leave “Queer” utterly confused, completely blown away or somewhere in between. What’s certain is that it will not be what you expect.