To reductively describe what Matt Wheeler, AKA Teardropcity, does, his music sort of sounds like a hip-hop/country hybrid with vocals that sound straight out of Beat Happening. But let's let the Olympia local describe it himself.

"I have several catch-phrases that I use to describe it, the first being ‘music for late nights and early mornings,'" says Wheeler. "The second being ‘contemporary American music from the future past,' the third being ‘400-year-old hip-hop,' the fourth being ‘avant garde music for the masses.' ... I think that's all of them. Sort of a combination of those."

In case you haven't already figured this out, Wheeler is a savvy guy. In exploring his albums, you find songs like "Jay Z Diss," which, despite its provocative name, is an otherwise innocuous song, a free jazz chant that doesn't quite rip Jay-Z a new one. Wheeler says he released it in protest of Jay-Z's vilification of autotune, but part of the brilliance of the Teardropcity project is this kind of self-promotion and self-mythologizing, which also manifests in Wheeler's series of bizarre green-screen music videos.

Read Rev. Adam McKinney's full feature on Teardropcity in the Weekly Volcano's Music section.

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