Friendship and feeling collide in lo-fi's softer corners: phoneswithchords crafts indie lo-fi folk born from summer voice memos and unplanned joy with collaborator Ben Sooy, while Start-Track's Sampler '25 channels music into meaning — splitting proceeds between their blog and Slovak homeless charity Vagus. Auditory Cortex paints a mural of grief and impending doom across two hard-won songs, and Rebekkah The Band weaves a poem-turned-melody into a short story of war and love. j4vaman drifts through experimental dark ambient sampled from old Adult Swim bumpers and public service ads.