VIDEO PREMIERE: “Make You Whole” by Dilly Dally Alley

Contributed to by Krista Vilinskis of Elephants and Flowers Media

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Dilly Dally Alley is our kind of band.

Their live performances are high-energy affairs, engaging the crowd, weather they like it or not.  Every show features a “balloon experiment”, some are blessed with a “kazoo experiment”, and most feature an excessive amount of crowd singing that audiences either really like (or at least say they really like!).

With their latest release, Make You Whole, Dilly Dally Alley created an album that was born to be brought to the stage, forging tunes that are meant to encourage interaction with a crowd.

Make You Whole is jam-packed with infectious grooves and upbeat shuffles, but its lyrics also dig into what vulnerable little comforts we can rest in during turbulent and difficult times. It grapples with different strands of rejection (of the queer self, of one’s own trauma, of the forces of our planet, of our loved ones), how our brokenness after rejection can form a patchwork of strength and wisdom, and how our beauty lies in the fibers of this vulnerability. Especially when you’re dancing to these tunes about it.

Below is the VIDEO PREMIERE of the title track off of Make You Whole.

About Dilly Dalley Alley:

Dilly Dally Alley is a queer femme-led, Minneapolis-based indie funk band that got started in May of 2022 with an Art-A-Whirl debut. They have since been taking the Twin Cities by storm with meaning-filled crowd games, vivacious solos, and other joyful nonsense. Every performance features a balloon experiment, sometimes a kazoo experiment, and an excessive amount of crowd singing that audiences either really like or at least say they really like. They hope their music and community organizing can tap into human universals that inspire the Twin Cities to care for their communities, their biomes, and their world. Founder and leader, Sophia Spiegel, first beheld the talents of one of her bandmates, Will Kjeer (keys), at Interlochen Arts Academy. She then went on to play cello with her other two mates, Maxwell Voda (bass) and Kevin Yetter (drums) in the St. Olaf Orchestra.

When the pandemic hit and there weren’t many folks she could play with, Spiegel picked up the guitar, decided to muck around on the cello with a loop pedal, and wrote the bulk of the tunes heard in Dilly’s upcoming album, Make You Whole. When Spiegel decided to share these songs with her bandmates, the music formed a mind of its own, they had a sense they were making something a lot of folks could dig. Of course that’s what every band thinks when they start out, but we’re still here, and you’re still reading this, so joke’s on you.

They decided to have one last back-alley party and record the tracks for their debut album right before Kjeer and Yetter left for graduate school in August of 2022 (Dilly loves them and eternally wishes them well). Sophia then went on to write horn parts for all of the tracks, and began her collaboration with Adam Tucker in coproducing the excessive bells and whistles heard in this music. She then recruited all the immaculately-groovéd Twin Cities legends she could think of – Ivan Cunningham (sax), Ben Ehrlich (drums), Levi Schwartzberg (keys), and Mitch Van Laar (trumpet) – and began her work forging the dreams of this freshly-minted group of pals. Since then, they have enjoyed praise and success for their high-energy performances and continue to gain a reputation for their good sounds, having been featured on The Current, NPR, KFAI, and RadioK. They will have their album release show at the Turf Club in St. Paul on Wednesday, May 17th with Psylo, Rabeca, and Freaque, and they hope to celebrate the release of their album with a midwest tour and continued chaos-stirring in the Twin Cities this summer.

Make You Whole

MUSIC and LYRICS by SOPHIA SPIEGEL
LYRICS for “Give Yourself Up To Yourself” CO-WRITTEN by SOPHIA SPIEGEL and JUSTIN HALVERSON
PRODUCED by SOPHIA SPIEGEL and ADAM TUCKER
PERFORMED by: IVAN CUNNINGHAM on Alto Saxophone
WILL KJEER on keys
SOPHIA SPIEGEL on guitar, vocals, & cello
ADAM TUCKER on auxiliary percussion
MITCH VAN LAAR on Trumpet
MAX VODA on bass & violin
KEVIN YETTER on drums

RECORDED, MIXED, and MASTERED by ADAM TUCKER at SIGNATURETONE RECORDING in MINNEAPOLIS, MN
ALBUM and BOOKLET ARTWORK by DEVIN CUNEEN