I'm still struggling with low spirits due to the death of my youngest brother, so I wasn't sure I was up to chosing the "Monday Music" this week ... and yet music is often the very thing that I turn to for solace, understanding, and healing. So I send these songs out for Keith, my brother who is gone; to Vic, my brother who is missing; to Michael, my brother recently found; and to any of you who might resonate with it too. Art lifts us. And that's why we need it. 

Above: "Bubble" by King Creosote and John Hopkins, from their collaborative album Diamond Mine (2001). The animated video, with its doppleganger of Tilly, was directed by Elliot Dear. 

Below: "Wherever I Go" by the great British guitarist Mark Knopfler, with Australian-born bluegrass musician Ruth Moody, now based in Canada. The song appeared on Knopfler's album Tracker (2015).

Above: "Dear Brother" by Nahko Bear, with two members of his band, Medicine for the People: Max Ribner and Tim Snider. Nahko is singer-songwriter of mixed Apache, Mohawk, Puerto Rican & Filipino heritage. The song was recorded live in New York in 2018.

Below: "Tus Pies" by Nahko Bear, recorded live in New York in 2016.

Above: "No Hard Feelings" by The Avett Brothers ( Scott Avett, Seth Avett, Bob Crawford, Joe Kwon) from North Carolina. The song was filmed for the Live from Here television program in 2017, with back-up from the Live from Here band.

Below: "Time After Time" by American singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper, from her first album, She's So Unusual (1983). When I was a young editor in New York City in the '80s, my youngest brother used to call me "Terri Lauper" to tease me for my '80s fashion sense. The original video for "Time After Time" reminded him of me, he once said, for I'd always been something of a misfit in our family and left it at a very young age. The haunting version below, filmed in 2004, seems the right song to end with today.