Ben Connelly spent the nineties investigating clubs, studios, and late night parties in South Minneapolis and across the Eastern half of the United States with his rock band Steeplejack, who put out one full length and three EPs for a variety of record labels. His solo debut "Big Red Throbbing Heart" launched his solo career in 2001. His songs have appeared on college, commercial, and public radio, as well as national television and theatre and film productions. Live he transports audiences across the northern Midwest and East coasts with what Minneapolis's City Pages describe as "furious finger-picking and top-notch tunes."

The archetypal resonance of folk songs, spirituals, and fairy tales, the subtle power of lyric poetry, and a raw passion for rock and roll, all pour into to the indie-folk mold of Ben Connelly's sophomore CD, "You Burn Hotter" to form a beautiful, cracked, joyous, and troubling mess. Connelly's passion for storytelling and blazing finger-style guitar are carried on a river of arcane rhyme schemes and bizarre lyrical conceits which live happily next to workaday imagery and chant-like anaphora. Radiant hope wrestles patiently with cynicism and despair. Certainly worth checking out.

"Hayward Williams' earnestly jaunty folk-rock might seem anachronistic in the prevailing musical atmosphere of self-conscious irony, but his combination of melody, restraint, and unabashed enthusiasm saves the day. Williams also boasts a voice that sounds several decades older than he actually is, lending his songs of love and loss a gravity they might not otherwise possess." - The Onion

Ahhh, where to start? The exquisite gruffness of a manly voice that belies the strip of a lad who appears on the photographs? The moving, intelligent storytelling, from which "Doctors" and "Problems with Hemingway" stand out --- but only just - from the crowd? Or the new-alt-country-blues (and will you forgive me that phrase) of the sound, put to beautiful use on 'Devil's Lament'? In truth, its hard to put it into words; this is a fantastic record, one that's a treat from start to finish. On first listen, the cover of Thunder Road strikes a jarring note; when your songs are as good as Hayward's there seems no need to walk in another's shoes, but several goes later and it melds in seamlessly. You'll like this." - Americana UK