Dear indie friends,

There’s something strange about holidays.

We spend months dreaming about them, counting the days, imagining silence, distance, slower mornings, longer nights. We promise ourselves we will finally rest.

And then… the moment arrives.

Suddenly, the brain refuses to stop.

A melody appears while staring through a train window.
A lyric sneaks into your mind while walking near the sea.
A story begins somewhere between two airport announcements.
An idea for a painting, a film, a project, a new life, arrives exactly when you were supposed to do absolutely nothing.

Maybe creativity has always hated schedules.

Maybe inspiration only speaks when the noise finally leaves the room.

Because let’s be honest… most of the year, we live compressed. Notifications. Timetables. Algorithms. Deadlines. Repetition. Endless scrolling. Endless reacting. Endless surviving.

And then holidays come like a small rebellion against acceleration itself.

For a few days, or a few weeks, time becomes softer.

You start noticing details again.

The sound of dishes in a tiny café somewhere far from home.
The strange rhythm of strangers speaking a language you don’t understand.
The colors of a sunset that no smartphone camera ever captures correctly.
The silence inside forests.
The smell of old books in forgotten towns.
The emotional shock of hearing a street musician at the exact right moment.

This is where creativity hides.

Not only inside studios.

Not only behind expensive software.

Not only in perfectly optimized workflows.

Creativity lives inside interruptions.
Inside detours.
Inside accidental moments.

And maybe that’s why so many indie artists secretly create their best ideas during periods where they are supposedly “doing nothing.”

Vacations are dangerous for creativity.

Because they remind us that inspiration was never fully under control.

You can spend six months forcing songs that refuse to exist… then suddenly write an entire chorus while sitting near a lake with bad coffee and no Wi-Fi.

You can spend weeks searching for your artistic direction… then find it while getting lost in a city you never planned to visit.

Sometimes the brain needs movement to unlock emotion.

Sometimes distance helps us hear ourselves again.

And maybe this matters even more now, in a world where everything pushes creators to constantly produce.

Post more.
Release faster.
Stay visible.
Stay active.
Stay optimized.
Stay present.
Stay profitable.

But creativity doesn’t always bloom under pressure.

Sometimes it needs emptiness.

Real emptiness.

The kind that feels uncomfortable at first.

The kind where you stop checking statistics every ten minutes.
The kind where you forget what day it is.
The kind where your identity slowly reconnects to something human again.

I think indie culture desperately needs this reminder.

Not every silence is failure.
Not every pause is disappearance.
Not every slow period means you lost your fire.

Sometimes artists disappear because they are rebuilding themselves.

Sometimes the next masterpiece begins with a long walk, a missed train, a random conversation at 2AM, or simply the courage to rest without guilt.

Maybe holidays are not an escape from creativity.

Maybe they are part of the creative process itself.

So wherever you are reading this from…

A crowded city.
A beach.
A tiny apartment.
A train station.
A mountain road.
A night shift.
A place you love.
Or a place you are trying to escape from…

I hope you allow yourself a little space.

Not to become productive.

Not to become “better.”

Just enough space to hear what still lives inside you beneath the noise.

Who knows?

Maybe your next song is already waiting there.

This week again, the indie world kept moving in every direction at once.

Songs written between two sleepless nights.
Albums born in bedrooms and garages.
Voices recorded thousands of kilometers apart somehow meeting inside the same track.
Artists continuing despite exhaustion, uncertainty, algorithms, and silence.

And honestly… that may be the most beautiful form of creativity of all.

Not perfection.

Persistence.

Quiet, stubborn, human persistence.

And speaking of beautiful persistence…

Today in Le Salon Indie de Mitxoda, I’ll be playing the latest track from Vanessa Tottle, Earthside, an intimate eleven-minute journey where she delivers a deeply incarnated, woman-empowered piece that slowly unfolds like a conversation with the soul itself.

A track that feels less like a song and more like a reconciliation between past wounds and present strength, where memory, healing, motherhood, art and resilience slowly begin to dance together beneath the surface.

Alongside it, several World Premieres will also enter the airwaves today:

🎧 Eckotrigger — Pleasure & Pain
🎧 The Far Worst — Devil & I
🎧 The Siffredis — Dolly Kane
🎧 Taylor D — Fake Illusion
🎧 Regifter — Tiny Venus

Different sounds. Different worlds. Same indie heartbeat.

And while writing these words, I’m currently facing the sea. Literally. Sitting by the Belgian coastline, taking a small step aside from the usual rhythm, spending precious time with my family.

And honestly… it feels incredibly good.

That little disconnected moment.
That slower breathing.
That sensation of letting the mind drift without pressure for a while.

I truly wish this feeling to all of you.

Because sometimes, even for indie souls constantly creating, surviving, building and moving forward… a little pause near the waves can heal more than we imagine.

Stay tuned.

One hour of beauty is awaiting for you all.

And keep sending your music. Always.

Mitxoda

This week’s Top 10 isn’t about winning prizes, it’s about love, support, and staying in it together.

Listen Back to the last Friday Salon Indie de Mitxoda here.

Every Friday at 4:00 PM (Brussels time) a new episode of Le Salon Indie de Mitxoda will take place on salon.mitxoda.be, don’t miss it.

Sometimes the best creative decision is simply to breathe long enough for new ideas to find you again.

See you, somewhere between noise and silence.

Love you all,

Stay true.
🖤 Mitxoda

END 😆