“A Summer Day on Mercury”

There’s something quietly explosive about Mercury, the latest single from Bud Kelsey. Recorded solo in a single summer day inside an old funeral home apartment in Boone, North Carolina, this track feels like a one-man time capsule cracked open, with all the ghosts of past selves, broken bands, and half-said goodbyes echoing inside.

Built on warm layers of analog soul and gut-punching honesty, Mercury is a genre-fluid swirl of alternative country and indie rock, with Southern grit and West Coast shimmer coexisting in harmony. Fans of Big Thief, MJ Lenderman, or The Lemon Twigs will feel right at home here, yet Kelsey’s voice, both literally and creatively, feels unmistakably his own. There’s a looseness in the groove, but every element is deliberate, grounded in rawness without ever sounding careless.

It’s easy to imagine this track pouring out of him in a single sitting, vocals arriving first like a journal entry set to melody, then swelling into a soundscape that’s simultaneously intimate and expansive. With its homespun production and emotionally grounded performance, Mercury doesn’t just sound like a turning point for Kelsey,it feels like a declaration. A reset. A map drawn in real time as he searches for his own North Star.

Put simply, Mercury isn’t trying to be big. It’s just trying to be real and in doing so, it hits like something massive.