Over the past several months, I’ve been connecting with record store owners, independent artists, and vinyl collectors as I’ve been building Vinyl Vibes​, sharing their stories and celebrating the culture that keeps vinyl alive.

Somewhere along that journey, I came across an incredible book called The Record Keepers by Josh Greenberg, a project built around digging into the stories behind Canada’s record stores and the people who keep them going.

I spent the past few weeks with Josh’s book — a bit strategically, honestly. I’d pair chapters with listening sessions, spinning albums like David Bowie’s Scary Monsters or Echo & the Bunnymen’s Songs to Learn and Sing. I started with the Ontario chapter and eventually journeyed coast to coast, discovering stories that made it feel like I was standing inside the shops myself.

That’s what made The Record Keepers such an enjoyable read for me. It isn’t simply a book about record stores. It’s about the people behind the counter, the customers walking through the door, the records they discover and the communities that form around them.

Vinyl has always had a way of bringing people together.

Sometimes it happens in a record store, standing beside someone flipping through the same bin. Sometimes it's a conversation at a record show or a recommendation from someone who knows exactly what you're looking for.

And sometimes it starts online.

That's how I came across Vinyl Threads Collective, a group of music and record lovers who found each other through Instagram and turned a group chat into something much more.

I recently had the chance to talk with two of the people behind the collective, Luis and Sophie, about how the group came together, what keeps it going and why it has become such an important part of their lives.
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What I found wasn't a story about one person building a community.

It was a story about a group of people who found each other through a shared love of music, then kept showing up for one another.

Walk into Kops Records today and you will still find what has made the store special for decades: walls of records, deep catalogue, and people who love music. But you will also notice something else — a new generation helping carry that history forward.

Founded in 1976, Kops has survived every major shift in how people discover music, from vinyl’s decline to CDs, downloads, streaming, and now the renewed excitement around physical records.

But record stores have never survived simply because of what is on the shelves. They survive because of the people who create the experience.
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Among those people is Taylar, a musician from Wellington, New Zealand, whose journey at Kops began behind the scenes and grew into a role helping connect the store with a new generation of listeners

Some albums arrive quietly, almost by accident. Silver Spoon found me through a physical copy sitting at Flashbacks in Hamilton, waiting for someone to take a chance on it.

I went out of my way to pick it up because Chad always seems to have something interesting spinning, and I've come to trust his taste more than any algorithm. I'd streamed a couple of Fighting Frogs tracks, just enough to get a feeling for the band.

Something clicked.

So I made the trip.

What I came home with was CD 50 of 50, the final copy in the band's limited run. The number wasn't printed or factory-stamped. It was a homemade label stuck right on the front of the CD case.

That small detail says a lot.

This wasn't a major-label release designed to sit neatly on a shelf. It was two Hamilton musicians making something themselves, putting together fifty physical copies and sending them out into the world.
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Holding the last one made it feel less like buying an album and more like catching a small piece of a local music story while it was happening.

Canada has a knack for producing world-class independent music across just about every genre. The problem is that in the streaming era, finding those artists can feel harder than ever.

Music is everywhere, all the time. Thousands of new releases push through algorithms every week, each one fighting for a few seconds of our attention. And somehow, the more access we have, the harder it can become to connect with anything long enough to actually feel something.

Music discovery isn’t broken because there’s a lack of music.

It’s broken because there’s a lack of attention.

So when something does land—when a song cuts through the noise and makes me stop what I’m doing—I pay attention.

For context, I don’t cover anything I don’t genuinely like.

The first record that pulled Joe Hat into vinyl wasn't even his.

It was Black Flag's Damaged, sitting in his college radio station in Toronto in 2010. Joe was studying graphic design, buying CDs and getting deeper into heavy metal and hardcore punk when a classmate brought the album into INtune Radio.
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The music grabbed him. The artwork grabbed him even more.

Long before Elevated Music became a record store, it was a way for Bill to bring together everything music had given him.

Growing up just outside Vancouver, he started playing drums at ten years old and spent his teenage years chasing records with the same enthusiasm he brought to making music. While most people his age were buying the latest releases, Bill was already building a collection that stretched into the thousands.

​That obsession never really changed. It simply evolved.

By his mid-twenties, he was doing whatever he could to make music pay the bills. He recorded local artists, produced beats, played session drums, organized live events and sold records on the side. None of those jobs alone offered much security, but together they allowed him to keep building a life around music.

In 2011, at 25, he created Elevated Music—not as a record shop, but as the name for all of his creative work.

A deep dive into Kevin Crump’s passion for overlooked records, underground scenes, and the stories hidden inside the grooves.

That's how Kevin Crump opens almost every video. It's a playful, punk-rooted catchphrase that sets the tone before he even lifts a record.

He loves the mythology behind records as much as the records themselves. The whispered Beatles tapes that slipped out of Abbey Road. The bootlegs that feel half legend until you hear him explain where they came from. That's where the Record Detective comes alive. He's not chasing condition or value. He's chasing the strange, the overlooked, the records that shouldn't exist but somehow do.

Like the Russian pirate pressing of Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth's landmark 1988 double LP. He didn't show it off like a collector. He held it like evidence.

I first came across Kevin through one of those videos. That unmistakable opening line. The guerrilla-style delivery. The punk‑rooted intensity. The quick cuts. The raw enthusiasm.
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It reminded me of Nardwuar the Human Serviette. The same passion. The same deep-cut knowledge. The same genuine curiosity you can feel through the screen.