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Get ready to feel uplifted with new music from Scratchy Blanket

Shannon Keating fronts the Pittsburgh band Scratchy Blanket along with her wife Chloe Hodgkins.

“Chloe is the mastermind behind most of the guitar parts. Typically, the sound of the song is what will influence my lyrics. I basically just let the sound of the song take me to some kind of emotional place. We’re usually all on the same page as far as what we want a song to sound like,” says Shannon Keating.

Scratchy Blanket describes their music as “kind and polite indie rock.” You can add yearning and uplifting as well, especially when you hear their new song “On Top.”

“The song ‘On Top’ is about loving your friends and needing them to stay alive. The first line, ‘Which one of my friends is next?’ reflects how desperate it feels to see your friend struggling or even dying and not knowing how to stop it. I want my friends – or anyone, really – to know that it’s okay to not feel on top all the time and that I can be there to carry some of that weight if it becomes too heavy,” says Keating.

You can see those heartwarming, genuine friendships on display prominently in the video for “On Top.”

“So, the song is about friendship and, for our music video, a bunch of our closest friends came together to help us. They helped us with the script and the acting and the production. We felt so blessed to have that experience. It was really a reminder to us of how strong our bonds are with our friends and how strong the music community is here in Pittsburgh,” says Keating.

Joey Spehar is a Pittsburgh native who started as a volunteer D.J. at WYEP, fresh out of college in 2006. He took on any job they’d let him do like editing audio, engineering remote broadcasts, and shoveling snow.