The Traverse City-born, Nashville-based power group The Accidentals released the music video for their new single “Eastern Standard Time” last Friday — a sterling, silvery indie folk song that gives a sincere nod to their beloved home state with footage shot on the Leelanau Peninsula.

The Accidentals’ Katie Larson shares that “Eastern Standard Time” was written with artist and songwriter Peter Mulvey. “We met Peter when we played a Tuesday at Frederick Meijer Gardens with Ralston Bowles & Friends,” she says, noting, “Peter plays guitar on this track and the arrangement on this song is breathtaking.”

She explains their inspiration: “Sometimes when you go into a co-write, you look for things you have in common that you can write about. So after geeking out about fungi and nature on Zoom for a good thirty minutes, we decided to write a song about the mystery and beauty that exists in that connection between his home state — Wisconsin — and our home state.”

The lyrics are delivered with tenderness, but don’t hold back on their potency: The Accidentals share that “threats to our remaining freshwater resources, the long-lasting effects of colonization on Indigenous people, and climate change…are all things we were thinking about as we wrote Eastern Standard Time. [The lyric] ‘three fires burn from the old bloodlines,’ pays homage to the three Native American tribes that comprise much of the Midwest.”

The music video features ethereal Leelanau County landscapes which Larson says, “is courtesy of [Lake Leelanau resident] Elijah Allen, who captured drone footage of the Leelanau countryside, and of himself ice skating across frozen North Lake Leelanau.”

Allen is a local contractor and builder as well as film hobbyist and winter sports enthusiast. He now adds music video producer to his credits after The Accidentals saw a mesmerizing video he posted online of the glasslike lake in January and asked to collaborate.

The Accidentals recorded “Eastern Standard Time” at their own Crooked Moon Studios in Nashville. It’s the first single off their self-produced TIME OUT Session #2, “an album of collaborations with the songwriters who inspired us to write” coming March 4. The release of the TIME OUT Session #2 album comes on the heels of the TIME OUT Session #1, which Rolling Stone called “the anthem for uniting a busted America.” 

Larson notes, “Our goal with TIME OUT Session #2 is to write songs that build bridges, celebrate our differences, find gratitude in grief, and remind us we are connected in our humanness.”

A two-month Midwest tour kicks off next week: “We’re playing songs from the album in the round with Kim Richey, Maia Sharp, and Beth Nielsen Chapman,” says Larson. A heads up for locals, there is a March 6 stop at The Old Art Building in Leland. (Find tickets here.) 

Meanwhile, Michigan native and rising modern country artist Sophie Bolen debuts a single, “Night Owl” this spring, with a video featuring a snow-swept Glen Haven beach, Glen Lake, and the inimitable Art’s Tavern.

Bolen tells the Leelanau Ticker of the kismet opportunity: “[Art’s owner] Tim Barr, was so gracious. I knew it was impossible to get it as a location but luckily enough the day we needed it was their annual cleaning day.”

Bolen, of Grand Rapids, has family who have been a part of the Glen Arbor community for generations. She jokes that she grew up “roaming all over town, but my cousins were all older than me so I never could go out to Art’s with them.”

Bolen, now 22, has worked steadily in film and commercials since age 10 (when she co-starred in The Christmas Bunny with Florence Henderson). She later both acted in and sang for the soundtrack to The Horse Dancer, but it wasn’t until she joined a workshop with producer Matt Wilder and top Nashville songwriters that the world of country music opened up to her.

She will release a batch of her own modern country pop tunes this spring, though “Night Owl” is a ballad borrowed from acclaimed songwriter Deanna Walker. “It is about longing and it’s beautiful. There’s lyrics about being in a bar in the middle of night, and Art’s had just the right atmosphere. The feeling you get when you walk into Art’s…it feels like you are walking onto a movie set.”

Ben Lemmen is the video’s director and cinematographer. Tarren Knox from Grand Rapids plays Bolen’s love interest. “Ben shot it like a short film. It’s really cool to go from outside in the snow, to inside Art’s where it is warm, vibrant and alive.”

Tim Barr was behind the bar, of course, “And all the extras were my aunts and uncles and my mom’s cousins [the Thomasmas, Lyons, and Vredevoogd-Combs].”

Bolen dined at Art’s the day after the video shoot. “Staff and customers were talking about it while I was a fly on the wall, eating tots with the special mustard,” she laughs. “I am so grateful everything worked out the way it did, allowing something that normally would never be able to happen. Art’s is the heart of Glen Arbor, and I am really excited for everyone to see it.”

Pictured: Still from “Eastern Standard Time,” shot by Elijah Allen; on the set of “Night Owl” by Alex Bolen