While others have been steadily diluting their original work with politicized lyricisms both leftist and rightist the same, the crew of Pete Muller & The Kindred Souls are defiantly making Americana great again in their new single “For What It’s Worth,” a cover of the Buffalo Springfield track of the same title. Circumventing comparisons to the classic song through a heady mixture of millennial folk conceptualism and post-country pastoral execution, Pete Muller and his band deliver us a cover actually worth writing home about here – and it’s one that relates to the incendiary nature of our modern times better than anything else might have.

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This definitely doesn’t feel like a conventional cover song by any measurement; on the contrary, I would say that its bluesy soulfulness and contemporary grit are what essentially plant both its stylization and the narrative itself in the 21^st century. While Pete Muller & The Kindred Souls might just as easily have manipulated the beat into something a little more raucous, they take the opposite route here and spread out of the tension as far as it will run. This makes the catharsis on the backside of the track all the more powerful and telling of what freedom from oppressive forces feels like.

The music video for “For What It’s Worth” strips away any and all potential cosmetics from the equation and leaves us to examine the chemistry of The Kindred Souls more than it does anything else. The result? We find a group of players led by one Pete Muller completely untethered to the notion of living up to what Buffalo Springfield already accomplished with this song. They’re playing this for a much greater reason – arguably one that transcends culture timelines and brings us the unity only cable news anchors seem to be interested in talking about anymore.

“For What It’s Worth,” in this incarnation, features a clandestine climax in comparison to its original form, but this works for a couple of big reasons. By keeping things toned-down from start to finish, there’s an argument to be made that Pete Muller and his band are able to make the entirety of the single feel as expressive as its greatest release is. That’s not the path a lot of their rivals might have taken, but the uniqueness of this piece is what makes it the kind of cover that anyone can listen to and fall in love with.

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/What-Worth-Kindred-Souls-Muller/dp/B08N41XSC6

As powerful a cover as they come, Pete Muller & The Kindred Souls’ “For What It’s Worth” should be considered required listening by anyone who keeps tabs on indie music this month. No matter which side of the isle you sit on, a song like “For What It’s Worth” generates a spark within us that is so especially American that it takes a superb group of Americana interpreters to really do it the justice it properly deserves. It’s a single I don’t see many people taking umbrage with, but instead embracing as the one of a kind document it truly is.

John McCall