WUGA

Kishi Bashi made a name for himself with the shiny, fantastical indie pop of his first three albums. (The singer and multi-instrumentalist also made a pseudonym for himself: his stage name is a mashup of his first initial – K, for Kaoru – and last name, Ishibashi.) 

Ishibashi's newest record Omoiyari (available May 31) takes a more sober turn. From Japanese, "omoiyari" roughly translates as compassion or kindness shown toward others, which stirred in the Athens-based musician after President Trump's administration placed a travel ban on people from specific, predominantly Muslim countries.

Hurricane Maria slammed the entire U.S. territory of Puerto Rico two weeks ago. Maria came hard on the havoc of other storms, leaving the entire island dreadfully damaged, flooded, without basic necessities, and difficulty distributing what they did have, and no electricity. Nearly 90,000 Puerto Ricans live in Georgia, nearly a fourth of them in Cobb and Gwinnett Counties. Cynthia Román-Hernández is a Managing Director with the Latin American Association in Atlanta, and her husband Juan Carlos Rodriguez is an assistant professor at Georgia Tech.