Tarra Matthews

Managing Editor

There always seem to be those nights where you can’t sleep and end up lost in YouTube for hours. These adventures sometimes end in those weird corners of YouTube but every so often you stumble upon a cool cover video of an artist (or group of artists) putting their own spin on a song.  So when I came across this version of “Cups” I thought it was a really cool and refreshing spin on the song (made famous by Anna Kendrick in Pitch Perfect)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Uftr-jWz4]

YouTubers Grace Doty & Kara Della Valle performed this version and I recently had the opportunity to chat with Grace Doty about how the cover came about, her love of guitar-heavy music and her up-coming album!

Kara and Grace became friends through YouTube after seeing each other’s videos and having a mutual respect for each other’s talent. The two finally had the chance to meet up and perform together and the result was their cover of ‘Cups.’ When I asked Grace what made their version of the song different from the others that have popped up since Pitch Perfect became an international hit, she said that it was probably the addition of Syracuse University’s all-male a cappella group the Otto Tunes who provided background on the track.

When it comes to her own music, Grace told me that she’s been writing songs since she was 16, after teaching herself piano and guitar. Her EP, featuring a collection of songs she wrote and arranged herself is titled “Stuff From My Brain.” She says that she loves music driven by cool guitar tracks and counts Jimi Hendrix, John Mayer and Pink Floyd.

When it came to talking about potential collaborations, Grace had 3 names (from her list of 70) that were at the top: Brad Doggett, contestant from season 1 of The Voice, Kelly Rosenthal, a girl who can play a mean electric guitar and the one and only Theo Katzman! Talk about small world!

So what’s next for Grace Doty? She teased that she’s in the process of starting work on her next album! She says that she wants to strive to lay down every guitar track on this record (unlike the last). We also talked about Kickstarter success stories and she said that she loves the idea of fans and supporters coming together to support something/someone they love so she’s intrigued about doing that for this record too – keep your eyes of for details on that in the future!

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