VERSED: THE ASCAP PODCAST illuminates the heart and soul of music - the songwriters and composers whose work makes us sing, dance and want to change the world. Regularly featuring the greatest music creators from a diversity of genres who share the stories behind writing their hits and best-loved work - and the gems of wisdom they gained in the process - as well as industry experts who discuss the important issues that affect the lives and livelihoods of all music creators, VERSED offers insight into the hearts and minds of music professionals like never before. If music is your life, and you want to experience what it's like inside ASCAP's music creator community, then VERSED is required - yet fascinating - listening.
Hannah Marks is a bassist, composer and educator living in New York City who leads a risk-taking acoustic jazz quartet that features NYC's most in-demand sidemen. Her career is on fire. She tours internationally with NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater's project "We Exist!" She was named to Downbeat magazine Critics Poll Rising Star Bassist list and just dropped a fantastic new album featuring her chops called Feed the Fire.
Marks was also honored with a 2026 ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award and is set to perform with her quartet at the prestigious DC JazzFest in Washington DC on September 5. She'll appear alongside jazz greats Kurt Elling, Yellowjackets, Lisa Fischer, Nate Smith and many more.
Here she talks with VERSED about her many passions as a composer and musician, the power of playing live and the advice she shares with the next generation in her role serving on the faculty at Fordham University.
Visit Hannah's website (https://www.hannahmarksbass.com/)
Listen to her new album, Feed the Fire
Watch Hannah Marks Quartet perform "Aggro" live at the Jazz Gallery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P4t9gijpHQ)
Download the ASCAP Mobile App
3 Dec 2025
Jerskin Fendrix on Bugonia's Beguiling Music
"Bugonia" is the ancient practice of leaving out the body of a dead cow, with the belief that bees would spontaneously generate from its carcass. That strange idea serves as an inspiration for the film Bugonia, the latest from visionary director Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, The Favourite, The Lobster). And in an abstract way it also inspired its score by British composer Jerskin Fendrix – the first original composer that Lanthimos ever worked with, and his collaborator on Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness.
Fendrix didn't read the script or see any footage before he began writing music for Bugonia. Instead, Lanthimos gave him just three words: "bees," "basement" and "spaceship." The bare bones of the film's metaphorical carcass, out of which Fendrix generated his score.
What resulted is a grandiose, oftentimes unhinged score that tracks the film's complex emotional terrain. It was recorded by the 90-piece London Contemporary Orchestra, which Jerskin praised for their adventurousness. "They're up for playing around, they're up for experimenting, they're up for embarrassing themselves musically," he says. "So being able to play with an orchestra…which I was able to draw some more unusual, more provocative sounds out of, was an absolute joy."
The same month that Bugonia was released in theaters, Fendrix released Once Upon a Time…In Shropshire, his first solo album in five years. It's a fascinating yin to Bugonia's yang, representing a very different side of this multi-faceted creator.
Follow Jerskin Fendrix on Instagram.
Bugonia is in theaters and on select streaming platforms. More info here (https://www.focusfeatures.com/bugonia).
Listen to Jerskin Fendrix's discography on Spotify.
Stream Once Upon a Time...In Shropshire on Bandcamp.
Get tickets now for the 2026 ASCAP Experience.
22 Sept 2025
Everybody Loves Lucius
Lucius, the Grammy-nominated indie-pop quartet led by Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe, have been crafting innovative, exciting and absolutely otherworldly music for nearly 20 years. Driven by Holly and Jess’s intricately-blended vocals and backed by masterful musicians, drummer Dan Molad and guitarist Peter Lalish, Lucius’s songs deliver provocative and soulful journeys into the human heart, all set in soundscapes that are by turns edgy and cinematic.
On the heels of releasing their fourth studio album, a self-titled work that is their most personal and purposeful work to date, and which Rolling Stone calls “The best album of their career,” Holly and Jess took a break from their 2025 Gold Rush Tour to talk to VERSED about their roots, the art of collaboration and harmonizing and how their long-enduring friendship and partnership has carried them through music-making, motherhood and more.
We also share insights from singer-songwriter Alex Warren’s appearance at the 2023 ASCAP Experience in LA that set him up for success with “Ordinary,” Billboard’s 2025 Song of the Summer.
Catch Lucius on tour
Listen to their new album
Watch the video for “Final Days”
Download the ASCAP Mobile App (https://www.ascap.com/mobileapp)
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
4.6 / 5
10 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Contact VERSED: The ASCAP Podcast
Guest appearances
Does not typically book guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Host of VERSED: The ASCAP Podcast?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
