Ears Wide Open: Yony

Matt Wallock on February 11th, 2022

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Yony is the indie-rock fun bunch helmed by Mike Cionni, who have released an album, an EP and a handful of singles since their 2017 inception.

Cionni’s sextet returned in January with “If It Happened 2 U,” a power-pop ripper that doubles as a purposefully ambiguous parable about injustice. The song opens with a taut bassline and anxious keys as Cionni sings about transphobic parents, but another storyline – about a bully named Billy – is more fleshed out.

“I was a little scared of the song at first, which tends to happen when I’m writing something deeply personal,” Cionni says. “But even though I was passionate about the message, I knew it wasn’t mine. It became a handful of vignettes laid out for the listener to draw their own conclusions. We followed that same approach for the video and the art.”

The lyric video — directed and edited by Cionni and Bree Doehring — stars Sawyer Greenberg and Joe Casper as a pair of unhinged news anchors whose broadcast goes off the rails. Meanwhile, Yony’s current members (Cionni, Cionni’s sister Meg, Jim Berkenkamp, Alex Zudin, Michelle Maret and Dustin Hackworth) deliver a punchy studio performance. Another segment features a protest scene gone awry.

“If It Happened 2 U,” the follow-up to their 2021 single “Drift Away,” is the first glimpse of the Los Angeles-based band’s forthcoming LP, “More Truth In Fiction,” due March 25 via A Fingerpants Production.

||| Stream: “If It Happened 2 U”