B-Side Guys

Santa Barbara duo Finn & Jake construct “When I Call” around the specific torture of knowing someone won’t pick up the phone. Olivia Finnerty’s vocals navigate the space between hope and resignation with the kind of careful precision that suggests experience with conversations that never happen. Her delivery carries weight that belies their relatively new partnership—formed after meeting as UCSB students and busking around town.

The song examines relationship endings not through dramatic confrontation but through the slower cruelty of abandoned communication rituals. Jake Hahn’s instrumentation creates dreamlike atmosphere that mirrors the dissociative quality of mourning someone who’s still alive but no longer accessible. Their approach to indie pop feels genuinely intimate rather than performed, suggesting artists who understand that the most devastating moments often happen in private.

Finnerty’s voice possesses what they describe as “angelic” quality, but it’s the earthbound pain in her delivery that makes “When I Call” effective. She presents acceptance as active process rather than passive resignation—the difference between giving up and choosing to let go. The track benefits from their busking background, which taught them to connect with listeners immediately rather than building elaborate sonic architecture.

Their decision to create accompanying animation demonstrates understanding that some emotional experiences require multiple forms of expression. The visual component suggests artists who think beyond single-format presentation, treating songs as starting points for broader creative exploration.

“When I Call” succeeds because Finn & Jake resist the temptation to overdramatize heartbreak. Instead, they focus on the mundane rituals that become painful after loss—the muscle memory of reaching for your phone, the phantom vibrations of messages that never arrive, the specific silence that follows unanswered calls.