Ceylon Sailor: NY Slice Session 2025

Ceylon Sailor is keeping indie rock alive and well. The band was founded by North Carolina-born, New York-based multi-instrumentalist Keith Sigel —who also co-founded the Brooklyn venue Gold Sounds — and yes, I do believe that is a reference to the Pavement album of the same name (though spelled slightly differently).

In fact, the spirit of '90s bands like Pavement, Superchunk, and Neutral Milk Hotel guides Ceylon's Sailor's sound. Last year, Sigel and his bandmates released their first single, "Better Times," and that was the first song of theirs that I featured on "NY Slice."

Ceylon Sailor have a couple of EPs under their belt, Cambridge Streets and Lines Seem Severed, and they're focused on releasing an album later this spring. For this "NY Slice Session," Sigel — joined by drummer Kieran Kelly, keyboadist Andrew Wood, bassist Seth Ondracek and Dave Long on trumpet — played two songs: "Not Where We Were" and "Lines Seems Severed." There was also a "NY Slice" pop quiz, which Keith and Kieran handled. Check it all out below.

[Recorded 1/28/25; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Julia Maling and James Higgins; produced by Meghan Suma; videographers: Stephanie Lane, Nikki Phillips, Sydney Marovitz, Gina Slavin and Grace Guerra.]