Stardust & Static | After Hours
- Mickey Fingers
- 18 hours ago
- 6 min read
Listen To, Stardust & Static On Mixcloud .. Or Press Play
Stardust & Static | After Hours
July 4, 2026 | 2:00 am | Central |
WDRTVelvet Umbrella Records | After Hours
With Mickey Fingers & Celeste Violet
Stardust & Static | After Hours
🌙 Stardust & Static
Part Two of Extraterrestrial Encore
The coffee has gone cold.
The last record has finished spinning.
The station is quieter now.
Somewhere beyond the windows of WDRT, the stars are impossibly bright.
Earlier today, our visitors wandered through record stores, discovered Wisconsin cheese curds, argued (politely) about synthesizers, and left with a much larger record collection than anyone remembers lending them.
Before they departed, they left us one simple note.
“Thank you for the music.”
That seemed like a pretty fair trade.
But every good conversation has that moment afterward… when everyone has gone home, the room grows quiet, and you find yourself thinking about everything that was shared.
Stardust & Static lives in that moment.
This is the quieter half of the journey.
A place built from dream pop, ambient soundscapes, midnight reflections, and the feeling that perhaps the universe has always been speaking to us… just softly enough that we needed to learn how to listen.
So dim the lights.
Leave the porch light on.
And if, somewhere tonight, another traveler happens to wander past our little corner of the universe…
I hope they know they’re welcome here.
Welcome to Velvet Umbrella Radio | After Hours.
Extraterrestrial Encore | 80's Hits From Beyond |Velvet Umbrella Radio
✨ Dive into the full playlist below — with videos linked for every track, so you can watch, listen, and wander through the eclectic flow.
Set your reminders | After Hours | Hour One | Weekly, On WDRT.
🌌 The Quiet Between Signals
By the time the last song faded away, the station had grown wonderfully quiet.
The coffee cups were still sitting where we’d left them.
A few records hadn’t quite made it back to their sleeves.
Outside, the stars carried on as they always have, completely unconcerned with whether anyone happened to be watching.
Earlier in the day, we’d spent hours imagining what visitors from another world might discover here.
Music.
Friendship.
Community radio.
Coffee.
Dream pop.
A surprising quantity of Wisconsin cheese curds.
But as evening settled over the station, another thought quietly arrived.
Perhaps first contact isn’t really about meeting someone from another planet.
Perhaps it’s about discovering that curiosity has a way of making strangers feel a little less strange.
The universe suddenly feels much smaller…
when you’re listening to the same song.
Some conversations don’t end when the music stops.
📓 A Note From Mickey
Earlier this week, I found myself thinking about what happens after a really good conversation.
Not the conversation itself.
The quiet afterward.
The drive home.
The moment you’re washing your coffee mug and suddenly remember one more thing you wish you’d said.
That’s where Stardust & Static came from.
When we first imagined Extraterrestrial Encore, we had a lot of fun wondering what visitors from another world might think of us.
They discovered community radio.
Record stores.
Cheese curds.
Dream pop.
A surprising number of wonderfully curious humans.
But I kept wondering what they might carry home.
Maybe not souvenirs.
Maybe not records.
Maybe just the feeling that somewhere, on a little blue planet, they found a place where complete strangers offered them coffee, music, and a seat at the table.
That’s a journey worth remembering.
I hope this playlist feels like sitting quietly under the stars after everyone has gone home.
Thank you for spending part of your evening with us.
We’ll leave the porch light on.
Until next time…
— Mickey Fingers
PLAY LIST
Air - La Femme d’Argent
Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas
Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd - Memory Gongs
Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy
Slowdive - Sugar for the Pill
Broadcast - Tears in the Typing Pool
This Mortal Coil - Song to the Siren
David Sylvian - Orpheus
Dead Can Dance - The Host of Seraphim
Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)
Jean-Jacques Perrey - Colonie Céleste (Sky People Station)
The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds
Welcome to Velvet Umbrella Radio
If you’ve wandered this far…
you’re probably one of us.
The curious ones.
The playlist collectors.
The people who hear a song once and carry it around for twenty years.
The ones who still look up when the sky feels unusually interesting.
Around here, every corridor has its own personality.
Some become radio shows.
Some become stories.
Some become strange little adventures that begin with a single click and somehow end with a mushroom house, a UFO, and Earl Grey Bunny putting the kettle on.
Some doors simply lead to a comfortable chair…
because not every journey has to go somewhere.
Below is a quick tour through the neighborhood.
Who’s here.
Where everything lives.
And why, around these parts…
the porch light is always on.
Welcome home.
🍄 The Mushroom Lounge
A quiet place to slow down.
Coffee optional.
Wonder encouraged.
📚 The Archives
Every transmission leaves footprints.
Browse previous shows, hidden corridors, favorite playlists, and stories waiting to be rediscovered.
🛸 Special Investigations
Bigfoot.
Mermaids.
Extraterrestrials.
Lost corridors.
Questionable evidence.
Entirely unnecessary adventures.
In Case You Missed It…
Click any show artwork below to listen, explore the story, browse the artwork, or wander a little deeper down the rabbit hole.
📻 Eclectic Wonderland
Wednesdays • 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM (CT) • WDRT 91.9 FM
Where the strange adventures begin.
Eclectic Wonderland is our weekly live radio show filled with independent artists, forgotten gems, ambient soundscapes, novelty records, unexpected detours, and the occasional pineapple with legal representation.
Featured Adventure:🧜 Mermaids, Non-Fish & Other Perfectly Reasonable Creatures
🎭 First Week: Alternate Wednesday
(Covers, remixes, reinterpretations, and musical curveballs)
🎵 Third Week: Independent Artist Showcase
(Please send us your music)
🛸 Fourth Week: Audities
(Our weirdest shows, experimental broadcasts, novelty records, and unexplained events)
🌙 Velvet Umbrella Radio: After Hours
Fridays • 2:00 AM to 3:00 AM (CT)
When the lights get softer and the stories become a little more mysterious.
After Hours leans into dream pop, darkwave, ambient, gothic folk, cinematic soundscapes, and the quieter corners of the Velvet Umbrella universe.
Featured Adventure:✨ Signals From Beneath
Dream Pop.
Darkwave.
Trip-Hop.
Late-night discoveries.
Moonlit roads.
Signals from beneath.
And occasionally…
reports from Atlantis.
After Hours with Celeste Violet and Mickey Fingers
After Hours is more of an Evening Vibe:
And then .....
🧜♀️ Petals & Hooks
Mixcloud Exclusive
Premieres Fridays at Midnight
With Celeste Violet & Mickey Fingers
Petals & Hooks is where the filters come off. Long-form themed journeys.
Dream narratives. Storytelling. Unexpected connections.
Beautiful mistakes. The things that don’t fit neatly inside traditional radio.
Most episodes run between three and four hours.
Some are explicit.
All are deeply strange.
Some stories need more than one chapter.
Petals & Hooks is our long-form audio journey where playlists become story worlds, unfolding over multiple episodes through music, artwork, and imagination.
Current Story:🪸 Beneath the SurfacePart One & Part Two
Beneath The Surface - Part One
Part Three of our current four-part story cycle.
A two-hour descent into signals, longing, dreams, memory, and moonlit shorelines.
Explicit & Unfiltered Content.
Mixcloud Exclusive.
Beneath The Surface - Part Two
Part Four of our current four-part story cycle.
The water gets deeper.
The signals get stronger.
The investigation continues.
Explicit & Unfiltered Content.
Mixcloud Exclusive.
Thank You For Visiting
If You Missed This Transmission…
(last month’s featured story) Click any show artwork below to listen, explore the story, browse the artwork, or wander a little deeper down the rabbit hole.
Keep Exploring…
If you’re not quite ready to head home, there are still plenty of strange little corners waiting to be discovered.
🎙️ Welcome to Velvet Umbrella Radio
Start here if you’re new. Meet the cast, step inside our world, and learn why nothing around here is ever quite normal.
🚪 Explore Our Sister Stations
Three different doors. Three different adventures.
• After Hours• Velvet Umbrella Radio• Petals & Hooks
🌂 Visit VelvetUmbrella.com
Music, stories, artwork, projects, archives, and all the wonderfully weird things we’re building.
📼 From the Vault
Archived transmissions, favorite episodes, and forgotten adventures from years past.
🌊 Continue the Story…
If you didn’t mean to leave just yet, Petals & Hooks is waiting just beyond the next door.
No rush.
Stay as long as you need.
Thank you for listening 💋
Stay Connected
Follow along, say hello, and join us as we continue building strange little worlds together.
Mickey Fingers
Celeste Violet
🦇 Stay with us… or come back when the lights go out.
Part of the Velvet Umbrella Radio: After Hours series. Originally developed alongside Eclectic Wonderland on WDRT 91.9FM Viroqua
Produced by DJ Celeste and Mickey Fingers for the Eclectic Wonderland universe.
The Folks We Blame For This…
Creative Direction & Visual Worldbuilding
Celeste Violet | DJ Tea Mickey Fingers
Music Curation & Programming
Celeste Violet | DJ TeaMickey Fingers
Original Voice Overs & Incidental Music
Mickey Fingers
Writing, Storyworld & Show Notes
Celeste Violet | DJ Tea
Mickey Fingers
Video Production & Editing
Celeste Violet
Audio Production & Sound Engineering
Mickey Fingers
Celeste Violet
Featuring
Eclectic Wonderland
DJ Tea | Celeste Violet
Mr. Announcer Man
Mickey Fingers
Velvet Umbrella Radio
After Hours
Celeste Violet
Mickey Fingers
Petals & Hooks
Celeste Violet
Mickey Fingers
Special Thanks
To every independent artist who trusted us with their music.
To every listener who wandered in.
To every spoonie who reminds us that creating is an act of hope.
And to the wonderfully strange little community that continues to make this world feel like home.
💜
We’ll leave the porch light on
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