Going to Porchfest this weekend? Here are nine groups to watch for

“Acoustic guitar, electric cello, analog synthesizer, mandolin, banjo and electric violin — these are the instruments that make up The Wiggly Tendrils “quirky” sound. The four-piece band is a “cross between a farmer’s market string band, and Star Wars cantina band,” said Conor Loughridge, the band’s principle singer and songwriter.

The band is working on an album that will comprise of around 100 songs, each dedicated to a single tree. Loughridge often wanders the Arnold Arboretum to find the album’s next subject.

If you’re looking for “songs about science, science fiction, love, fantasy, or trees, you really can’t find a better band than us,” Loughridge said.”

-Brookline.News, September 24, 2025

The Awesomeness of Singing About Frogs, Toads, and Newts

The song’s by the Wiggly Tendrils, a band that uses music to tell stories, and it’s delightful. At only a minute and a half long, it’s worth a little listen for its acoustic twang and charming back-up singers. “Dyscophus Antongilii,” it turns out, can sit rather nicely in meter.

-The Atlantic, JULY 30, 2012

Discovery Of 7,000th Amphibian Celebrated In Song

“CORNISH: Yes. Today, we, the warm-blooded, honor those who are not – namely, amphibians. That’s because of the discovery of the 7,000th species of amphibian. A website called AmphibiaWeb at the University of California, Berkeley is keeping count.

Oh, and they wrote a song about it.

CORNISH: Well, the song is written and performed by a friend of AmphibiaWeb, Conor Loughridge, so in his rock star moments, he goes by the name The Wiggly Tendrils.

DAVID WAKE: You listen to it a couple of times and it sort of catches in there, doesn’t it?”

-HEARD ON ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, AUGUST 2, 2012, 3:00 PM ET

The Wiggly Tendrils

“The Wiggly Tendrils are an enigmatic Philadelphia music collective rumored to consist of 20-30 members operating out of a basement workshop in a condemned building somewhere near Baltimore Avenue. Their style veers virtuosically between introspective voice-and-guitar soliloquies, rollicking earworm-infested sing-alongs, and hyperactive synth-pop microsymphonies.

Listen at your own risk— you may not be able to stop.”

-Acousmata, 2009