Signal & Response: Music that connects. Artists who keep the conversation going.
The Como Brothers’ album Whisper In The Wind is scheduled for September 28, 2026. A few weeks later, Matt and Andrew Como are due in Nashville as finalists in American Songwriter’s Road Ready Talent Contest.
The September 10 announcement places them among three acts heading to the October 20 final at 3rd & Lindsley.
You can vote for The Como Brothers daily. Visit American Songwriter’s Public’s Pick voting page, select The Como Brothers and confirm your vote with the code sent to your email. Voting is limited to one vote per day per email address.
The online public vote counts for 40% of the final result. Votes at the live finale account for another 40%, and American Songwriter staff votes make up the remaining 20%. Online voting closes October 20, 2026, at noon Central Time, so you can return each day until the deadline.
I have worked with The Como Brothers for many years, and I love many of their songs. Cheap Talk is a favorite. So are Underneath It All and I Don’t Like You. Following this band has meant accumulating songs, then finding reasons to return to them.
For this Complete Edition, I want to work backward through the music and the people who helped Matt and Andrew get here.
2026: something new, something familiar
The Nashville appearance follows another American Songwriter recognition. Their performance of the Beatles’ I Feel Fine won the publication’s Road Ready Covered Promotion. In a July interview, they said their regular Beatles posts had begun in late November 2025. By 2026, the project included live performances of three complete Beatles albums.
Those albums were A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale and Help!, released as audio recordings and full-length performance videos. In the same interview, they traced the response to a December performance of If I Fell, followed by their January 3 posting of I Feel Fine. The recognition grew from sharing music they had spent years learning to play together.
They told the publication that Whisper In The Wind would include I Don’t Like You, a title that reaches back to their earliest professional EP, alongside Life With You (Acoustic) and Somewhere In This Cup. They also discussed recording All I Want Is You, a song written by their uncle Lawrence.
To understand how much history sits behind those decisions, it helps to turn the calendar back.
2024: a song at a television wedding
Some listeners may have found The Como Brothers through a scene rather than an artist page. In May 2024, I See Something accompanied Brook Lynn and Chase’s first dance as newlyweds on General Hospital. Soap Opera News identified the song in its coverage and included the brothers’ announcement of the placement.
Music written and recorded by two brothers from Long Island became part of a fictional couple’s wedding, carrying an emotional moment for people who might never have searched for the band by name.
I See Something already had a life before that scene. It appeared in their 2019 run of monthly singles. The official recording credits place Andrew on lead vocals and guitar, Matt on bass, Burton on keyboards and Sterling on drums, with Andrew also credited for the mix. Five years separated that release campaign from the television wedding.
By then, their television history already stretched back years. Their official biography names Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The Real World and The Young & the Restless among the shows that have used their music.
2022 to 2020: the work around the songs
In a 2022 NYS Music feature, Stephen Yusko described encountering the brothers playing at Fire Island Vines in Bay Shore. When he asked about their online presence, they credited Tatiana with filming music videos and helping with the website and shop.
Their recording process was changing too. The credits for Never Meant to Break Your Heart, released in September 2021, name Andrew as producer and one of the engineers, as well as a vocalist and guitarist. Matt plays bass, Andy Burton contributes keyboards, Aaron Sterling plays drums, and Michael Brauer mixes.
In an interview with The Bucket Playlist, Andrew traced his efforts to learn self-recording back to 2017. He described earlier earnings from marketing work going into New York studio sessions, then a shift toward recording themselves and sending parts to collaborators.
The pandemic made that change especially consequential. Andrew told the same interviewer that they ordinarily played 100 to 150 shows a year, an important part of their income. During lockdown they were writing faster and releasing singles about every three weeks. Home recording gave them a way to keep making music while their usual working life was interrupted.
The interview also offers a glimpse of how they divided the singing. Matt wrote Honey, I’ve Been Thinking Bout You about Tatiana and sang most of it, while Andrew took the bridge. Andrew described Beautiful Tonight as imagining where a relationship might have led. The two songs approached commitment from different points in a relationship.
2019: Cheap Talk and a song every month
By late 2019, the brothers were releasing a new original song every thirty days. Their November announcement named Money, Take Me Home, Shooting Star and I See Something, then marked the November 19 arrival of Cheap Talk.
That announcement gives each song a different starting point: financial pressure in Money, affection for home in Take Me Home, ambition in Shooting Star and romance in I See Something. Music or lyric videos accompanied the releases, with a December appearance at Rockwood Music Hall announced alongside them. Each new song gave listeners another way into the growing catalog.
I love Cheap Talk. Its lyric follows someone worn down by the way a relationship spills into blame, shame and other people’s conversations. At first, the narrator is still caught in questions and hurt. As the song develops, the emphasis shifts toward recognizing what he cannot continue to accept.
That turn gives the song somewhere to go. The pain is still there, but so is a boundary.
The recording credits name Matt and Andrew as writers and producers, with Sam Woolf among the vocalists, Burton on keyboards and Sterling on drums.
2018 and 2017: an encounter becomes a song
The story behind First Time begins with another song and an unexpected audience.
According to its 2018 release announcement, Andrew was singing Magic outside in Buffalo in October 2016 when a wedding party asked him to serenade the newlyweds. More than a year later, the groom’s mother contacted the brothers about a song for the couple’s baby shower.
That request led to First Time, released in August 2018, and a song about a parent’s love.
A performance reached somebody, and the response eventually became another piece of music.
Magic had its own personal starting point. In a February 2017 CelebMix interview, Andrew connected it to looking back on the early part of a relationship after a breakup. He recalled ideas arriving while driving to the gym, capturing them on his phone and heading home to work on the song.
The recording took longer than that first rush of writing. Andrew described three sessions between April and October 2016, with work taking place in Los Angeles, New York City and Long Island. Woolf supplied harmonies, Sterling played drums and Burton played keyboards. He remembered visiting Sterling’s Los Angeles studio as a particular highlight of making the record.
That collaboration had a history in their listening. Andrew told CelebMix that discovering John Mayer around age nineteen pushed him further into guitar and groove, while Matt became interested in bassists Pino Palladino and Sean Hurley. Working with musicians from that circle meant bringing some of their own musical education into the room with their songs.
2016 and 2015: widening the studio circle
Jam Theory, released in August 2016, includes programmed drums, MIDI bass and synthesizer contributions alongside their instrumental work. Sam Woolf appears on Afraid to Love You.
The six-track release also makes their growing production role visible. Both brothers are credited as producers throughout, with additional collaborators on Maybe I’m Feeling Lonely. Kenta Yonesaka’s work includes mixing and programming, and Hollow adds Stanley Lynch to the songwriting credits. The songs were being built through a combination of band performances, electronic parts and work across several studios.
A year earlier, Imagination brought Matt and Andrew together with drummer Steve Jordan, keyboardist Andy Burton and producer Graham Marsh.
Its five original songs run from Good Enough for Me through Tell You I’m Fine, Chemicals, Make My Heart Move and the title track. A bonus performance of Jimi Hendrix’s Bold as Love sits alongside them. The sessions were recorded and mixed at Germano Studios in New York, with Burton’s keyboards recorded at his Tannery Row Studio. The brothers shared vocal and harmony duties, with Andrew on guitar and Matt on bass.
Live at 89 North!, released in November 2015, features Sterling on drums and Burton on keyboards, with Woolf joining for Hey Jude.
Seen together, these records capture different working arrangements within a short span: originals and a Hendrix cover in the studio, a live set with another drummer, then a release that incorporated more programming. Burton and Sterling would keep appearing in later credits, including the monthly singles. These were musical relationships that continued across projects.
Television exposure was also becoming part of their working lives. In a July 2015 Sonicbids interview, Matt discussed placements on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The Real World and Best Ink. He recalled friends, relatives and listeners getting in touch after recognizing their songs on television.
He also associated those placements with new opportunities, including better shows and press interest, and mentioned opening for the Wallflowers.
2013: Baby Steps and an earlier Indie Music Bus chapter
Baby Steps arrived on October 1, 2013. The full-length album was recorded at VuDu Studios in Port Jefferson and produced by Mike Watts and Tom Flynn. Its credits include keyboards, brass and percussion around the brothers’ vocals, guitar and bass.
Across twelve tracks, the album gave those arrangements more room. Pasquale T. Ianelli supplied saxophones and Andrew Mericle played trumpet. Casey Crescenzo contributed Mellotron strings to Late Nights and Fender Rhodes to Chasing Ambience. Dan Gluszak handled most of the drumming, while Andrew played drums on Bad Karma. Those details make Baby Steps a useful place to hear how many players were involved in this early chapter.
Earlier that year came Still Waters, released in March.
Its five tracks were Bad Karma, I Want To, Parachute, Can’t Be Right and Leaving You. Bad Karma also appears on Baby Steps, connecting the EP to the full-length that followed. Within one year, the catalog had grown by two releases, with a song carrying across them.
The August 19, 2013 Butterflies Radio IndieViews episode identifies The Como Brothers as Indie Music Bus’s Artist of the Month for August. Andrew joined host Kiva Johns-Adkins to talk about the band and the forthcoming Baby Steps.
Looking at that date puts some weight behind the phrase “many years.” For me, the pleasure is being able to revisit the earlier songs while there is still another record ahead.
A 2016 Stony Brook Press retrospective described some of the effort behind those early releases, including income from dental-supply marketing helping pay for recording. The brothers spoke about learning from one project to the next.
Watts told that publication that their writing had developed, particularly in the lyrics. The brothers described using older recordings to judge their progress and identify what needed work. There was a practical rhythm behind the releases: earn money, rehearse, play shows, then return to the studio.
The stage history was growing too. Their 2015 press biography records a June 2013 opening slot for the Wallflowers at Stamford’s Alive@Five, followed that October by a CBGB Festival appearance and a show supporting David Cook at 89 North. The album year also brought opportunities beyond their own headline sets.
2012: the cover I remembered
I recently found myself trying to locate an older Como Brothers release. What I remembered most clearly was a yellow cover with a car on it.
It was The Speed of Sound, released January 26, 2012. Its four songs are Underneath It All, You Are My World, I Don’t Like You and Can I Be Matched with You.
Underneath It All and I Don’t Like You are still favorites of mine. Finding that cover again brought me back to a particular part of the catalog, one I had remembered visually even while the album title escaped me.
The early band had a third member. In an April 2012 Skope interview, Matt and Andrew described their lineup with drummer Dorian Costanzo and called The Speed of Sound their first professionally recorded EP.
Their ambitions were already clear in that conversation. They admired the Lennon-McCartney partnership, but also named Sublime, Foo Fighters, Maroon 5, Amy Winehouse and Ray Charles among their influences. They wanted listeners to recognize experiences from everyday life in the songs. Asked where they hoped to be in five years, they named Madison Square Garden.
There were more immediate stages to reach. Skope reported their Hard Rock Rising finalist appearance at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. Their later press biography also records 2012 appearances at the Montauk Music Festival, the Warped Tour stop at Nassau Coliseum and the Jones Beach side stage. The yellow-cover EP belonged to a band getting its original songs in front of audiences around New York.
It also contains part of the television history. The band’s catalog notes identify You Are My World with The Real World and Can I Be Matched with You with Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Those are artist-reported placements, but they connect the early EP to the television work discussed above.
Before the records had a history
There is an earlier recording in the official catalog: Get Me Back to You, released under Matt & Andrew Como in December 2010.
In the Stony Brook Press interview, Matt looked back on that first recording as an experiment in finding their identity. He could hear its limitations, but also measure how far they had come. That is a useful way into the earliest material: the writing and playing were still developing, and the recordings preserve that development.
Andrew’s 2017 interview dates his time in the family Beatles tribute band to 2008 through 2011. The Stony Brook Press retrospective identifies that group as the PJ Day Trippers. Their father and uncle were part of the experience, giving the brothers a way to learn songs and perform with family.
The 2012 Skope account reaches back further, to Andrew meeting Dorian in high school in 2007 and playing shows before Matt joined.
Their early artist biography traces the training further back. Both took piano lessons as small children. Andrew later studied saxophone and guitar, playing in school ensembles, the pit orchestra and as an accompanist for the chorus. Matt continued with voice, guitar and bass lessons in college. Family playing and formal lessons both contributed to the skills they brought to their own band.
In the July 2026 American Songwriter interview, Matt and Andrew described a family tradition that preceded them. Their father and uncle Lawrence had an original band called The Words, and music was part of family gatherings.
That brings the story back to the uncle’s song planned for Whisper In The Wind. After years of original releases, professional sessions and television placements, something heard within the family can still become part of the next record.
Vote for The Como Brothers daily
You can vote for The Como Brothers daily. Visit American Songwriter’s Public’s Pick voting page, select The Como Brothers and confirm your vote with the code sent to your email. Voting is limited to one vote per day per email address.
The online public vote counts for 40% of the final result. Votes at the live finale account for another 40%, and American Songwriter staff votes make up the remaining 20%. Online voting closes October 20, 2026, at noon Central Time, so you can return each day until the deadline.
Listen and follow
- Visit The Como Brothers’ official website
- Explore their original music
- Browse their Bandcamp catalog
- Return to The Speed of Sound
- Listen to the Signal & Response playlist
