“Every writer knows the highest compliment is envy: I wish I’d written that. [This book] is a joy: fizzy, moving, endlessly smart. Brickley doesn’t just write well about music, she anatomizes why and how we love it, and she makes us feel the stakes of that love.” –Claire Dederer (Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma)

A love story about two people pulled apart by the same force that draws them together: music.

It’s a Friday night in a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is pontificating about music again. Hall and Oates is on the jukebox, and Percy—who has no talent for music, just lots of opinions about it—can’t stop herself from overanalyzing the song, indulging what she knows to be her most annoying habit. But something is different tonight. The guy beside her at the bar, fellow student Joe Morrow, is a songwriter. And he could listen to Percy talk all night.

Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years, ignite new passions in them both, and set Joe on a path to indie-rock stardom. But it also bruises Joe’s ego, and traps Percy in a role she resents. How long can Percy ignore the roars of her heart, and of her own unique talent, to protect their thrilling collaboration? Moving from Brooklyn bars to San Francisco dancefloors, Deep Cuts examines the nature of talent, obsession, belonging, and above all, our need to be heard.