Hearing Sejal Kargal talk about community is to know that for her, it’s a lived practice. The artist, singer, and DJ has spent the past year building something bigger than herself. Since launching UNDEFINED in January 2025, she’s turned a creative idea into a national collective that uplifts historically underrepresented voices in music and nightlife. The platform doesn’t rely on corporate sponsors or hype. It runs on people. Self-funded, community-led, and intentionally inclusive.

“I’ve never felt like I belonged in any box,” she said. “I hated to confine myself to a genre or label. I wanted to be boundless.” That spirit of freedom is the foundation of UNDEFINED. It started as a mindset, a small symbol, and a promise to create without barriers. It grew into a movement for artists who refused to dilute themselves to fit in. “So many creatives are fed up with being told how to market themselves or how to present identity to get attention,” she explained. “I wanted to make space for people who didn’t want to play that game.”

When you meet Fifth Floor, the first thing you notice is their energy.  It’s loud, fast, and alive in every direction. Four friends who move like a family, interrupting each other mid-sentence, cracking jokes, finishing thoughts. Each has their own rhythm. Eli, the frontman, speaks like he’s already thinking about the next show. J-Will, the bassist, balances quick wit with the quiet focus of someone who’s been building something for years. Trey, on drums, watches the room with producer instincts, already hearing how it all fits together. And Samuel, on guitar, floats somewhere between calm and chaos, fluent in both Spanish and strings. Together, they make up Fifth Floor, a band that’s as unpredictable as the story behind it.

“I started out playing music by myself,” Eli said. “Me and J-Will had known each other since middle school and always talked about playing together. Then I met Trey in the parking lot at college, and Samuel in class…well, skipping class, actually. Playing UFC.” The band laughed. It was unplanned, but natural. Fifth Floor wasn’t the result of strategy or searching. It was something that happened because it was supposed to.

When Kyleigh tells you she’s always been a songwriter, it’s not a reach. Before the polished studio releases, before her latest single, Easy, she was a kid playing pretend pop star with her best friend Drew in the basement. No cameras, no stage, just two eight-year-olds writing silly songs and dancing them out. “That’s really where my songwriting journey began,” she said. “I’ve always been super creative. A storyteller. I didn’t know it was songwriting at the time, but I just had to get the words out.”

That same instinct still drives her today. If you strip away the production and the arrangement, her music begins in the same place it always has. With a feeling. “I’m pretty sensitive,” Kyleigh said. “So when I feel something, I have to write it down. That’s always where it starts.”

There’s a certain quiet in Saturn Oak’s photographs. An in-between stillness that slows you down. It feels like you’ve wandered into someone else’s memory. Like a dream you can’t quite place. 

It makes sense once you talk to him. Saturn Oak is just as drawn to the surreal as we are to his lens. His photos are imagined timelines born out of intuition and feel. “I like to bring almost like a fever dream quality to it,” he explained. “My goal every time I do a shoot is to almost make it feel like it’s on Earth, but it ain’t on Earth.”

Marly McFly didn’t set out to build a brand. He just needed a break.

Back when he was working an office job. One of those desk-bound routines that slowly grinds away at your imagination. Marly didn’t take smoke breaks like his coworkers. Instead, he picked up some colored pencils and zoned out into the pages of his sketchbook. “Leave me alone,” he’d joke. “I’m just coloring something.” What started as a way to survive the day eventually sparked a whole new chapter. That quiet rebellion, that decision to escape into his art, eventually became Active Imagination, a coloring book that invites adults back to the headspace they had before the world hardened them.

“I never said it, but people picked up on it. It was never for kids,” he admitted. “They already have that imagination. I wanted adults to use it. Just take that moment to escape.”

There’s a groove to being behind the scenes on a film set. A quiet influence. A type of presence that shapes the outcome without demanding the spotlight. And that’s where this story begins, not with the final cut, but with the women who make it possible. Who plans the shot. Who calls the wrap. Who keeps the set moving when no one else knows what comes next.

It’s easy to credit the face on the poster, but the vision? That’s often in the hands of the people off-camera. Nuri Muhammad, Anna Ray, and Chenita Adé are three Black women working behind the scenes in film across North Carolina. They’re producers. DPs. ADs. Writers. Storytellers. Problem solvers. And more often than not, they’re the glue.