Intern Grace’s Team Pick:

The internet can be a cruel place, especially for people with creative interests. But if the internet is a dark and dangerous place, then Julia Nunes is an adorable, high-spirited, ukulele-playing puppy that the citizens of the internet adopted and loved and raised to be their own.

Within only a few years, Julia Nunes went from  playing covers in her dorm room for her popular YouTube channel to playing original songs on Conan O’Brien and headlining her own tour. Julia will be the first to attribute her grassroots success to her fans, but it seems clear that her raw talent has a lot to do with her accomplishments.

Thanks to a wildly successful Kickstarter project, Julia was able to release a new album last Tuesday, and it’s so, so good. It has the classic, upbeat, turn-up-the-radio sound that harkens back to her classic videos (some of the tracks are even re-recordings of old favorites), but now it sounds more polished and grown-up. This is definitely her first big-kid record, and it sounds awesome. She has this way of turning the minutia into really catchy songs that make you want to dance but can also break your heart.

But wait, there’s more! Because she collected way more money than she originally asked for (over $76,000 more), she was able to use some of the extra cash to produce professional music videos for three vignettes from the album (“Pizza,” “He Is Mad,” and “I Wasn’t Worried.”), as well as a video for the album’s single “Stay Awake.”

This is the video:

You can stream the album in its entirety at Mashable right now, but I recommend you buy it from her website or Amazon or iTunes. There is a song about pizza, you guys. I mean, really. She wrote this for you.

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