A Playground of Experimentation: Jacob Smolinski & Alex Behrens Link Brains for Project ‘Dumb 100’

Two of the scene’s most engaging songwriters have teamed up for a musical collaboration from which a steady stream of new songs will be dropped upon us over the course of the year — starting today.

Called ‘Dumb 100,’ the project is the brainchild of musicians Jacob Smolinski and Alex Behrens, who play under the names ‘Wylie Something’ and ‘Everythings,’ respectively.

Described by Smolinski as “a true, blue collaboration, tapping into classic indie rock and drum machine bedroom pop,” Dumb 100 features warbled synth leads, reverbed guitars, dynamic basslines (provided by Andrew Behrens) and emotional vocal performances, making for songs that “tap into heartache” with “big hooks (and) big feelings.” 

Throughout 2025, Dumb 100 will be releasing a continued run of singles, with the first two — ‘All of the Money (Just Like You)’ and ‘Patience’ — dropping today on Spotify, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and other streaming platforms. Both songs — each a sonic cornucopia onto themselves — leave us intrigued about what else Dumb 100 has in store as the project moves forward.

Behrens said he and Smolinski, who work together at an ad agency in Buffalo, “sort of stumbled” into making music together while doing client work.

“During that process, we quickly realized how natural it felt collaborating and how complementary our skills are, and I think we both knew we could do something really cool together,” said Behrens. “We made these songs last year and have been working on a ton of stuff together since then that I’m really excited about. It’s been so fun getting to work with Jake on these songs and to be able carve out our own sound.”

Smolinski said Dumb 100 is “a playground to experiment with songwriting and new sounds,” and exists simply “for the sake of making real pretty tunes.” 

“We both have our own projects, Wylie Something and Raybees for me – and Everythings and Wife and Kids for Alex — but combining our talents that we use in our 9-5 seemed like a really fun way to break the mold of our songwriting and sonic habits,” he said. “It's one thing to work on solo music and get lost in it, but getting to workshop ideas with someone that has a completely different musical background is so dang refreshing. Like, I'm a bit more guitar leaning, Alex is more of a piano guy. But we both know how to jump back and forth on just about any respective instrument to make what we want to hear.”

Behrens said that while he and Smolinski are content right now continuing to produce regular, smaller releases such as A/B singles or EPs, nothing is off the table.

“Who really knows?! We might write an album. We might drop a massive deuce or two or maybe even three. We are having a good time and that’s all that really matters to us.”

Added Smolinski: “I came up in Buffalo playing in garage-rock types of bands and recording lo-fi-ish tunes throughout college and slowly refined my sound more and more. Flash forward to Dumb 100 and it exists to just have fun throwin’ ideas back-n-forth til something CLICKS, ya know? Alex is an insane mixing engineer, and it blows my mind getting to listen back to these tunes. This is just fun. That's the main takeaway, at least for me. If it ain't fun, why do it?” 

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Follow Dumb 100 at its Instagram page HERE and on the duo’s Bandcamp page HERE.)