Staff

Rusty Roberts is currently on his second tour of duty with the Planetary Group in their radio department. After his first run ended in 2009, he left the industry altogether and ended up in retail management for several years while still having the itch to be in the game. He started his own tiny little side gig called Locale Music, offering up tour and band management services, publicity and other industry-related consulting. He also missed being involved in radio from his college days where he was General Manager and Music Director of WSYC at Shippensburg University in Central Pennsylvania. He returned to the airwaves in January 2016 with This Is Not A Show, a weekly program on WERA featuring the best new music and sessions with some of the best up and coming acts in the independent music scene while also assisting with the overall music programming of the Arlington based low power FM station. Rusty returned to Planetary in 2018 who he now works for from outside of Washington, DC where he resides with his partner and their four-legged child, Gracie J. Puppy Dog.

Despite his degree in political science, Zach will tell you that the only news source he reads obsessively is Bandcamp Daily. Born and raised in New York City, Zach spent many weekends in high school traversing the city’s record stores with his friends. When he moved upstate to Skidmore college, he immediately embedded himself in the campus’ music scene. He managed the DIY music venue Falstaff’s Lodge and worked at the campus station (WSPN) for 3 years as the head music director, head of programming, and as an interim general manager.

In 2020, Zach co-founded Forte Creative Group, a multi-stakeholder music cooperative which helps musicians in the Capital Region of New York establish collective organizing, resource sharing, and peer-to-peer networks. That same year, Zach also produced a podcast for Harvard’s Eurasian studies center called How to Kill a Superpower: Lessons from the USSR, where he examined the mysterious circumstances behind the final days of the Soviet Union.

In his free time, Zach is either playing ultimate frisbee, listening through the many albums he’s bookmarked throughout the week, grinding Super Smash Bros tech skill, or, if inspiration strikes, working on some playwriting.

Jacqueline Codiga is a writer, DJ, and podcaster from Pasadena, California. After leaving home to attend the University of Michigan, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in communications, she returned to LA to try to make a career full time out of her passion for music. Getting to spend four years near the still vibrant Detroit techno scene intensified her existing obsession with electronic music, eventually becoming a board member on the campus DJ club MEMCO (Michigian Electronic Music Collective) that threw their own DIY techno parties around the Ann Arbor area and held DJing workshops for students.

These days, her time away from work is spent as a co-host of the Indieheads Podcast, writing for Merry-Go-Round Magazine, and generally looking for good music anywhere she can find it. As DJ Horse Jeans (don’t ask her to explain the name), she loves playing house and techno of all subgenres and varieties, but her listening tastes outside the DJ booth are all over the place, always looking for something new and exciting.

Nick comes to us from Grandstand Media where he cut his teeth in Publicity with a diverse roster of artists ranging from Modest Mouse, Lindsey Buckingham and Jeff Rosenstock, to Public Enemy, Genesis Owusu and A$AP Ferg. Prior to that, he worked on the record label & management side of the business at Sargent House working with artists such as Chelsea Wolfe, Deafheaven, Russian Circles and more.

Nick fell in love with music at an early age. Growing up in the suburbs of Southern California, he was introduced to many different genres of music at once from his family, neighbors and school friends. His first favorite artists that he can recall were Michael Jackson, Slipknot, Blink-182 and Dr. Dre.

On most days, Nick can be found walking with his best friend Levi (a 6 year old standard sized labradoodle) to pick up an iced oat milk latte while listening to an audio book, podcast or stand-up special.

Born and raised in southern Illinois just outside of St. Louis, MO, Matty’s love of music formed when he was young listening to classic rock and pop radio, eventually translating over to hip hop and indie music in his teenage years. While in high school, he founded the Indieheads Podcast in 2014 and a year later, joined the radio broadcasting program at Lewis and Clark Community College, where he eventually 89.9 WLCA’s Assistant Program/Promotions Director from 2016 until his graduation in 2017.

In late 2016, he joined the moderation team at Reddit’s r/indieheads subreddit, eventually heading up their AMA (ask me anything) and social media teams, along with editorial duties as the founder and editor of the r/indieheads Album of the Year Write-Up series. In his spare time, he’s a writer with bylines in Paste, Merry-Go-Round, and Opinion Police, along with heading up Soft Sounds, the weekly newsletter of the Indieheads Podcast.

Chris Burleson is a recent transplant turning the California to Texas pipeline on its head. After reading John Doe’s Under the Big Black Sun, Chris decided that he needed to experience the energy of the city that produced some of his favorite punk groups himself. His music education began in the suburban sprawl of Austin, TX, where his father’s Steely Dan obsession ensured that Chris aged at twice the normal speed of his peers. He spent his time at The University of Texas at Austin booking shows for KVRX and annoying his neighbors with homemade, mediocre noise rock. You can usually find him scrolling through Rate Your Music, scouring the internet for prime Mark E. Smith quotes, or trying to figure out why J Mascis’s signature Jazzmaster has a gaudy gold pickguard.

Jaden Amjadi comes to Los Angeles by way of Iowa, where he was raised and attended college. He became Music Director of KRUI in his freshman year at the University of Iowa. There, he discovered the joys of sorting through and hearing many dozens of records on a weekly basis. His DJ shows focused on new music, with a bend towards the lo-fi and bizarre. He loves to hear everything the wide musical landscape has to offer, and loves to discuss great music finds with others. He graduated from the University of Iowa and the Music Director role in 2022, and beelined for a job as Music Promoter with Planetary, to help a new set of Music Directors find great music as many promoters had done for him before.

At any given moment, Jaden is likely playing a Silver Jews or Green Day song on his guitar, telling a horrendously cheesy joke to his friends, or petting his cat, Kirby. He’s published a far-reaching breadth of music reviews on the KRUI website, and likes to read poetry and fiction in his free time. Having just arrived in Los Angeles, he imagines it is only a matter of time before the Lakers invite him to make playlists full-time for team practices–an offer he will ultimately reject out of passion for college radio promotion.