Good Habits features the core songwriting duo of Bonnie Schwarz (cello, vocals) and Pete Shaw (accordion, synths). In 2025, they evolved into a powerhouse lineup with drummer Jen Walinetski. If you haven’t yet experienced this trio’s live energy (on tour now), their latest studio album, Better for Now, is now one of our Featured Albums of the Month.
In his review of the album (available now on DL/CD/LP), Thomas Blake noted that this latest offering continues their journey outwards, exploring the extreme ends of their influences, from festival-ready, locked-in trance-folk to intimate acoustic balladry. Most notably, he observes that their music offers a “sense of movement and of travel, of a willingness to explore and widen their musical boundaries. This in turn fosters a combination of virtuosity and sheer vitality that makes Good Habits one of the most exciting bands on the British folk scene right now, as well as one of the most technically accomplished.”
In between a busy album tour schedule that includes Sheffield today and further dates in November (see here), Bonnie and Pete found time to be our latest Off the Shelf guests. For those new to this series, we ask an artist or artists to select ten objects from their home and talk about them. These objects often hold meaning in their daily life, their musical practice, or the overlap between the two.
Before we dive in, watch their latest music video for Reading Song. From Tom’s review:
Reading Song recognises the importance of other people’s creative work as well as the need for the unique kind of experience that reading brings: a combination of downtime and intellectual engagement. It also touches on themes of nostalgia and family, while Schwarz’s vocals are at their most unadorned, allowing her regional accent to give shape and texture to her words. It advances on a loping bassline and Jen Walinetski’s crisp drumming, while Shaw’s accordion weaves in and out in jaunty accompaniment.
Bonnie shares that the video was filmed “on a belting heatwave day in late May 2026. Every time it looks like Pete is asleep in this… he is. Filmed and edited together by Lydia Taylor.”
Off the Shelf with Good Habits
I declare it meaningful
When decorating the house, Bonnie and I have stumbled into the age-old discussion of what should, and maybe more importantly, what shouldn’t go on the walls. We both love art; however, for me, an art piece has to have some personal connection or meaning to it. If it simply looks nice, I don’t feel like I engage with it as much. Not to speak on Bonnie’s behalf, but I understand that she can appreciate the piece of art for how it looks in the space and nothing more. One day she went out and bought this butterfly embroidery from a charity shop as the colour palette suited our bedroom. I wasn’t the biggest fan of it, so it temporarily lived on a shelf in the bedroom so that it could be appreciated without making it a permanent fixture. I hadn’t noticed that it had gone missing a week before my birthday – when I unwrapped a big present in the morning, the butterfly was staring up at me with the newly embroidered words “I DECLARE IT MEANINGFUL” emblazoned on it. Now I love it.
Cockatoo Painting
There are two things we love about having a home (having been pretty nomadic for three years). One is having great neighbours, and the other is being able to host touring musicians, repaying the favour for years of being put up by countless welcoming people. Over Summer, the Australian singer-cellist Monique Clare came to visit, using our home as a base whilst on tour, meaning we could combine our two favourite things. Whenever we’re back from tour, our eight-year-old neighbour comes around a lot to do arts & crafts, piano practise, and gardening. As Monique was here, we decided to invent a game where you had to paint a picture whilst swinging on the swing, then everyone else had to guess what you were going for. This was Monique’s masterpiece that now lives in our kitchen.
Stable Door
Spending time in Germany has introduced me to the wonders of lüften (the practise of opening all your doors/windows every morning to replace the air inside the house). As a couple who work together, time apart is sometimes a rare commodity; fortunately, I tend to wake up before Bonnie so the early hours of the morning tend to be only witnessed by me, my coffee, and my book as I go about lüften-ing. Not only does the stable door provide a great opening for airing out the house, it also blurs the lines between inside and outside, meaning I can sit and read looking out to the woods with the birds, the stream and the trains as my morning chorus even when it’s raining. I think blurring the boundary between outside and inside is important for me as someone who loves being outside, but can sometimes forget that when there are emails to be sent. There’s nothing like a big hole in the wall to remind you that you should probably take a break for a bit to touch some grass.
Dried Food
When Bonnie and I were stranded in Aotearoa New Zealand whilst on tour during the pandemic, we got ourselves a van (a car with a bed in the back) and drove around for a year playing every and any gig that was available to us. During this time we made a few discoveries: eating nothing but free chips from pub gigs over a 72-hour period makes your skin go grey; you don’t actually need to cook microwave rice first, you can just put it in a wrap and treat it as a bit of a chewy burrito; peanut butter can be a meal. Now that we thankfully no longer live this life, I never take for granted the ability to cook and eat real meals. Having shelves of dried staples each with their individual labels brings me a level of satisfaction that my younger self could not have predicted and realistically would have been embarrassed by. Living near Sheffield also gives us the luxury of having access to the “lentil belt”; a leafy area of south west Sheffield full of whole food shops and vegan cafes where we can stock up on dried legumes and kilos of spices. Now as soon as we return home from a period of touring, I go into a domestic daze of bread baking, dahl cooking, and flapjack making.
Running Shoes
I don’t know why I run. People often ask me if I’m training for anything, but the reality is that I’m just running. Running amongst nature gives me a clarity rarely found anywhere else in my life; thoughts seem to melt away, leaving me mindlessly trotting along through the trees. It often acts as a cheat code to problem-solving. If I’m struggling with something creatively or socially, I’ll go on a run, and the solution rises to the top of the nothingness in my brain. Having sung all of these praises about running, it is ridiculous how much I have to convince myself to get off the sofa and actually put my shoes on.
My fitness seems to be dictated by the passing of the seasons. In winter, I go absolutely stir crazy if I’ve been sitting inside all day at the computer, meaning that by the evening, getting outside in order to be blasted by the elements isn’t that much of a challenge. Come summer, we’re on the road a lot, and I find myself outside more often than not. Subsequently, my running falls off a cliff, and my trainers look at me scathingly as they perch in the shoe rack untouched.
I like a bare bum
I came across this artwork on Instagram, and it instantly brought me so much joy that I purchased the card instantly. I’d like to dig into my rebuttal of Pete’s belief, stated above, that an art item needs a story behind why you’ve taken it into your home. I think the whole point of art and creation is that the art itself can just connect with you and speak to you, and doesn’t require any statements. You wouldn’t only enjoy an album because of the circumstances in which you discovered it, would you?! Anyway, back to my item. Arthouse Unlimited is an art charity showcasing the work of adults living with disabilities. A few days after we lost Dolly Parton, I bought another bold print that says “Dolly says your beauty is beyond compare” under a cheerful illustration of her.
Blue hat door
We played at a fantasy festival in the Netherlands last winter and found these hats in a charity shop. They’re a playful take on what the helpers traditionally wear around Sinterklaas. Slowly, the collection has grown as other blue hats of different styles have migrated. Maybe friends who are around one evening will indulge in a blue hat night? Or I’ll forget I’m wearing the blue hat with the largest feather when the postman rings? We have a neighbour next door who’s eight and often pops round. She has telling eyebrows that show her surprise that two seemingly adult people wear feathered hats and paint on the walls.
Mozart Mouse and Beethoven Bear
These two used to sit at either end of my late granny’s piano. She was a music teacher, mine too, teaching me cello and piano from when I was a child. For a few years we lived in the attached bungalow to my grandparents’ house in Dorchester in Dorset. On Saturday mornings, when we weren’t at school and she wasn’t at church, we were given permission to creep up through the house to her room to see if she was awake yet. Although my brother and I felt sure we’d succeed in a silent approach, she would reliably lie perfectly still until our heads slowly rose at the foot of the bed, and then one eye would snap open, sending us into giggles. Piano and cello lessons with my granny had the same playful spirit and excitement. So having this little mouse and bear in the house gives me two very precious connections to her and to childhood memories of music learning. They make their way back to the piano whenever kid friends and family visit. They’re in very good condition given they’re probably as old as me, and have been in many toddlers’ mouths.
The “You Got This” sign
When I was in my final year as a student, I was studying a module in composing for film. It’s uncharacteristic of me now, but it got to the morning before the deadline, and I hadn’t even figured out how to use Logic yet. I knew I had an almighty wall of a task ahead of me. Frozen with overwhelm, I left the house and walked down the street, straight into a pop-up art shop and found this sign. I walked straight home and completed the assessment (it took 30 hours). Between university and last year, most of Pete’s and my possessions lived in big boxes at our parents’ houses, but this one is nice to have in the office, either as a reminder that even the most overwhelming task is tackleable, or just to remind me that I’m much better at time management these days.
The cross-stitch sunflower cushion
Last Christmas, my mum presented me with a mammoth cross-stitch she’d been working on in the form of a cushion. It is so impressive and now lives in our living room. I was moved by just how much work it obviously took her, and I also went on a little thought journey. It felt odd at first to put something in our living room that is a band press photo, something so associated with work (the original image was taken by Kate Griffin, photographer and musician, whilst we were in New Zealand). But the reality is that the photo just does capture who we are as people so well. In fact, there’s something in the fact that we are sharing who we truly are (or parts of who we are) as a job, so the line between work and life doesn’t really exist, and that’s okay.
Better for Now is out now on Colour Plum Records (DL/CD/LP)