A Little Bit for Charity is a creative charity project curated by Eivind Kirkeby, where indie bands and artists cover songs from the ongoing animated TV series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The songs are uploaded to bandcamp, where people can pay what they want—including choosing to not pay at all—and all the money goes directly to an animal-rights charity organization.
The current charity is the Animal Welfare Institute. It’s a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing the detrimental effects human actions have on the well-being of animals. This includes working to improve the conditions of farm animals, preserving vegetation to benefit endangered species, and much more. For more information about the organization and their work, please see their website.
—A Q&A originally posted in the Kirkeby Kritikk blog—
Q: What exactly is “indie music”?
A: That’s a tricky one. Indie is short for independent, and was initially used to distinguish between the established, mainstream, popular acts signed with the big labels and record companies, and the lesser known acts signed to smaller, “independent” labels. Now indie music has become more of a genre label, mostly used to refer to alternative and experimental music in the pop/rock tradition, with a plethora of sub genres.
Q: Why indie music?
A: While the series has an impressive creative community, including a thriving music scene, there hasn’t really been much fan-made indie music produced related to the show. Seeing as how most of the music we love fall within the indie genre, we wanted to help rectify this (while at the same time trying to help raise some money for causes we believe are important).
Q: Why My Little Pony?
A: It’s a genuinely good series with some genuinely good (and award-nominated!) songs. It might not appeal to everyone, which is fine, but if you’re not averse to animation it’s certainly worth giving a try, and the series has a special place in the hearts of many. If you’re curious to learn more about the show’s fandom culture, you might want to give the professional documentaries Bronies and A Brony Tale a look.
Q: How often will new songs be released?
A: We’ve unfortunately no idea. The original goal was to release a cover by a different band once every month, but that was quickly proven to be too ambitious. Even once every other month seemed like it could be difficult to pull off. Many bands and musicians have tight schedules, with various  real life obligations above and beyond that of music (especially pro bono work, even if it’s for charity), and it takes time finding the right musicians for the project as well. So right now it’s running on a “whenever we’re able” schedule. Follow us on bandcamp and you should be getting notified whenever new music is made available.
Q: This sounds fun! Can I help out?
A: We are certainly open for folks who want to help us out! Having a couple of visual artists interested in doing covers for future songs would be great, maybe doing a few different banners we can rotate between too. As for the actual music, if you can get us in touch with other indie talent, then sure, that would also be great! You can also get in touch if you’re an indie musician yourself, but please note that we prefer musicians and bands who are not already known for doing pony-themed music. Just send an e-mail to eivind@kirkebykvalitet.com with the topic “A Little Bit for Charity”.