Safe and sound: How New Zealand musicians have been able to return to the stage

It's early October, and Elizabeth Stokes and Jonathan Pearce of New Zealand indie-rock band the Beths are in Raglan, a small surf town on the west coast of the country's north island. In an empty Sprinter van sitting snugly side-by-side so as to better squeeze in the laptop's camera frame, they flip the camera to show off their view: a mountain-ringed suburban neighbourhood on a lovely, quiet, sunny afternoon. It's their second day on the road in support of new album Jump Rope Gazers. The night before they played Raglan's Yot Club and ended up hanging with inebriated members of the New Zealand national cricket team. The batsman Martin Guptill and the bowler Kyle Jamieson just happened to be at the venue and the proprietor of the place – “an absolutely classic New Zealand bloke,” Pearce explains, “shaggy hair, shorts, so loose” – made all parties hang out.