In this time of great innovation, so much creative energy, especially in music, is oddly (sweetly) focused on nostalgia.

Maybe it started with the Journey montage on “Glee” or retro theme nights on “American Idol” or the success of “Mamma Mia” on Broadway. This year, Netflix launched “The Get Down,” which uses ’70s hip-hop not only as a soundtrack, but as the main storyline. Daryl Hall’s wonderful “Live From Daryl’s House” webcast showcases the artist brilliantly reinventing his own work.

In Hawaii, add to that genre Matthew Mazzella, a 20-year-old actor from Kaneohe who, for no reason other than taking on a personal challenge, recorded Kalapana’s version of Hall and Oates’ “When the Morning Comes” all by himself, singing and playing every part in a “full band cover.” The result is a charming music video posted to his YouTube channel that is a faithful homage with a millennial’s sunny, un-self-conscious style.

“You can’t grow up here and not know that song!” Mazzella said. “It’s a great song.”

Watch the clip and appreciate not only that he played every instrument (the triangle!) but that he mixed and mastered the recording and shot and edited the video. He figured out the arrangement by listening to the Kalapana track over and over, picking out the guitar parts, the bass line, the drums, even taking notes on each shake of the shakers.

“It was hard. I was listening to two different guitars, one in each ear.”

He has one of those stories of coming to music almost effortlessly. There were no torturous piano lessons in his childhood. “My grandma had a piano, so just played it. The instrument was available and I was curious,” he said.

Later, he studied music in middle school. “That helped me give names to things,” he said. He found a drum kit in the school music building and taught himself enough to get into jazz band. Eventually, he learned to read music. At one point, he signed up to take a music class but all the popular instruments had already been spoken for, so he ended up playing bass. “It was, ‘Oh, no! That’s the last thing I want to play!’ And I ended up loving it.”

On almost a separate track, Mazzella pursued a love of theater. He is a 2013 Castle High School graduate who came up through the lineage of revered drama teacher Ron Bright. “I only got to do one show with Mr. Bright,” Mazzella said. “I was in seventh grade, in ‘Guys and Dolls.’”

He spent summers studying with Bright’s protege, John-Paul Tai, at Paliku Academy of Performing Arts. “I really credit him for inspiring me,” he said.

Mazzella is currently in the Manoa Valley Theatre production of “It Should Have Been You.” He spent a year as a company actor for Honolulu Theatre for Youth, composing music for plays and performing on tour to schools on every island.

He has another retro homage, an all-band cover of America’s “Sister Golden Hair,” posted on his YouTube channel and he’s thinking about which song he might want to try next, even though the production work is painstaking and he sometimes is too wrapped up in the fun of the project to make himself go to sleep. “Something from the ’60s or ’70s,” he said. “The sound is there without being super complicated.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.