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The thing about finding yourself is there’s always another corner to turn. The Vermont-based singer/songwriter Liz Cooper made her third album during a period of intense self-discovery and reinvention. She moved to New York for the first time, weathered a pandemic, came out to herself after falling in love with a friend, and experienced her first queer relationship and breakup, all in the course of a few years. New Day marks both a personal and a musical revolution for Cooper – a plunge into psychedelic pop depths and a fullhearted reflection of a whirlwind chapter in her life. These songs scintillate with the kind of self-confidence that only beams through after you’ve aimed a sharp gaze inward and realized that whatever you see will always keep darting ahead of you.

In making New Day, Cooper radically overturned her habitual approaches to making music. Rather than writing with a full band behind her, she recorded demos alone in her apartment, learning day by day to trust herself as she forged her new sound. While recording, Cooper assumed production duties for the first time in her career, which enabled her to work bold new textures into each song. Together with co-producer Dan Molad (Lucius, JD McPherson), she wrung entirely new sounds out of her guitar with studio equipment she’d never tried before. For the album’s bristlingly optimistic title track, Cooper ran her guitar through a Kaoss pad synthesizer while Molad captured the sound by swinging a microphone around the room. They visited the War on Drugs’ studio to record feedback from Marshall amplifier stacks. Rather than focusing solely on composition and performance, Cooper took a sculptural and procedural approach to production.

No matter how many times you change, no matter how many hours you commit to improving yourself, each new phase in a life is still only a prelude to the next one. With New Day, Cooper captures the unfurling transformations that revealed her to herself – and leaves the door wide open for all the people she’s still yet to become.

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West 22nd is a rock band out of Austin, TX, made up of friends who met at UT Austin and came together with one shared goal: to make music for the world and become the next great rock band.

Their sound—self-described as carousel rock—spins through genre, emotion, and energy without ever losing its center. It’s a term they coined to capture the controlled chaos of their music: sometimes dizzying, sometimes grounding, always unforgettable.

From a breakout EP to a debut album that pulled in over 1.5 million streams in its first month, West 22nd has made it clear they’re not here to blend in. Their lyrics are autobiographical, their shows are electric, and their ambition’s impossible to miss. They’ve already played ACL, sold out venues in cities they’d never even been to, and built a fanbase that screams every word right back at them.

West 22nd isn’t a throwback or a trend—they’re what’s next. And if you’ve ever been in a crowd when the chorus hits just right, you already know.

For the latest updates, upcoming shows, and more, visit their official website: west-22nd.com

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Between their tight grooves, radiant harmonies, heartfelt lyrics, and jaw-dropping solos, there’s no simple, easy way to summarize New York City five-piece Juice.

Pulling from pop and rock, hip-hop and R&B, ‘90s alternative, modern electronic, folk, and more, their complexity is their strength: All six members are multi-instrumentalists from different musical backgrounds and upbringings, each one bringing his own unique flavor to the band. The result is a “multi-dimensional rock” identity that has continuously evolved over the past decade, as the band members themselves – Ben Stevens (vocals, keys), Christian Rose (vocals, violin), Kamau Burton (vocals, guitar), Daniel Moss (guitar), and Rami El-Abidin (bass) – went from students at Boston College to professional touring musicians and seasoned recording artists.

Juice’s sound may be ever-evolving, but their bold energy is evergreen: The goal, both on stage and on record, is not just to connect on a human level, but to breathe life into every room. While they pack a punch on record, Juice shine their brightest onstage, bringing their music to life for all to see, hear, and feel. The band have played countless national tours over the past ten years, including four headline tours and support slots opening for bands like flipturn, Ocean Alley, and The Dip.

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The weight of change taunts our periphery, smearing lipstick across a heated cheek before those lips have had a chance to say how they felt, really. A blue-black polaroid, held in a pocket, barely makes shapes of its faces before someone takes another photo. Songwriter Al Olender tries to grasp these brief moments in slow-motion, to live in them for just a little while, but finds that the tighter she holds on, the more these frames fall into a soupy blur. Change is our only constant, but what if we wanted to steep in the now? What if we could stay right here? Olender captures the anxieties of an ever-moving world on her second full-length album The Worrier, where all are invited to mourn the fleeting nature of our experiences and yell into the ether.

She has never shied away from the goopy mess that comes with laying your heart on the line. On her 2022 debut album, Easy Crier, Olender stared the truth right in the face and got to know the all-encompassing shadow of grief. She learned to stop lying and to really live in deep sincerity, no matter how shaky or silly it could feel. By stepping into this boundless reality, Olender connected with herself and those closest to her more than she ever had. Now, after a few years on the road touring solo in her beloved Mazda, opening for the likes of Bonny Light Horseman, Langhorne Slim, Rayland Baxter, John Moreland, Shovels & Rope, Deer Tick and Lucius, she finds herself aching for those connections to stay still, to be just the same as when she left them. To chase your dream, to make art and see the world, often means loosening your grip on the very things that allowed you to do that in the first place. For Olender, that’s a tough one to swallow.

“It’s a new season of my life but how do I hold on to everything I love?” she asks. “Is change almost worse than the loss I’ve experienced?” After the sudden death of her older brother Keith, Olender found reprieve in her songwriting and built a beautiful community in her home of Kingston, NY. Now older than Keith was when he passed, Olender finds that as she enters new phases of her life––ones that Keith never got to experience––new forms of grief and worry bubble to the surface. “Every year is a little further from him and that’s the sad hard truth. He is never far from any of these songs.” As she has grown, Olender has come to realize that she now loves people in different ways, never holding back from discovering every aspect of herself: anxiety, sexuality and anarchy, both in herself and in her relationships. Although she’s in an almost constant state of worry, she can also hold the beauty and luck that her life beholds. The Worrier nourishes these contradictions.

Olender wrote these songs in motion while trying to hold still: highway scenes speeding past a driver side window; quick-scrolling through phone photo albums; running through the airport to say goodbye; kissing a stranger in a new town; calling a friend out of the blue. It felt necessary that these kaleidoscopes of swirling memory be captured in an instant, much like the moments that are gone too fast. Olender recorded them in just under a week with producer Nick Kinsey (Waxahatchee, Kevin Morby, Scott McMicken, Elvis Perkins) at Chicken Shack Recording. She wanted the album to feel human, to hear each crackle, strum or phone alarm and so, they recorded live to tape, just Olender and her friends in one room, one take at a time.

The Worrier feels like a montage in a beloved rom-com, capturing both Olender’s messiest and most beautiful moments. The rootsy belly of “The Cyclone,” points to the butterflies of first crushes, while spotlighting the gut-punching reality that it might not work out the way you want it to. “I wanna text you but it’s desperate, I’ll pretend I don’t care,” she spits over bluesy strums. It’s that universal urge to be a cool girl but deep down, we all just want to be noticed and loved. “Spring Fever” sprints through a street-lit city, trying to make it to the person you’ve been dreaming about. It’s a coming-of-age chapter, embracing sexuality and lust in all its delicious glory as its urgent percussion mimics the cravings that come with a connection. It begs the question: what if we didn’t think about what could go wrong and instead, dive right in? The sweet, star-drenched “Matter of the Heart” tries to tighten the grip on adult friendships, aching about the ever-evolving responsibilities and choices that can get in the way of true tenderness. Olender laments: “We’re not enemies We’re just strangers I don’t know which one Is more dangerous,” highlighting how friend break-ups carve deeper scars than romantic ones.

Olender has crafted an album that captures our most important moments but doesn’t try to create meaning or resolution. These are brief, beautiful glimpses into the characters that adorn our stories, nourishing the person we become or hope to be. “I’ve been so good at pushing things away and not confronting them and then losing people,” Olender explains. “In this season of life, the best part is that I can talk; even in the hard moments, even crying on FaceTime, even being away. I’ve been lucky to have such incredible women that have given me chances and let me fail and let me disappear, and still, they have not abandoned me.” The Worrier is the chance to be a better version of ourselves. It says: we’re still here and we’re trying our best.

– Sammy Maine

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After years of steady growth behind the scenes, Low Gap is poised for a massive breakout in 2026. Brothers Gus and Phin Johnson spent the past year-and-a-half with their proverbial feet slammed on the gas and have hundreds of shows and a slew of singles to show for it. The duo recently released their debut album, Geneva, which is bound to expand their ever-growing audience to new heights. Gus and Phin, known for their well-crafted songs and animated concerts, have roots planted in Ohio and Eastern Kentucky, which show up clearly in their music. They, along with their five-piece band, blend 90’s alt-country and americana music with modern country sentiment. Original and unique, their songs manage to garner mainstream attention and critical acclaim from all corners of the increasingly diverse country genre.

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Brendan Walter is a Texas-born singer-songwriter with a relentless craving for purpose. A former semi-pro hockey player, Walter pivoted to music and began releasing his rugged mix of country, indie folk, and alternative songs. Following the hit collab “If a Song Could Change Your Mind” with Low Gap, and then popular tunes like “Asking for a Friend, and “Pipe Dream,” Walter scored a record deal in 2025 and released his debut album Disappearing Days, a collection about coming of age. He’s hit the road with artists like Wyatt Flores, Evan Honer, and 49 Winchester, and he’s excited to take bittersweet tunes into headlining shows this year.

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Born and raised on Boston’s North Shore, 25-year-old Lily Fitts is emerging as one of the most compelling new voices — an artist defined not by genre, but by the clarity and conviction of her storytelling. What began as intimate covers on TikTok has evolved into a career anchored in lyrical precision and emotional depth, transforming personal experience into songs that resonate well beyond their origins. Her work has drawn early support from artists such as Noah Kahan, The Lumineers, and Zach Bryan, alongside a rapidly growing audience that propelled her debut album, Getting By, to nearly 15 million streams since its release last June.

Getting By introduced Lily as a fully formed storyteller: a coming-of-age record marked by unfiltered honesty, narrative discipline, and a sharp emotional point of view. Drawing subtle influence from songwriters like Dolly Parton while operating with a distinctly contemporary sensibility, Fitts writes with cinematic detail and restraint, allowing each song to unfold with intention. She is not chasing a lane — she is establishing one.

On stage, Lily pairs commanding vocal delivery with a lyric-first performance style that translates with immediacy and impact. Rodeo Magazine calls her live show “beautiful, powerful, and refreshing,” while Concert Chronicles notes a voice that “stretches and simmers.” Following standout appearances at Fairwell Festival, Levitate Festival, and BST Hyde Park alongside Noah Kahan, Gracie Abrams, FINNEAS, and Gigi Perez, she brought Getting By to the road on her first-ever sold-out headline tour.

With momentum accelerating, Lily recently completed a European and UK tour alongside Max McNown, further expanding her international fanbase and stagecraft. She will enter the studio at the beginning of 2026 to record her sophomore album, marking the next step in the steady rise of an artist quickly becoming one of the most compelling young writers of her generation.

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A pulse-pounding, bass-blasting experience like no other! Touring nationwide, Sploinky Rave delivers electrifying DJ sets from top-tier talent, pushing the boundaries of sound and energy. Get ready to feel the bass in your chest and lose yourself in a night of immersive lights, unforgettable vibes, and face-melting music. Join the movement and experience the ultimate bass music party sweeping across the US!

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Femme Fest returns to unite the working class on May 9th at Higher Ground with a lineup of queer punk and hardcore that will stir up your hunger for the 1%. Prepare for a night of delicious community as we dress in royal excess like Marie Antoinette, the over-indulgent wares of a Y2K Heiress, or in the fanciest top hats and gloves like the wealthy elite on the menu. If that’s not your vibe, sharpen your pitchfork and join the angry mob as the peasants who revolted or the leaders throughout history that inspired the working class revolutionary you are today.

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Burly Girlies

Burly Girlies will yell in your face, kiss you on the cheek, and gather the fems and thems in the pit. Their mix of vulnerable and fun punk rock will get you riled up in more ways than one. Their songs include themes relating to feminism, anti-capitalism, sapphic love, and grooming. Burly Girlies hopes to inspire, charm, enrage, and make you laugh all at the same time.

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Froggy

Froggy is a Philly-based queer punk power trio formed in 2020. Starting the band as teenagers, they’ve written punchy and melodic tracks depicting the relatable and earnest parts of growing up, from 711 Nachos to ordeals with local creeps. Inspired by L7, The Dead Milkmen, Bikini Kill, and many other hard-hitting icons, Froggy stirs up a charming mix of youthful humor, grunge, and classic punk.

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Pleasure Death

Hailing from New York City, PLEASURE DEATH, is a queer heavy grunge duo harnessing power, revenge, and all consuming desire. Informed by RiotGrrrl ethos and 90s grunge, their songs exorcise repressed rage born of r*pe culture and queerphobia, with a heavy dose of distortion. Live shows are an invitation to step into your shadow and purge whatever’s killing your pleasure.

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Blossom

From the stone choked soil of the Green Mountains blooms forth raucous songs of queer joy, resistance, and liberation. Drawing from the fertile soundscapes of old school hardcore, modern punk, and the Riot Grrrl movement, Blossom seamlessly blends righteous rage and radical tenderness in the face of efforts to eradicate trans/Two Spirit existence. With the ferocity of a flower bursting through concrete these artists seek to smash barriers and overgrow all systems of oppression.

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Joshua Quimby is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist from Connecticut who plays alternative country music with a modern twist. His rich vocals and introspective lyrics blend traditional country roots with blues and folk influences, creating a sound that’s both nostalgic and original. Quimby’s music captures the essence of the American spirit, weaving tales of love, loss, and the open road.

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Baltimore native Matt Pless has been making a sustained impression on music fans and has released seven albums including his newest, Water Sign Language (2026), which should steer him further into the mainstream.

After a stint in NYC playing the streets, subways, and becoming a part of the Sidewalk Café scene in the East Village, Pless embarked on a 3-plus-year touring schedule, crossing the U.S. five times and releasing Tumbleweed, an album that sold more than 2000 copies out of his car and at shows. He shared the DIY underground with names like Days n Daze, Kimya Dawson, and Jeffrey Lewis, and the mainstream stage with Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and Southern Culture on the Skids. He has toured in the U.S., Canada and U.K. and Europe.

Matt Pless is the perfect example of a modern-day folk singer, as he has put his words to the test and his actions behind them. His wide appeal to listeners from 5 – 95 makes him a fan favorite.

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Think you know your stuff? Join us for a new monthly Trivia Night in the Showcase Lounge! From music to pop culture and everything in between, challenge yourself, win prizes, and claim bragging rights.

It’s first come, first serve, so don’t miss out!

Additional dates:
December 9
January 6
February 10
March 3
April 7
May 5
June 9

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Genre-defying Emerson Woolf & the Wishbones have been categorized as many things: Indie Alternative, Folk Rock, Dark Country, and Pop Americana, to name a few. Their music forms itself around Emerson’s songwriting, and the raw lyrics and visual storytelling pull listeners in from all walks of musical appreciation. Her songs are often a collage of autobiographical and completely fantastical elements, creating a unique space that is so relatably human while also seeming otherworldly and cinematic.

The band has been capturing attention in the indie music space since the release of their debut EP Not a Good Woman, and they’ve certainly managed to keep it with their recent release Too Easy to Kill, featuring Thia Kane.

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Minneapolis’ VIAL magically met each other through a Tinder post in 2019, brought together by a shared love of 90’s punk, indie, and grunge. Launching into their home scene with their debut Grow Up they quickly became local favorites with everyone from The Current to Music In Minnesota. Signing to LA’s Get Better Records in 2021, their follow up full length, Loudmouth, was an evolution of their indie-pop and alt-rock beginnings but began to hint at other leanings, especially in the tracks Ego Death and the fan-favorite Piss Punk. A little less reflection on the past and a little more anger at the future.

Even though their third release, Burnout, retained the whimsy, the fiercer side of things kept creeping in. Tales of betrayal and teen drama were also being matched by a hardness reflective of our fractured society.

With their 4th record, HELLHOUND, the gloves have come completely off. There’s a wee trace of the jovial in the LP’s title track/interlude but the rest of the record is one shredder after another – deceit, revenge, frustration and vitriol are nailed incessantly into the tracks from start to finish. Produced by Martin Cooke (Death Cab For Cutie, Of Monsters And Men, Destroy Boys), the LP is a powerhouse that draws from vintage punk, classic metal and all in between. Anyone who’s crossed them is a target and asking to get cut. First single CREEP SMOOTHIE pulls no punches in calling out disrespect from the worst kinds of men and would-be’s alike. IDLE HANDS channels the rage inward. Overall the record is a culmination of influences and experience and an explosive chapter in VIAL’s life.

Behind everything they do is an underlying dedication to causes ranging from gender equality and abortion rights to supporting indigenous arts and refugee aid. The band constantly helps on a material level, funneling income directly to these groups. Many artists pay lip service to making the world a better place. VIAL put their money where their mouths are and their steel toes where the sun don’t shine.

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Afie Jurvanen does not spend too much time in cities these days. For nearly two decades, Jurvanen was a fixture of the Toronto scene, both as a valued multi-instrumentalist and producer for friends like Feist, The Weather Station, and Kathleen Edwards and as the architect of one of his country’s most celebrated artists, Bahamas. Jurvanen came of age across Bahamas’ first six albums, the restlessness of jumpy early hits like Pink Strat and Barchords slowly shifting into the generous domesticity of 2023’s Bootcut. But Jurvanen has long been drawn to open spaces, to a quieter life. In 2009, the year of his aforementioned debut, he began visiting Nova Scotia, the Atlantic Ocean. Over the next decade, his trips became more consistent, then more frequent, and then longer, until, in 2019, Jurvanen and his family of four finally made the move—nearly 2,000 kilometers northeast, to Nova Scotia. They live a lifestyle, Jurvanen half-jokes, that is “close to Mennonite.” The kids are homeschooled. No one has an iPad. Text messages can feel like miracles.

But in 2022, Jurvanen went back to a city—namely, Music City, or Nashville, Tenn. During five days at the Sound Emporium, he worked with some of America’s true country greats, aces like Vince Gill and Sam Bush, Russ Pahl and Mickey Raphael. Bootcut, he reminisces, was maybe the easiest record he’s ever made, his songs and visions executed with utter clarity by absolute pros. When Jurvanen came home, though, he still had a few tunes and plenty of energy. Could he make more music, he wondered, outside of a city?

Despite his extended résumé, Jurvanen has never been much of a tech guy or studio hound, never one for making his own records. In 2021, however, producer and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Van Tassel had also left Toronto, moving back to Nova Scotia and building a little studio, called DreamDate, in a backyard shed there. It was just small enough to skirt inspections, just big enough to house everything. Jurvanen had once rented Van Tassel’s space back in Toronto to listen to his Earthtones album on someone else’s speakers, to decide if it was ready for release. He’d been impressed by the place’s minimalism and tidiness, by the studio rarity of everything working. So Jurvanen began driving the 20 minutes from his cottage to Van Tassel’s spot via a winding ocean road, passing his days hanging out with his local friend and recording some songs. There was no real agenda but to work and play. And that’s how two people in a little shed made what may be the most effortlessly magnetic record in the entire Bahamas catalogue, My Second Last Album.

Van Tassel and Jurvanen played every sound on My Second Last Album, from the buzzing acoustics of “Shadows” to the Mellotron ostinato of “Play the Game.” This self-dependence allowed them to do anything they wanted, to follow musical enthusiasms into any space they favored. Jurvanen wrote “The Bridge” via text with Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor, and he and Van Tassel turned it into an infectious country-funk tune, the strutting refrain closing the gap between Little Feat and Canned Heat. “Ready for a New Thing” echoes Joni Mitchell’s famous electric guitar tone, using it as the core of a buoyant little pop song about growing up, about being happy with growing older. “Feels So Good” is a modern soul wonder, its perfect groove framed by bass, piano, and finger-snap drums and built with a brilliant amount of negative space. There is charging indie rock, hazy piano, and pastoral folk-rock. Again, My Second Last Album is anything Van Tassel and Jurvanen wanted it to be.

What’s most striking about these 10 songs, though, may be Jurvanen’s lyrical candor and open sense of play. He often found himself so motivated by what he and Van Tassel had accomplished during the day that he’d go home and write another song by night, the pace giving him permission to put down words without second-guessing himself. “Don’t hold back/share your opinion,” as he belts out as he emerges from the bridge on the funny and real opener, “Sauna.” His opinions here range from government payouts that could feel like pandemic bribes (again, “Sauna”) to the anti-rock star practice of waking up early enough to see the dawn and feel the day take shape (“Ready for a New Thing”). Over the tender piano of “Only Inspiration,” he extols the virtues of living in a house of women and girls, while he chastises Henry Ford’s vitriol and social media’s endemic bile on “Dearborn.” There is a burgeoning strain of self-determination to it all, of finding and accepting new ways to live for oneself and for everyone else, too. As Jurvanen, the son of immigrants, sings during the poignant closer, “We all belong in this country.” In the country, Jurvanen found his own state of being.

For a long time, Jurvanen didn’t know what to do with My Second Last Album. After cutting a legitimate country record in the city where the genre lives, was it a too-weird left turn to put out a loose-limbed indie-pop set cut in a shed? He thought about slicing it into singles or splicing it as a bonus onto some sort of future Bahamas compendium, maybe even shelving it altogether. But then he put the record back on after not hearing it for several months and had the simplest and most profound realization possible: He loved these songs, the way they sat together, the story they told about who he was at that moment—a married father content to live in the country alongside the very ocean where he surfs, a musician who often goes to his buddy’s house to casually make some music. It became My Second Last Album, one of Bahamas’ truly indispensable works.

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City of the Sun’s new album, Under the Moon marks a return and feels like stepping out of the shadows and into new sunlight.Produced with the legendary Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty, Built to Spill), the record bends through moods and geogra-phies: the rolling surf of “Angeles,” the spaghetti-western hush of “Bajo la Luna,” the desert rock pulse of “Ciudad del Sol,” the Mediterranean sway of “Hotel Alma.”

Formed by guitarist John Pita, joined by drummer Zach Para, the band later introduced bassists Matt Fasano and guitarist Marco Bolfelli. City of the Sun creates music that feels at once intimate and cinematic–like a film you can step inside. Since their debut in 2016 with To The Sun and All the Cities in Between, to their 2020 self-titled, and 2022’s Segunda Alma, the band has built a cult-following around the globe.

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For Trousdale—the trio of Quinn D’Andrea, Georgia Greene, and Lauren Jones—the ache of growing through change, of facing down existential anxiety, and matters of the heart are all intimately familiar. “We can acknowledge the strides we’ve made and be grateful, but we’ve talked a lot about how tired we are,” Jones says with a laugh. “We’ve been thinking a lot about the tension that comes with change, wanting it, fighting it, embracing it, but learning to thrive in that moment.” On Trousdale’s upcoming LP, Growing Pains (due April 11th), the band works through those struggles to find strength, courage, and growth in each other. “From what was, something new can always grow,” D’Andrea says.

Trousdale’s debut album, 2023’s Out of My Mind, earned raves from the likes of the Boston Globe, Consequence, and Atwood Magazine for its powerful songwriting, immaculate harmonies, and ability to bridge gaps between country and indie pop. On Growing Pains, the three songwriters evolved their style, writing rough ideas on their own, then refining and finishing them in the room together. “We’re all adding to each other’s ideas, drawing from personal experiences and then expanding them into something more people can connect with,” D’Andrea explains. To that end, second single “Secondhand Smoke” lives deeply in the story of an abusive relationship, but elevates into something far more haunting. There’s an icy chill to the acoustic guitar, the pain ringing softly into the night as the trio take on the perspective of a woman struggling to find hope.

As good as Trousdale sounds when they lean into their gold-hued pop, the group work their country flair into the material more masterfully than ever before. There are shades of Leann Rimes to the groovy, swaying “Lonely Night”, while the heartbeat-ballad “Want Me Back” took inspiration from Lady A and finds the trio hoping that an ex might be regretting the breakup.

Across 12 remarkable tracks, Growing Pains stares down all the weight of its title, a trio of strong, independent women facing the threats of loneliness, broken hearts, loss, and more, and converting it into transformative, uplifting music. And as the album closes on the dazzling “Last Bloom”, Trousdale basks in the light at the end of every tunnel. “What it was will grow into something new,” they sing, radiating at the end of the journey. “It’s a reminder that even in the coldest moments, renewal is always possible,” D’Andrea explains.

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Think you know your stuff? Join us for a new monthly Trivia Night in the Showcase Lounge! From music to pop culture and everything in between, challenge yourself, win prizes, and claim bragging rights.

It’s first come, first serve, so don’t miss out!

Additional dates:
December 9
January 6
February 10
March 3
April 7
May 5
June 9

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Arts Fishing Club is more than just a band; they are storytellers, explorers of the human condition, and purveyors of living life boldly. An ethos demonstrated by frontman Christopher Kessenich’s first 4.5 month tour in which he walked 1600 miles along the east coast from Maine to Atlanta to Nashville, played 60 shows, and slept in strangers’ living room floors.

The boldness that compelled such an adventure is felt in AFC’s electrifying live shows where the band weaves the raw energy of rock and the introspective lyrical honesty of folk to create a sound that is timeless and refreshingly original.

Whether performing in sold out small clubs or on festival stages (Bonnaroo, Summerfest, Treefort, Mile of Music), their engaging stage presence and ability to connect with fans makes their live performances a cornerstone of their success.

With a growing fanbase, commitment to pushing their creative boundaries, and an infectiously entertaining live show, Arts Fishing Club is poised to make a lasting impact on the indie music landscape.

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A cult band in the making, The Toxhards bring a chaotic shot of adrenaline with their rousing live performances and genre-bending songs. With 8-foot-tall pig suits, t-shirt tosses, AirDropping unreleased demos from the stage, constant instrument swapping, and free coffee, The Toxhards have built a rapidly growing and devoted fanbase – many of whom attend shows cosplaying as characters from the band’s eclectic catalog such as “Ængus, The Prize-Winning Hog,” “Satan’s Little Hell Song,” “Beatrice,” “Doombop!” and “Get Creative! Or Get Radicalized!”

No two Toxhards shows are ever the same. The Get Destructive Tour promises to be the band’s most ambitious and interactive run yet, featuring a completely different setlist every night, brand-new visuals, and new songs the audience will vote on during the show (the band needs that sweet, sweet market research!) plus all the Toxhard classics fans love to experience live.

The Toxhards’ music has racked up tens of millions of streams and views online, with millions more for their comedic bits and skits. Their debut LP Your Neighborhood was released in spring 2025 via Hopeless Records to critical acclaim, and was followed by extensive touring across North America. The Get Destructive Tour marks a new era for The Toxhards, and promises to outdo everything before it.

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Now Would Be A Good Time, their debut album, tells vivid, visceral stories, and is funny and darkly ironic in the manner of writers like Mary Gaitskill or Otessa Moshfegh. Their music sounds familiar, but the songs are modern, youthful, singing acutely through dissociative daydreams and galling breakups, sexual fantasies and media overload, all the petty resentments and minor humiliations of being in your early twenties in the 2020s.

“Cathode Ray” opens with caution, its first harmonies arriving in big, looping sighs. It’s vulnerable but a little menacing, with a wide open chorus and a spacious, airy beat anchoring everything. “Moth Song”, a song about unrequited love and “being so spun out by everything that you feel like you’re delusional and hallucinating crazy things,” forms the album’s spare centrepiece, Anita Clark’s undulating violin part drifting in and out of focus as if from a dream.

Other songs aren’t as oblique, instead chronicling brutally familiar moments at the end of relationships: The tense, emotionally volatile torch song “The Actor”, says Peverelle, is about “going to your partner’s one-woman show and then getting broken up with”. “Hotel TV”, a hypnotic, late-night reverie, is about “having a sex dream about somebody else while next to your partner, and your partner being a liar,” explains Pilkington.

The strongest link between the trio, aside from friendship, is music. “We all talked about loving music when we were growing up, and knowing we wanted music to be a big part of our lives,” says Pilkington. That feeling—of music as an innate calling, as opposed to hobby or folly—was justified: Folk Bitch Trio have already toured across Australia, Europe and the US, supporting bands as disparate as King Gizzard, Alex G and Julia Jacklin. They’ve signed with Jagjaguwar, a home for singular icons and iconoclasts (Bon Iver, Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten, UMO and others), and they’ve found their first diehard fans with dazzling harmonies and acerbic lyricism that transcend genre expectations and audience lines.

These are the stakes: Learning how to live a life free of lovesickness and loser exes, when to sink into contemporary nihilism and when to have a laugh with your friends, and why being alive can feel so ephemeral and unreal. In this sense, Now Would Be A Good Time feels like a manual for modern living: a missive from three proud Folk Bitches finding beauty and wisdom where they can, together.

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Cheekface is an indie rock trio, more precisely a talk-singing band, from Los Angeles.

The story starts in 2017. Things were getting pretty crappy on Earth. Indie rock lifers Greg and Mandy got together to write out the anxiety, despair and the bleak humor of it all. They sent the demos to Echo and, voila, a band.

The band chased their 2019 debut LP “Therapy Island” with 2021’s “Emphatically No,” which bowed as Bandcamp’s top-selling alternative album. Their 3rd LP “Too Much to Ask” in 2022 was a watershed moment: it shot to #2 on the non-commercial radio chart, and The Needle Drop proclaimed it one of the year’s best albums. Cheekface’s 4th album “It’s Sorted” came out January 22, 2024. Touring to support “It’s Sorted,” the band sold out shows across the US, Canada and the UK.

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Carsie Blanton is a songwriter with hooks, chutzpah, and revolutionary optimism. A radical folk artist in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, her infectious melodies and lyrical wit keep listeners rapt while she conjures spirits of vaudeville, campfire singalongs, and punk rock. Blanton and her road-tested band deploy humor, camaraderie, and considerable musical muscle to enroll each audience in a rare vision of hope and solidarity.

In addition to writing and performing music, Carsie works as a political organizer and activist. In fall of 2025, she participated in the Global Sumud Flotilla, a direct action to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza by sailboat. In early October, after a month at sea, she was imprisoned in Israel for five days along with hundreds of her comrades.

Soon after, Blanton released The Little Flame, a song of solidarity covered widely on social media during her detention. The Little Flame features background vocals from Irish band Ye Vagabonds and Carsie’s Palestinian/New Zealander prison-mate Rana Hamida, and appears on her latest album, The Red Album Vol II.

After two decades spent on the road, Blanton has amassed a dedicated fan base and a small menagerie of viral hits, and regularly sells out mid-size venues across the U.S. and Europe. 2026 will find her touring heavily with her own band and in collaboration with Canadian folk-punk rabblerousers The Burning Hell, as well as continuing her organizing work with Artists Against Apartheid, Party for Socialism and Liberation and others.

“Beautiful, militant anthems.”– Ken Tucker, NPR’s Fresh Air

“Carsie Blanton is fighting fascism with big hooks and an even bigger heart.” - American Songwriter

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“It clicked for me one day, that the album was going to be about hornets,” explains Sputnik, the mononymous songwriter behind the noise-pop project Weatherday. “It just made sense to me.”

Hornet Disaster, Weatherday’s follow-up to their 2019 debut Come in, and spiritual successor to 2022’s collab release Weatherglow, is their most expansive work to date. In Weatherday’s initial bout of inspired writing and recording, they produced over 70 songs for the record, but not before they had a complete, overarching narrative that was coherently tied back to Sputnik’s previous work.

It’s a bustling record with disparate songs each vying for space like wasps in a swarm. It can inspire caution and chaos, but there’s wonder, purpose, and a certain familiarity there, too. Weatherday has extended the knotted, thrashing maximalism of Come in by doubling down with the uncompromised, no-stone-unturned nature of Hornet Disaster. Where Come in was the product of an artist searching for their voice, Hornet Disaster represents the joyful abandon that comes from having found it.

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