Willis
WILLIS didn’t blow up overnight — they built something lasting. Formed in Florence, Alabama and now based in Nashville, the band began in 2016 as five childhood friends making music in a bedroom. Nearly a decade later, they’ve grown into one of the most loyal followings in modern indie rock — with over 350 million streams, an RIAA Platinum-certified record, and a fully sold-out national headline tour in 2024. Their breakout track “I Think I Like When It Rains” became a viral anthem, reaching #1 on TikTok’s U.S. chart in 2023 and remaining in the Viral 50 from 2022–2025. WILLIS made their name where it matters most — the stage. Night after night, fans show up in Locals Only tees, singing every word like they’ve been there since day one. What started as a quiet DIY movement has become a full-on live experience. Across their beloved Locals EP series (Locals, Locals 2, Locals 3, Locals 4) and 2024’s debut album I Can’t Thank You Enough, WILLIS has developed a sound that’s warm, rhythmic, and emotionally direct — nostalgic but never stuck in the past. It’s indie rock that leaves a mark. The band continues to evolve while keeping the same heartbeat that’s been there since the beginning: real connection, real fans, and music built to outlast trends. Website | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify | TikTok
Marielle Kraft
When you hear Marielle Kraft’s music or experience her candid live shows, you feel as though you already know her. The indie pop singer/songwriter, now based in Nashville, displays craftsmanship beyond her years, following suit to artists like Colbie Caillat, Maisie Peters, and Taylor Swift. Self-taught, the Rhode Island native began playing guitar at 16 and soon writing songs that strike chords with listeners everywhere. Her gift for storytelling is evident through her use of salient detail, raw emotion, and poignant word choice to describe moments “exactly as they feel.” In spring 2018, she was crowned Grand Champion of the Mid-Atlantic Singer-Songwriter Competition, and the following June she delivered a Tedx Talk at Firefly 2018, discussing the importance of honesty rooted in her songwriting process. Marielle Kraft’s debut studio EP, “The Deep End” landed on July 12th, 2019, featuring fan-favorite tracks like “Toothbrush” and “Better Without You”. Kraft’s first effort is, as described by The Music Mermaid, “song after song of mini pop addictions.” In February 2020, Kraft co-released an “anthemic” and “heart-filled” single with Joshua Howard entitled “In It Together”, which quickly gained support across platforms as an anthem of connection amidst a chapter of isolation during quarantine. Marielle Kraft regularly plays at venues across the United States, sharing stages with names like Mt. Joy, GIRLI, and Amber Liu. She presents her live shows as a seamless narrative: evocative yet encouraging, deeply reflective yet refreshing. The raw authenticity with which Marielle invites listeners into her story cultivates a relationship with them beyond the song, as she is known to “bring together a room full of strangers.” Her “winning personality,” “genuine connection”,” and “gift for story telling” on stage have fueled the ever-growing crowds at each of her shows. In 2021, Marielle Kraft released 4 singles, each of which found major traction on TikTok before becoming studio produced releases. “Everyone But Me” (February 19th), “We Were Never Friends” (March 24th), and “Second Coffee” (July 19th) feature a more developed sound than seen from Marielle before, while her collaboration with Charlie Brennan called “Sidelines” (October 29th) landed on Spotify’s “Fresh Finds” and Apple Music’s “Breaking Singer/Songwriter” playlists. Kraft’s sophomore EP “Heartspace” released on September 30th, 2022 followed by two powerhouse pop singles “Owe My Ex” and “10x Better,” which fueled a nearly sold-out headlining tour across the United States. October 27th, 2023 brought the latest offering from Kraft—an evolved EP of 4 songs, tied together as the concept project called “GOOD.” Co-produced with Nashville’s Quinn Redmond [Stephen Day, Emma Klein], GOOD marks an exciting new chapter for Kraft as she stretches her reach to opposite coasts and wider corners of the internet. Website | Instagram | Facebook | Youtube | Spotify | Bandcamp
Diggy Graves – Crash My Funeral Tour
Raised in the PNW, Diggy Graves likes to describe his music as a melting pot of genres that ranges from Rap to Horror Core. Diggy has been making music for most of his life and decided to create his persona behind the mask in 2020. You might know him from his most popular songs Red Vineyard and Circus Psycho. You can usually find him hidden in the woods making music in his cabin but in his free-time he enjoys long walks on the beach, hanging out with his son and digging graves. He always looks forward to performing live and seeing all his loyal fans. Website | YouTube | Spotify | TikTok | Instagram | Facebook
Oddly Satisfying: Ky Newman & atlgrandma
“Ky Newman is a content creator and producer on the podcast Emergency Intercom.” atlgrandma is the artist Liam Hall, a key figure in Los Angeles’s leftfield pop community: pensive, digitally curdled music that blends rock, rap, pop, and dance music in new absurdist ways. As a producer, Hall has helped shape the sounds of fellow artists like Willow, Snow Wife, Dorian Electra, The Hellp, D4ine, Izzy Spears, ericdoa, and Frost Children. Frequent collaborators include pop masterminds Lil Aaron and Y2K. Prior to LA, atlgrandma lived in the suburbs of Atlanta, where his family had resettled after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Youtube was his playground: He learned to play guitar, produce music, shoot videos and develop basic fine motor skills all at once. Releases like 2019’s “Even If We Don’t Get It Together” and 2022’s “Angelhood” further explored the brain rot of the chronically online, and detailed the dead-end promises of Western culture with a big Cheshire Cat grin. “Nightmare Blunt Rotation”, which arrives August 9, is a perfect distillation of atlgrandma’s sincerely demented, dementedly sincere worldview. Recalling Odelay-era Beck, it’s also a masterful piss-take of the kinds of punishers you can and do meet at parties in Los Angeles. “Reaper”, which comes in September, combines the blown-out sound of vintage bloghouse with a surprisingly compassionate encounter with Death himself. Earlier this year atlgrandma toured with Dorian Electra and Frost Children, and co-produced their triple-billed rave-up “We Invented Love,” which landed just in time for summer. His newly launched, semi-regular warehouse event series with fellow provocateur Ky Newman falls somewhere between party and performance art, and returns after Labor Day. “Nightmare Blunt Rotation” is out August 9 on smartdumb, a new label by producer Nick Sylvester, creative co-founder of godmode (Channel Tres, Yaeji, Pawpaw Rod, etc). Instagram
Sir Chloe
Sir Chloe is the moniker of the musician and artist Dana Foote. She has been known to blend grungy guitar hooks, sharp pop instincts, and a distinctive, emotionally raw vocal style. Sir Chloe draws influence primarily from funeral dirges and early Gregorian chants, channeling artists like PJ Harvey, David Byrne, and Radiohead. Foote shirked her government name and adopted the moniker Sir Chloe in 2017. Her stage presence has been compared to the likes of a “disheveled businessman after a long day,” and a “drunk uncle.” Her debut EP Party Favors (2020) has garnered nearly a billion streams and multiple gold records. The music is taut and emotionally charged, sitting between mainstream ambition and experimental edge. Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
Clem Snide
“The last ten years have been a rollercoaster of deep despair and amazing opportunities that somehow present themselves at the last possible second,” says Eef Barzelay. “During that time, the band bottomed out, I lost my house, and I had to declare bankruptcy. The only way to survive was to try to transcend myself, to find some kind of deeper, spiritual relationship with life. Once I committed to that, all these little miracles started happening.” ‘Forever Just Beyond,’ Barzelay’s stunning new album under the Clem Snide moniker, may just be the most miraculous of them all. Produced by Scott Avett, the record is a work of exquisite beauty and profound questioning, a reckoning with faith and reality that rushes headlong into the unknown and the unknowable. The songs here grapple with hope and depression, identity and perception, God and the afterlife, humanizing thorny existential issues and delivering them with the intimate, understated air of a late-night conversation between old friends. Avett’s production is similarly warm and inviting, and the careful, spacious arrangement of gentle guitars and spare percussion carves a wide path for Barzelay’s insightful lyrics and idiosyncratic delivery. “I look up to Eef with total respect and admiration,” says Avett, “and I hope to survive like he survives: with total love for the new and the unknown. Eef’s a crooner and an indie darling by sound and a mystic sage by depth. That’s not common, but it’s beautiful.” Named for a William S. Borroughs character, Clem Snide first emerged from Boston as a three-piece in the early 1990’s, and the group would go on to become a cult and critical favorite, picking up high profile fans from Bon Iver to Ben Folds over the course of three decades and more than a dozen studio albums. NPR highlighted the Israeli-born Barzelay as “the most underrated songwriter in the business today, with a sneakily firm grasp on poignancy and humor,” while Rolling Stone hailed his songwriting as “soulful and incisive,” and The New Yorker praised his music’s “soothing melodies and candid wit.” Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Rattlesnake Milk
From the southern plains of Texas, Rattlesnake Milk summons the sound of the prairie, mimicking the howl of coyotes and the pulsing rhythm of a lonesome junk train. While farming cotton for a family friend, Lou Lewis found inspiration to record an eight-song demo listening to the classics played on KDAV 1590AM in the empty flatlands of his hometown. Those demos paid homage to Lou’s favorite Dust Bowl migrant songs and haunted melodic gems from the 50s and 60s. Now, with the help of Corey Alvarez, and Andrew Chavez, Rattlesnake Milk captures the ephemeral soundscape of the Texas panhandle in the studio and on the stage. Website | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify
Novulent
Starting their music journey at 17 Novulent has been making a name for themselves as a singer and songwriter. With just a phone and earbuds Novulent has made one of the biggest shoegaze songs to date ‘scars’ which has 143 million views and counting at just 18 years old. Making a name for themselves in the alt rock scene their polarizing approach to music is what captivates the hearts of many. Website | Instagram | YouTube | Soundcloud | Spotify
Boris – Pink 20th Anniversary Tour 2025
Boris formed in 1992 and eventually arrived at the band’s current lineup of Takeshi, Wata, and Atsuo in 1996. In the years since, Boris has tirelessly explored their own rendition of what is heavy through methods entirely their own. Though the depths of their “heaviness” may intensify, their unique musicianship defies classification in any one genre or style, so let’s just call it real “heavy music” in extreme color. Their music has been called a “game changer” regarding the leading edge of the world’s rock scene, and that influence is limitless. They enter realms that cannot be described simply in terms of the “explosive sound” or “thunderous roars” that have become their trademark. Website | Facebook | Instagram
Geese – The Getting Killed Tour
In the summer of 2021, Geese emerged from out of nowhere, sparking a hype cycle unlike anything that had been seen for a young American rock band in recent memory. Suddenly a band that had previously planned to release some music, break up, and go away to college was touring the world. And during this entire process, that very same band everyone was getting to know ceased to exist. On a practical level, Geese are still the group we were introduced to in 2021: vocalist Cameron Winter, guitarist Gus Green, guitarist Foster Hudson, bassist Dom DiGesu, and drummer Max Bassin. But spiritually, Geese have returned as an entirely different prospect. Their new album 3D Country is the sound of a restless, adventurous band redefining themselves. Anyone who has seen Geese live recently might’ve noticed the band adopted a different vibe onstage — more of a volcanic, unpredictable aesthetic. It turns out that wasn’t a flipside to the recordings of Projector, but foreshadowing that there was more to the story. Knowing they were now beyond teenage basement experiments and were instead making something for an audience who would hear it, Geese felt emboldened. “When we were writing Projector it was about narrowing the scope, trying to do more with less,” Green says. “When we started writing for 3D Country we were trying to do a lot more and seeing what worked and what didn’t.” At the same time, they’re well aware of how significant a departure they’ve made. “As music listeners, we all appreciate bands who change over time, and are comfortable with risk,” Winter adds. It wasn’t necessarily a given that Geese would overhaul their sound, but with age came new adventures and interests. “Maybe the last record was our teenage angst and 3D Country is our newfound twenty-something arrogance,” he quips. For Winter, the album really started to materialize when they figured out “Gravity Blues” in early 2021. “It was simultaneously new and classic sounding, like older structures and sounds run through the 21st century,” a sound recognizable but warped to underpin an album meditating on daily life in a world sliding out of view. You can hear that fusion across 3D Country, Geese repurposing fragments of classic rock into a sound that is stranger and wholly their own. Right out the gates, the album kicks off with serpentine grooves underneath the armageddon visions of “2122,” before quickly ceding to the title track’s gospel-flecked chorus.”Undoer” is a slowburn simmer constantly building to something apocalyptic; “Crusades” travels back to Medieval times but chugs along on a “Heroes”-esque groove before strings swoop in around it. Later, Green and Hudson’s guitars bend and fry while Hudson also jumps in on vocals for an inhuman wail on “Mysterious Love,” and the whole album ends with the sideways piano elegy of “St. Elmo,” playing out like a saloon song viewed through a funhouse mirror. Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | TikTok | Soundcloud | Spotify
