The Moss
In a musical landscape with fewer boundaries than ever before, THE MOSS’s exuberant brand of alternative rock spans genres, eras, and even oceans. The Utah-via-Hawaii group was born on the shores of Oahu in 2015, as teenage buddies Tyke James (vocals/guitar) and Addison Sharp (guitar) picked up a gig serenading diners at local taco trucks in between surf sessions. Naturally, their songs took shape in the spirit of the island, imbued with the joyfulness and breeziness of reggae culture yet cut with the introspection and communal spirit of mainland indie acts like Pinegrove and Cage the Elephant. By 2018, the duo had grown, enlisting Willie Fowler on drums and Addison’s brother Brierton on bass, and traded in beaches for the Great Salt Lake. They hit the stage at spots like local cornerstone Kilby Court, live-testing their modern-indie-meets-’60s-blues with a wide-eyed exuberance that translated effortlessly into their 2019 self-released debut, Bryology. Colored by the sound of Stratocasters jamming through reverb-cranked Fender amps, all backed by bouncy rhythms, Bryology marked a big step for the still-young quartet – but, true to The Moss’s nature, was still hard-coded with a DIY ethos. “We basically had no budget,” James remembers fondly. “We bought some nice mics and an interface and I ended up learning how to mix while we were recording.” The follow-up, 2021’s Kentucky Derby, brought a more aspirational, blue-sky tilt to the foundation they’d laid on Bryology, expanding the group’s sonic arsenal while keeping the relatable lyrical style and sun-soaked sentiment at the forefront. “I’m really proud of how we’ve evolved as a band over time,” Addison Sharp says. “It feels like we’ve taken every different influence and mashed them all together to create something that feels really special.” “Bryology seemed like a collection of separate songs we put together to make an album, whereas Kentucky Derby is a similar thought and story coming together to collectively make a more cohesive album,” adds Brierton Sharp says, noting the album’s tracks are sneakily arranged in pairs of two that seamlessly flow into one another. “Each song could be listened to on its own, or you could listen to them all and get a broader sense of our intention.” No matter how listeners choose to interact with The Moss’s music, the band just hopes they feel something. It’s that kinetic relationship between band and audience that makes their live performances – including a pitch-perfect recent set for Audiotree – so compelling. “No matter what we do, we want to make sure the songs are fun to play live,” says Fowler. “We pride ourselves on being a band people want to see live.” “There’s something special that happens when you get an immediate reaction to a song,” says James. “Whether it’s during a live show or even just a songwriting session, if there’s a reaction from people in the room, you know you’re on the right track.” XX Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify
Twen
Everything about TWEN is hands-on. Ian produces, engineers, and mixes their albums. Jane designs every visual element, from videos, to posters, to merch. They’ve screen-printed their own shirts, booked their own tours, edited their own films, and built their tour van into a full-time mobile home. Their 2022 LP One Stop Shop wasn’t just a title, it was the truth. Even now, as their reach has expanded to a sold-out Red Rocks Amphitheatre show, opening arena tours, and having played 500+ shows across North America and Europe, they’ve kept full control. It’s proof you can exist outside the system and still make something that is current and alive. “TWEN, named after a post-war German magazine; a slang term for people in their twenties, has a sound that’s at once modern and nostalgic. Per the band, it’s ‘1965, 1995 and 2025 all at the same time.'” – Jax Today Written across highways & coastlines, their latest LP ‘Fate Euphoric’ isn’t nostalgic, though it nods to Britpop, psych, and new wave. It sounds more like the past filtered through the noise of right now. If ‘One Stop Shop’pointed out the problems of the 2020s from a first person perspective, ‘Fate Euphoric’ takes a bird’s-eye view, seeking comfort in the cosmic wheel that will always keep spinning. TWEN are a band in flux, and that’s the point. The van is still home, but the studio is wherever the signal feels right. The fate might be uncertain, but for now, it’s euphoric. Fate Euphoric is available on election day, November 4, 2025 via the band’s own label Twenterprises. Website | Instagram | Facebook | Youtube | Spotify | Bandcamp | TikTok
Kitty Craft
Kitty Craft is Pamela Valfer. Debuting in 1994 with the S/T cassette release on the Australian, Toytown label, and IT’S STUPID EP 7″ in 1995, Pam’s sound was originally a low-tech affair. 1997’s I GOT RULEZ EP 7” expanded her sound with keys & sampler, leading to 1998 release of BEATS & BREAKS FROM THE FLOWER PATCH (originally released in the USA by Kindercore Records). In 2000, her 2nd full-length album, CATSKILLS followed on March Records in the USA. Both albums had Japanese tours and Japanese CD releases with Rock Records. Around 2003/2004 after the completion of her 3rd Album… Pam dropped the mic, hung up her headphones, and put kitty craft into hibernation. The album was put down and filed away. Pam then focused on her visual and multimedia art, and career as an art professor. In 2019, kitty craft woke from her hibernation and quietly without fanfare, released “Beats and Breaks from the Flower Patch” and “Catskills” on all streaming & digital platforms. Followed soon after by “Lost Tapes”, a gem of an album, comprised exclusively of previously unreleased songs recorded as a full album in 2003, but was shelved never to see the light of day…until now. In some kind of pandemic zeitgeist, along with stuff like Lofi Girl/ChilledCow, a 90’s aesthetic resurgence, and the popularity of new and old vinyl records – kitty craft has been adopted by a whole new group of digital natives. Amazing and unexpected. Valentine’s Day 2022 brought us kitty craft’s first full-length LP vinyl record… MEW (1994-2004), an anthology album with tracks spanning all eras… MEW, shows an artist with a clear vision from the start. 2023: Takotsubo Records brings you the expanded CD versions of the kitty craft discography. Starting with BEATS & BREAKS and LOST TAPES… Both include previously unreleased songs. Back at home with Darla Records for worldwide distribution! Fall 2024: Darla Records and Takotsubo co-release a deluxe 2xLP version of BEATS ABD BREAKS FROM THE FLOWER PATCH. Available now at a record store near you! Spotify | Instagram
Little Image
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The Old Ceremony
Chapel Hill institution The Old Ceremony plays lush, literate cinematic folk rock. Now in their twenty-first year and having toured extensively in the US, Canada, and Europe, they have seven albums under their belt, including their newest album, Earthbound, released in October 2024 on Robust Records. They are especially known for their live shows, which bring their powerful songs together with spontaneous energy and musical interplay, making each night a new experience. TOC is led by songwriter Django Haskins, and includes vibes/organist Mark Simonsen, bassist Shane Hartman, violinist Gabriel Pelli, and drummer Nate Stalfa. Website | Bandcamp | Facebook
JD McPherson – SOCKS: A Rock N’ Roll Christmas Tour
Acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician JD McPherson will embark on his fifth-annual “SOCKS: A Rock n’ Roll Christmas Tour” this December with confirmed stops at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom, Nashville’s Basement East, & Minneapolis’s First Avenue, among several others. Tickets are available now via www.jdmcpherson.com/tour. These performances celebrate McPherson’s breakthrough debut Christmas album, SOCKS, which was released in 2018 on New West Records. The album features 11 all-original Christmas songs, the album has been the best-reviewed holiday record receiving overwhelming critical praise. Website | Facebook | Instagram | Spotify | YouTube
MAKE, Tacoma Park
MAKE – Website Tacoma Park – Website Spookstina – Website
Porch Light
Porch Light is an indie-rock group based out of Minneapolis, consisting of members Zac Fogarty (guitar), Jackie Uhas (vocals), Henry Hughes (bass), Kyle Siemon (guitar) and Isaiah Trimbo (drums). The project quickly came together in the Summer of 2024 with a mission to break the barriers that they have been accustomed to in the Indie world. Leaning into a raw and authentic live process “Porch Light’ creates a sense of relatability and intimacy for anyone experiencing this group. Inspired by blending the sounds of ’90s Radiohead with Hayley Williams’ Paramore, Slow Pulp, Big Thief and many more. The organic content with their signature ‘basement rock’ vibe has amassed them over 450k combined followers on socials. With just 3 songs released, be on the lookout for their debut EP arriving on April 11th, 2025! Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Soundcloud | Spotify
Watchhouse
Watchhouse, the North Carolina based duo of Andrew Marlin & Emily Frantz, have announced a new studio album called Rituals, due out May 30, 2025 via Tiptoe Tiger Music / Thirty Tigers. The collection marks the pair’s first release of all new, original songs since their 2021 self-titled album, which earned praise from Rolling Stone (“pristine acoustic picking collides with hazy, dream-like psychedelia”) Mojo, NPR Music, American Songwriter and more. Starting over a decade ago playing coffee shops and local restaurants around North Carolina, Watchhouse is a grassroots success story that’s been driven by Marlin’s poignant songwriting. With sold-out shows at legendary venues like Red Rocks and the Ryman Auditorium, and hundreds of millions of streams, they’ve earned a reputation for creating music that “redefines roots music for a younger generation” (Washington Post). The duo – now with a family of their own – are two singers and musicians with profound chemistry, performing earnest yet masterfully crafted songs that encompass the unknowable mysteries, existential heartbreak, and communal joys of modern life. The forthcoming album is no exception. Website | Facebook | Spotify | TikTok
Robert Lester Folsom
Sunshine Only Sometimes: Archives Vol. 2, 1972-1975 continues Anthology Recordings’ excavation, and exploration, of southern singer, songwriter, and psychedelic serviceman Robert Lester Folsom’s bountiful archives. Recorded across Georgia in various bedrooms, a barn, and a motel room with a reel-to-reel and a revolving cast of whip smart studio musicians in the first half of a dazed and confused decade, Sunshine Only Sometimes furthers Folsom’s place in the canon of long lost but eventually found independently spirited, high-flying American folk rock. When Anthology’s reissue of Music and Dreams, the sole contemporaneous album released in 1976 by Folsom, surfaced in 2010, little else was known of Folsom’s nearly five-decade deep archive of unreleased demos and fully formed studio recordings. Born and raised in Adel, Georgia — both then, and now, a sleepy hamlet with a population of less than 5,000 — Folsom was fortunate to be minded after extremely supportive parents. Exhibiting a precocious affinity for music, things went widescreen when he observed the same ferry from ‘cross the Mersey as many others of his generation, carrying the four musical moptops to their paradigm shifting appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Soon thereafter, Folsom began religiously absorbing every morsel of musical output The Fab Four offered, as well as that of their contemporaries. Yet, it wasn’t long before observation transformed into a motivation to create. Even a children’s record player bought by his parents as a gift to him was traded off to a neighborhood friend for a stringless, disheveled guitar (which Folsom’s father shined to prime and function for him in short order). As time went on, Folsom’s innate drive and field of vision broadened; he began enlisting neighborhood friends, classmates, and family members to fulfill his small-scale musical dreams, which would increase in weight with the passage of days. Over the next several years, while employing ingenious, home brewed over-dubbing techniques with his “love at first sight,” a Sears 3440 two-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, Folsom served as the de facto producer/arranger for any and all scrappy garage band or aspiring singer songwriter in the radius of Adel. Abetted by his mobile recording unit, across a number of unusual locations, and assisted by guitarist and collaborator Hans VanBrackle, this period produced the bounty of Folsom’s self-penned compositions which make up Ode to a Rainy Day and Sunshine Only Sometimes. And eventually, this period of woodshedding led to the formation of his rural-tinged, progressive, southern rock outfit Abacus. Though carrying Folsom’s own singular sound and vision, Music and Dreams, in equal measure, chartered the seas of smooth West Coast AOR before the yachts to come, while tracing the distinctly Californian sound of Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter soft rock Americana, which tussled on the waters before the large vessels overtook the big blue. Folsom’s earlier compositions found on Sunshine Only Sometimes reflect a darker-hued mixture of mellow folk, downer vibes, and rural tones, revealing his talent for melody and hook was intact far before Music and Dreams, with a keen sense of introspection making the dark and light equally resonant. Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | TikTok | Soundcloud | Spotify