Husbands
Husbands plays landlocked beach pop that sidequests Krautrock, garage rock, and tropicalia. OKC-based songwriters Danny Davis and Wil Norton got their start directing a Godzilla musical at their college and then began sharing snippets of lofi grunge pop ideas that came together in their first album, “Golden Year.” This album caught local label Clerestory AV’s attention, who assisted Husbands release its first vinyl LP, “After the Gold Rush Party,” on an imprint label, Cowboy 2.0 Records. “After the Gold Rush Party” was featured on NPR’s Heavy Rotation and Spotify’s New Music Friday, Fresh Finds, and Feel-Good Indie Rock playlists. Past performances included an OKC release show that drew 550 attendees and a stint opening for Smash Mouth (what Wil and Danny both likely consider their finest moment as a band). Pre-COVID, Husbands was slated to play bills at SXSW, Treefort Music Fest, Norman Music Festival, and a New York City release show at Baby’s All Right.Not to be deterred, Danny and Wil got back to songwriting and put together their third LP, “Full-on Monet,” released in January ’22. Their single, “Must be a Cop,” released June 6, 2021, has been featured on Spotify’s All New Indie, Today’s Indie Rock, and Grade A playlists (among other editorial playlists), and has received coverage from prominent bloggers including David Dean Burkhart, BIRP!, and Indie Shuffle.Website | Instagram | Twitter | FacebookWork Wife is the indie rock project made up of Brooklyn-based musicians Meredith Lampe, Cody Edgerly and Kenny Monroe. With influences such as Faye Webster, Neil Young and American Football, Work Wife blends melancholy lyrics and folk rock instrumentals to achieve music that evokes their own dark humor. Work Wife’s debut EP was released December 2022 on Born Losers Records, produced by Jordan Dunn-Pilz and Daniel Álvarez de Toledo (TOLEDO) and mixed by Melina Duterte (Jay Som). Their tour history includes stages shared with acts such as Anthony Green and Cafuné, and have been featured in FLOOD Magazine, Rolling Stone India and Under the Radar. Their Audiotree session and sophomore EP are due out in 2023.Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify
Dan Deacon
How do you make something solid, beautiful, and built to last in a time of cultural chaos and personal doubt? With Mystic Familiar, Dan Deacon gives us the stunning result of years of obsessive work, play, and self-discovery. It’s at once his most emotionally open record and his most transcendent, 11 kaleidoscopic tracks of majestic synth-pop that exponentially expand his sound with unfettered imagination and newfound vulnerability.Since 2015’s Gliss Riffer, Deacon has branched out from his core body of work as a popular recording artist into a dizzying array of collaborative projects: scoring eight films, including the feature documentaries Rat Film and Time Trial (both released as LPs on Domino Soundtracks) and HBO’s Well Groomed; collaborating with the New York City Ballet’s resident choreographer Justin Peck on the dance piece The Times Are Racing; performing expanded arrangements of his music with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; and for the first time producing and co-writing an album by another artist, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat’s alt-rock dynamo Riddles.But as varied and fulfilling as these projects were, they all lacked one thing: Deacon’s voice. And in the midst of that whirlwind of activity, he returned whenever he could to a personal oasis — the songs that would become Mystic Familiar, informed by all these collaborations but built from within. Propelled by the unprecedented response to Gliss Riffer highlight “When I Was Done Dying” and the exquisite-corpse animated video that vividly amplified that song’s narrative odyssey of multiverse-traveling post-life energy, Deacon’s writing took an exploratory new direction. He further developed this new material with daily prompts from Brian Eno’s deck of Oblique Strategies and the use of meditation to access that inner well of creativity David Lynch describes in Catching the Big Fish. These techniques, in tandem with his newly adopted therapeutic practices of self-compassion and mindfulness, produced Dan Deacon songs that go places far beyond those his music has traveled before — songs that wield the profundity of a philosopher and the absurdity of a court jester as they paint life as a psychedelic journey brimming with bliss and disruption, darkness and light.Mystic Familiar’s opening track “Become a Mountain” immediately announces itself as something new, for the first time ever on record presenting Dan’s natural singing voice, unprocessed and with only minimal accompaniment. When Deacon proclaims “I rose up” here, it is Dan Deacon singing in the first person as Dan Deacon — a startlingly vulnerable shift in a songbook abundant with characters, metaphors, and distorted vocals. As other ornate voices answer this unadorned I, we’re introduced to the album’s central concept and titular character: the Mystic Familiar, that supernatural other being that we carry with us everywhere in our head, which only we can hear and with whom we live our lives in eternal conversation. “Hypnagogic” takes us deeper into Deacon’s mind, a synth swirl similar to those which have begun his recent performances, absorbing the pulse of the room and extending that abstract moment in which a journey begins.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
The Moss
$1.00 of every ticket will go to the charity “One Tree Planted.”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.” XXWebsite | Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Kym Register + Meltdown Rodeo Album Release Show
Sometimes the process of mining for melody in words eviscerates the raconteur, gutting them like a tornado through a trailer park. Sometimes, “the truth” is a revival of shit rather forgotten, igniting a coward’s desire to look away. With “Meltdown Rodeo,” Kym Register foregoes such consolatory diversions for visceral scrutiny and unbroken stares. The result is a body of tunes that forages the American South, dislodging its ducked bullets from pearly white sand. According to Register, “Scottsboro,” the album’s opener, was years in the making. It recounts the little known history of “The Scottsboro Boys,” nine Black men falsely accused of raping a pair of white women in hyperpyrexic 1930s Alabama. One accuser eventually admitted the allegations were bullshit, but, for Black men in the Jim Crow South (as it is now), any assumptions of guilt are soon proven a permanent brand. Register wails against America’s foremost refrains—jury and peers and whole truths—in lyrics hefty with reconciliation and metaphor. “A blind eye, A blind eye is all justice knows / Of the truth of what happened in Scottsboro / Come on now, this story’s not that old.” Contrary to Register’s demand for account, the American South knows no shame. Balancing the album is Register’s odes to white, working class reckoners—Ella May, Maureen, Soni Wolf—that encase their unsung acts of defiance in mid-tempo rhapsodies. The aptly-titled “Blue” is a diagnosis of Joni Mitchell’s unchecked iconoclasm. Little-known fact: the cover of Joni Mitchell’s 1977 album, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, featured Mitchell in a blaxploitation era pimp suit, afro wig, and Blackface. “Blue”’s gutsy call-out challenges the conditions that still allow Mitchell amnesty, even after she traded her counterculture folk for jive turkey racism. Register’s literary acumen leads to exalting lesser-known white, southern, and queer freedom fighters and allowing leftist liberation struggles the air of legend generally reserved for America’s Wild West fetishes. Even in compositions that most closely resemble love songs (like “Water to Wine,” “Some Boy,” and “Traveler’s Cross”) Register never grabs the artificially colored bouquet or strums an acoustic verse to woo a corseted lover. Register prefers thorny things growing amidst the piss weeds, the fist-high, belligerent ballad that heralds love as the heartbeat of change. Register is also contributing a queer lens to the southern rock ethos. By way of supporting cast, Sinclair Palmer (bass), Joe Westerlund (drums), and Matt Phillips categorically deliver. Check out the title track for a perfect example of the band’s ability to travel between gritty responsiveness and tender reflection at Register’s lyrical instruction. Website | Bandcamp | Instagram
The Handsome Family
The Handsome Family’s new record (released Sept, 2023) began with a scream in the night. “It was a bleak winter during the middle of the pandemic,” says Brett Sparks. “One night around 4 a.m. Rennie started screaming in her sleep. She screamed, ‘Come into the circle Joseph! There’s no moon tonight.’ Scary as it was, I thought, man, that’s a good chorus!”The Handsome Family (songwriting and marriage partners Brett and Rennie Sparks) have been defining the dark end of americana for over 30 years. Brett writes the music and Rennie writes the words. Their work has been covered by many artists including Jeff Tweedy, Andrew Bird and most-recently Phoebe Bridgers. Their song “Far From Any Road” was the opening theme for HBO’s True Detective season one and still receives thousands of Shazams every week from all over the world.Handsome Family songs take place under overpasses and inside airports. Historical figures like George A. Custer and Nikola Tesla appear alongside a flying milkman and the whisper of an air conditioner against a plastic tree.Their eleventh studio album, Hollow (out Sep. 8, 2023) delves into the natural world at the edges of the man-made. It is a record lush with leaves and shadows and echoing with occult mystery. It begins with the dream-inspired “Joseph”— full of Mott the Hoople swagger and electric guitar so overdriven it sounds like an organ run through a vacuum cleaner. Next is the haunting “Two Black Shoes” which filters a Portishead groove through the highway motels, homeless encampments and McMansions of post-pandemic America.“I wanted to get an electronic feel with organic drums, “says Brett, “So I chopped up our drummer’s takes into little bits, quantized the beats, and ran those through an Echoplex. I really like that hybrid of real and fake.”“The King of Everything,” brings Brett’s harpsichord background into the mix plus Rennie’s time on the back porch taking muscle-relaxants and watching the white-winged doves.“Squirrels in the basement / Raccoons in the walls / Centipedes with stingers,” Brett sings on the mischievous and mysterious “Skunks.” The spooky Beethoven-inspired piano and Brett’s eerie whooping create a jingle for an increasingly desperate business. “Call us anytime at night,” Brett sings. “Call us day or night.”“The Oldest Water” is the real story of a primordial sea found deep in a Canadian mine. Dave “Guts” Gutierrez’s trilling mandolin gives the song an old-timey parlor elegance and the rushing feel of flowing water.“Mothballs” is a simple hymn for voice and piano. “A buddhist friend of Aleister Crowley’s always wore this old purple coat,” says Rennie, “and moths were continually flying from its pockets. The man refused to harm even the tiniest wool moth and I think that’s something we should all aspire to.”The softly-strummed “Shady Lake” is based on a real fishing hole hidden in the cottonwoods outside of Albuquerque where soft waves lap the reedy shores as turtles dive from wet rocks into the murky glory.“To The Oaks,” sings of the shady groves of ancient mystery cults while Alex McMahon’s overdriven guitars conjure up more modern tones. Brett sings, “Phantoms fly the forest / Twist up dripping ferns / Spirits in the shadows / In root and dirt and bone.”Website | Facebook
Nick Lowe featuring Los Straitjackets
Nick Lowe has made his mark as a producer (Elvis Costello-Graham Parker-Pretenders-The Damned), songwriter of at least three songs you know by heart, short-lived career as a pop star, and a lengthy term as a musicians’ musician. But in his current ‘second act’ as a silver-haired, tender-hearted but sharp-tongued singer-songwriter, he has no equal.Starting with 1995′s ‘The Impossible Bird’ through to 2011′s ‘The Old Magic,’ Nick has turned out a fantastic string of albums, each one devised in his West London home, and recorded with a core of musicians who possess the same veteran savvy. Lowe brings wit and understated excellence to every performance, leading Ben Ratliff of the New York Times to describe his live show as “elegant and nearly devastating.”Los Straitjackets are the leading practitioners of the lost art of the guitar instrumental. Using the music of the Ventures, The Shadows, and with Link Wray and Dick Dale as a jumping off point, the band has taken their unique, high energy brand of original rock & roll around the world. Clad in their trademark Lucha Libre Mexican wrestling masks, the “Jackets” have delivered their trademark guitar licks to 16 albums, thousands of concerts and dozens of films and TV shows.Together Nick & The Straitjackets have toured extensively around Europe and the United States, and are releasing an EP of new songs in June 2017.Nick Lowe: Website | Facebook Los Straitjackets: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Leigh Nash & Jeremy Lister
“The world knows Leigh Nash best as the delightful pixie-esque voice atop massive global hits such as “Kiss Me” and “There She Goes” with Sixpence None The Richer, but she’s worked tirelessly to define her perspective though her songwriting output, showcased on her latest project, “The Tide, Vol. 1,” a six-song collection of duets recorded with people Leigh considers personal superheroes.“What I’ve found to be true with my songwriting is that I seem to serve a story or song better when it’s something that just happened naturally with me, like an encounter or conversation,” she says. “I tried it back with Sixpence, but I’m just now starting to feel a little bit more at home in those songwriter shoes.”Combine those choices of subject matter — honesty with partners in times of strife, recognizing others’ perspectives in periods of trouble, identifying blessings in the everyday — with duet partners featuring voices both iconic and close to home, and The Tide reveals an artist at the peak of her powers.”Website | TikTok | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube Nashville’s Jeremy Lister started connecting with music while growing up in the middle of Mississippi. A son of a preacher, he began singing and learning harmonies in church at the age of two. Lister moved to Nashville in 2003, bringing his first EP, Shooting Star, with him. In 2005, he released his second EP, So Far, followed by the release of his Just One Day EP on Warner Bros. Records. That same year, he was invited to join the Ten Out of Tenn collective of singer/songwriters, which included then up-and-coming artists such as Andrew Belle, K.S. Rhoads, and Gabe Dixon.In 2010, he joined a cappella group Street Corner Symphony for the second season of NBC’s “The Sing-Off.” The group became a fan favorite, eventually claiming the second-place title in the competition. Ben Folds invited them out on the road immediately following their success on the show, which launched their touring career. Street Corner Symphony performs dozens of headlining shows all over the world each year.Lister released his first solo full-length album, The Bed You Made, in 2011, which featured a duet with Alison Krauss on the song You and I. In 2013, he released the single Set Us Free, which became the theme song for the MTV series “The World Of Jenks.” In 2017, he and his brothers, together under the name Lister Brothers, co-wrote and released the album Helium Ocean.In the 16+ years since he moved to Nashville, Lister has become a Music City staple, known for his prolific songwriting and unequaled vocal range. He has worked with some of Nashville’s biggest names, from Alison Krauss to Amy Grant, Meghan Trainor, and Chely Wright.Since signing with Big Yellow Dog in 2019, Lister has had songs placed with T-Mobile, Dignity Health, the Netflix movie 2 Hearts, the promo for the season finale of Modern Family, and more, and has released four EPs: “Sign Language” – 2019, “Cool Cool” (side project with Bergie) – 2020, “Forest for the Trees” – 2020, and “Happy Holidays, Everyone” EP – 2020. His most recent release is the full-length LP version of “Happy Holidays, Everyone,” featuring ten original holiday jazz songs.Website | Instagram | Facebook
Dyke Night
CALLING ALL DYKESWelcome to the return of Dyke Night, a queer performance experience presented by the one and only Lady Dyke and the queen of Chapel Hill herself Nyx Adonis.Featuring drag from the delectable Danny Libido and delicious Daydream, original music from the gorgeous AGA the Goddess, and a special guest appearance from the legendary Poison Venemisis.Bring your friends, your nail polish remover, and strap yourself in for the party of the summer.
Nick Shoulders and The Okay Crawdad
All Bad, the latest album from Nick Shoulders, ultimately encapsulates everything that makes Shoulders’ inimitable form of country music so vital: a heady balance of dazzling musicianship and punk defiance, coupled with gritty eccentricity and a generational connection to the roots of the genre. With a singing style inherited from his family’s vocal lineage, Nick’s songs achieve the rare feat of imparting difficult truths while inciting a certain joyful abandon, balancing a sound forged by years of hard travel with a heartfelt reverence for the origins of country music. In the spirit of Hazel Dickens and Jimmy Driftwood, the incisive yet wildly jubilant All Bad vocally objects to the reckless destruction of the natural landscape and development run rampant, while still offering plenty of joy and dance-ready rhythms. Spanning a variety of early country styles, the album’s infectious harmonies shine alongside everything from jangling cajun waltzes to surf-rock infused bluesy ballads–all tied together by a voice seemingly out of place in this century, yet ever ready to speak up about its problems.Released via Gar Hole Records (a label founded and co-owned by Shoulders), All Bad marks the first LP made with his longtime band, the Okay Crawdad, since 2019’s premier full-length Okay, Crawdad and their subsequent pandemic-imposed hiatus. After writing most of the album from the front seat of a tour van, the Fayetteville, AR-based musician and bandmates Grant D’Aubin (harmonies/bass), Cheech Moosekian (drums) and Jack Studer (lead guitar) recorded the album in a home studio on the banks of the Mississippi River with New Orleans collaborators Ross Farbe and Sam Doores.Surrounded by a singing style passed down from a time before microphones, Nick’s childhood of bird call whistles and an over-exposure to southern gospel music eventually steered him toward an adolescence drumming for metal and punk bands, and subsequent years as an active illustrator and member of Arkansas’s heavy music scene. After numerous personal calamities and a growing obsession with the rural musical traditions of his lifelong home, Shoulders left the Ozarks and lived out of his van, singing on the street corners of the west while slowly being drawn to the vibrance of the New Orleans dance and busking world.Instagram | Website | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Spotify
Michael Minelli
When Michael Minelli sings, you know it’s him. With show-stopping delivery, dynamic range, and timeless panache, the Connecticut born & raised singer/songwriter immediately sets himself apart. It’s no surprise he’s earned the praise of everyone from Ryan Seacrest to BuzzFeed.For Minelli, it’s all a matter of soul. “Soul is the core of everything,” he affirms. “It’s that thing you can’t put your finger on. Anytime somebody hears my music, I want them to immediately say, ‘That’s a Michael Minelli record’.”With over a decade of experience as an artist, Minelli seems to finally have hit his stride gaining over 20 million views, hundreds of thousands of followers & a 300% increase in streams all during the first month of being active on tiktok singing his song in public all over the country.Michael set the foundation in 2022 with major labels calling, huge sponsorships, and a 30 city, nationwide tour with fellow artist, Anees. With 2023 on the horizon, Michael is set for his long awaited explosion. One thing is for sure. When the time comes, he’ll be ready
