Sluice

When Justin Morris moved to New York City in 2019 after a lifetime in North Carolina, he was planning to do the opposite of what people usually move to the city to do: give up on his dream. Since childhood, that dream had been simple—write songs, play in bands, live inside “indie rock.” But a run selling merch for one of the era’s biggest indie stars unsettled that conviction. From his vantage point on the bus, the everyday grind of touring felt out of step with the spellbinding shows; encores gave way to a working reality that showed him the job-like side of something he’d only ever romanticized and left him wondering where the glow had gone. To his green worldview, the gap between the fantasy of “making it” and its reality was jarring. If this was “the dream,” he thought, maybe it needed to be reconsidered. New York was meant to be a clean slate, maybe even the place he’d learn another trade and leave music behind. Then, less than a day into his Bushwick sublet, a man with a gun kicked in his bedroom door, forced him to the floor, and tied his hands with TV cables. In the days after the robbery, unable to make sense of anything except through song, he started writing again. Those songs became the beginning of a new project he called Sluice. Sluice, now a four-piece band from Durham, North Carolina—with Morris on guitar and vocals, Oliver Child-Lanning on bass and various instruments, Avery Sullivan on drums, and Libby Rodenbough on fiddle—return with Companion, their third album and Mtn Laurel Recording Co. debut. It follows 2023’s Radial Gate, the quietly beloved record Morris made after fleeing New York for a Craigslist house in Hillsborough with then-stranger Child-Lanning, tracking songs at Sylvan Esso’s studio Betty’s while working carpentry jobs and wondering, as he sings on “What The Fuck?,” if he should do something else like “go back to school.” Radial Gate caught him halfway out the door of music, steeped in a hermit-like loneliness of rivers, dams, and floodgates. Instead, its release brought the dream back, but it looked different than it did to the “kid reading in a bunk” on a tour bus, crying and asking, “what happened to it all feeling so good?” that he sings about in “Vegas.” Companion begins where that disenchanted loneliness leaves off. Recorded with producer/engineer Alli Rogers at Betty’s in the winter of 2024 and slowly tended over two years, it sounds like someone deciding there may yet be a dream of music worth struggling for—and that the point of that dream isn’t stardom or escape, but companionship. That struggle is written into the songs themselves. “Vegas” returns to the era he was on tour with Angel Olsen, whose music he loved, watching the indie machine from the loading dock and feeling, as a younger musician, quietly overwhelmed by it, before fast-forwarding to the full-circle twist when Olsen later asked Sluice to open shows for her. “Now I’m at the 40 Watt with my old friends,” he sings, as if the old dream and the new dream finally collide in a joyous scream-along. Elsewhere, songs like “Torpor” and “What The Fuck” reach back to the robbery and that period of spiritual whiplash, now re-recorded after years of being played live to show how time can turn personal crisis into determination. Instagram

Be My Angel: WXYC Valentine’s Dance

Calling all lovers to the dance floor <333 On February 12th, find your angel at WXYC’s Valentine’s dance💘🪽 Whether you’re single, coupled up, or something in between… 😉 Join us at Cat’s Cradle and dance yourself into the night while our DJs mix 10PM-2AM💌🏹 DJ Lineup TBADoors: 9:30PMMusic: 10PM-2AM$5 w/ UNC Onecard, $8 General Admission📍Cat’s Cradle Backroom Instagram

The Still Not Okay Tour

The Still Not Okay Tour Featuring Turtle Smash: Performing as My Chemical Romance – Playing ‘The Black Parare’ in its entirety + hits Fake Happy: A Tribute to Paramore The Dirty Little Rejects: A Tribute to The All-American Rejects 2000s Era Emo After Party – A hit packed super set featuring members from all bands. Website

Dogpark

Dogpark got their start performing at University of Richmond (their alma-mater), before launching into sell-out shows across the country. The band consists of Eamon Moore (lead vocals), Chris Conte (drums), Declan Harris (lead guitar), Billy Apostolou (bass/guitar), and Will Harford (vocals/bass/guitar). Infectious stage presence and an homage to the indie-rock of the 90s have kick-started their career from a backyard band to a mainstage group. The band’s EP, ‘Breaking in Brooklyn,’ proves that they are here to make a mark, and with the release of their upcoming full-length album, this is only the beginning. Instagram | Spotify | YouTube

Cass McCombs

Over the past twenty plus years, Cass McCombs has journeyed a singular path as an uncompromising song-carver, guitarist and singer. Along with the finest squadron of collaborators and bandmates, his music travels gracefully over seemingly contradictory terrain, from infectious guitar riffage to intensely personal lyricism. In August 2025, Cass released his newest album “Interior Live Oak” to rave reviews including 5 stars from the Guardian, an 8.1 from Pitchfork who said “16 songs and not a throwaway among them…,” a 9/10 from Uncut Magazine, and a rave from Mojo magazine who said “…this is the kind of record it’s impossible to be casual about.” Interior Live Oak is his most personal album to date, and, more than any previous record, shows his vast range as a lyricist and musician. It draws from everything Cass has created over two decades of experimentation to cut through with a direct and clarifying light. Cass McCombs will embark on his “Interior Live Oak Live” tour over 2026. He lives in New York City. Website | Facebook | Instagram | Soundcloud | Spotify

Mason Jennings

This is a seated show. Minneapolis songwriter Mason Jennings shares his new video for the single, “Only Lovers Welcome” from his brand new album, Underneath The Roses out now via Loosegroove Records. Underneath The Roses is available on limited-edition colored vinyl and is available here. Watch and share the video for “Only Lovers Welcome” here. Jennings writes that the songs from Underneath The Roses were, “Written in an unprecedented burst,” following the birth of his son, Western, in March 2022. Jennings explains, “I hadn’t written any songs in about a year. I had been dealing with the psychological after effects of the pandemic as well as the loss of my dad. So, when Western was born I didn’t expect to be writing much. But immediately he was responding to music in a very intense way. For this album, between May and November 2022, I wrote 48 songs! They certainly uplifted me and connected me with the creative spirit, and spirit in general, again. They cover all kinds of ground but, when I listen back, I think the central theme is overcoming fear with love.” Jennings also released a video for, “No Ordinary Friend,” which he explains, “Depicts two of the most important decisions a person can make. One, whether or not they believe in a loving higher power and two, who they decide to choose as a life long romantic partner. This song is referring to both of those and the choices I’ve made.” “Stone Gossard and Regan Hagar from Loosegroove Records helped me edit the 48 down to 11. I then enlisted the help of my Painted Shield bandmates to record the songs.” Jennings and Gossard are ongoing collaborators in the band Painted Shield, who released their 2021 debut album on Loosegroove, the influential indie label that Gossard founded back in 1994 issued records from acts such as Critters Buggin, Malfunkshun, Weapon of Choice and Devilhead, and was the launching point for Queens of the Stone Age’s debut album in 1998. Jenning’s previous album ‘Real Heart’ came out in January 2022 and received Triple/Non-comm radio across KCMP Minneapolis, WFPK Louisville, WPYA Birmingham, KRCL Salt Lake City, WMMM Madison, WQKL Ann Arbor, KCSN LA, KRVB Boise, WCLZ Portland, WDSE Duluth, WRLT Nashville, WXPN Philly, WXRV Boston, & WZEW Mobile. Press highlights include: American Songwriter, Relix, No Depression, Grateful Web, Take Effect 9/10 review, & Jam Bands Jennings adds “I called it Underneath The Roses because I feel like these songs are musical roses and when I look below them there are many thorns and so much dirt and soil. All of it was needed for them to come into existence and bloom. It’s been a long hard road of self-discovery and discernment for me the last few years and the roses wouldn’t be here without what lies underneath. Hope you enjoy the music!” Website | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Billie Marten

Prolific British singer-songwriter, Billie Marten, will tour America in support of her fifth album, Dog Eared, out now via Fiction Records. Billie Marten loves to leave her mark on a good book—underlining important passages, scribbling ideas in the margins, folding the corners of pages into dog ears to mark her place. The 10 songs of Dog Eared serve that purpose, telling the story of who she was as she wrote and recorded it, cleaving her adolescence from her adulthood in order to move forward. She is the songwriter who finds wisdom in horses and encourages self-reflection while realizing she has barely begun her own. She is the singer who makes the chorus of “Goodnight Moon” as beautiful as a lunar corona and smartly lets dissonance slip between her voice and the band around her as she watches something she loves disappear during “Crown.” Marten is a consummate singer-songwriter who has dared to push beyond the limitations of that form and make a stunning record that marks a new page, suggesting what comes next through the strength and beauty of what’s right here. With Dog Eared, Billie calmly posits herself at the top of the tree of not just British contemporary folk artists, but with British songwriters at large. Website | Instagram | TikTok | Facebook | YouTube | Spotify

vaultboy

Emily Yacina

Emily Yacina has been self-releasing music for over a decade, offering a “treasure trove of wrenching melodies and delightfully off-kilter meditations on time and absence” (Stereogum). Although she’s collaborated with some of the most notable names in indie rock, including Alex G and Rostam, Yacina is a singular artist. Her voice is compelling and instantly recognizable, sometimes winking, lilting, or layered and chopped and used as an instrument. Veilfall arrives six years after the release of her debut studio album, and is another mesmerizing entry in her catalogue. Illuminating Yacina’s sharp command of crystalline production, Veilfall showcases an expanded roster of collaborators operating at the highest level. Her ability to mine intangible emotions is sage-like, as she navigates formless concepts like the process of grieving, and the types of alienation that can follow in its wake. Spotify

Snail Mail

Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Genre: Concerts