mc chris
mc chris is most widely known for his reoccurring character MC P Pants on Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force where he was also an animator and writer. He’s been featured in the Aqua Teen movie, the video game and most recently on a series of You Tube videos called Aqua Donk Side Pieces. He’s also starred on several Adult Swim series including The Brak Show and Sealab 2021. When he’s not voicing some of his iconic late-night characters, he’s a full-time touring rapper. A pioneer of the hip hop subgenre Nerdcore, mc chris has worked with the likes of Talib Kweli, Andrew WK, and Donald Glover. His fans include the likes of Gerard Way, Post Malone and T-Pain and was even sampled by Run the Jewels for the latest Aqua Teen movie Plantasm. He’s toured with Reggie and Full Effect, Ninja Sex Party, Warped Tour, appeared on a GWAR album, performed at the gathering of the Juggalos and even had his own Honda commercial. His music has been featured on several Adult Swim Shows and commercials, Broad City and America’s Funniest Home Videos. mc chris is the widely accepted soundtrack to nerd culture. Not only does he rhyme about what nerds love most, but he was one of the first performers to encourage nerds to take pride in themselves and what they care about. He’s a full-time single father to his son, Tony, and lives in Los Angeles.Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Portico
Johnny Sunrise Hailing from Western Massachusetts, and now based in Carrboro, NC, Johnny Sunrise is an indie folk rock singer-songwriter who draws inspiration from love, longing, the “quarter-life crisis,” and the uncertainty of life. Although Johnny grew up with music primarily as a drummer, his unforeseen travels up and down the east coast and the isolation caused by the COVID pandemic brought him closer to his neglected guitar. Johnny has carved a place in the NC Triangle music scene over the past year or so performing original songs with honest lyrics and a soulful voice. Always with a smile and a healthy dose of banter. Davie Circle Davie Circle is an alt-country/folk-rock band based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Formed in their tight-knit college town, the group quickly became a mainstay in the local music scene. Their name comes from a historic street where the band spent countless hours rehearsing, and it perfectly captures the spirit of their roots.Blending the free-spirited improvisation of jam bands, the lush harmonies of bluegrass, and the rhythmic groove of jazz with the storytelling traditions of Southern rock and Delta blues, Davie Circle creates a sound that’s undeniably American. Drawing inspiration from iconic acts like The Allman Brothers, The Band, and the Grateful Dead, as well as contemporary voices like Tyler Childers and Zac Brown Band, the band brings a fresh twist to the genres they love, crafting music that feels both timeless and new. Portico Portico – Hunter Wright [vocals, guitar], Colton Miller [guitar], Cameron Champion [bass], Hunter Miller [drums] – delivers thoughtful, melodic, energetic rock music. The quartet blends influences from slowcore, post-punk, and alternative rock to forge an indie rock-adjacent sound that is digestible, yet abrasive enough to keep things interesting. A Portico show provides you with driving rhythm section crunches, memorable guitar solos, buttery vocal runs, and lyrics that make you miss people you’ve never met. If you see them live, you will walk away having felt something.
The Lemon Twigs
Following the release of Everything Harmony, which garnered acclaim from Questlove, Iggy Pop, Anthony Fantano, The Guardian, and countless others, The Lemon Twigs—the New York City rock band fronted by brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario—have once again captured the attention of the music listening public. They are in their premature “comeback” stage, and coming back this early has its benefits; the brothers have the energy of 24- and 26- year-olds, plus the experience and songwriting chops of seasoned musicians, having recorded their first album, Do Hollywood, nearly a decade ago at ages 15 and 17. Set for release less than a year after their last album, A Dream Is All We Know is a joyous affair. As the title suggests, it’s less of a sober look at the darker side of life, and more a hopeful sojourn into the realm of dreams. The tone has shifted away from dreary melancholic ballads and moody power pop. Brian and Michael are revisiting their “1968” sound. This album feels closely related to Do Hollywood, but their songwriting and recording techniques have vastly improved over the course of five albums. The brothers combine elements of the Merseybeat sound, the California Beach Boy harmony sound, and Bubblegum to create a unique collection of pop nuggets. (They say it’s part of a new “Merseybeach” movement, sure to catch on, though that fact remains to be seen.) The sense of urgency imbued in lead single “My Golden Years” comes in part from the jangly 12-string guitars and driving drums, but also from the anxiety of a narrator who can feel their “golden years” slipping away from them. Michael’s line, “In time I hope that I can show all the world the love in my mind,” can serve as a statement of intent for the whole collection of songs, as the brothers race against time to create as much quality pop material as possible. “They Don’t Know How To Fall In Place” propels the album forward into bubblegum paradise with its euphoric harmonies and biting clavinet, while the Roy Wood inspired “Church Bells” takes you on a journey in its two-minute and nine-second run time. At every turn you’re introduced to a new instrument, and as Michael sings “ring goes the bell,” the drummer switches to the bell of the ride cymbal and the song reveals itself as a pop tone poem, complete with cellos, mandolin and trumpets, all played by Brian. Not to mention the fun Mersey pun, using famous drummer Ringo’s name in a song that conflates images of the west side of Manhattan with the atmosphere of northern England. Next comes the titular “A Dream Is All I Know,” an existential space age epic, followed by the baroque pocket-prog of “Sweet Vibration.” Equipped with the songwriting chops of a lost era (somewhere between The Brill Building and 10452 Bellagio Road) the new record was carefully arranged and produced entirely analog in the brothers’ Brooklyn recording studio. Most of the tracks were constructed with the two brothers swapping instruments and layering all the parts themselves. One of the exceptions to that rule was “In The Eyes Of The Girl,” co-produced by Sean Ono Lennon in his upstate New York studio, which had the brothers tracking drums and piano while Lennon handled bass duties. On top of that, the brothers add multilayered harmonies that bring to mind The Beach Boys, The Four Freshman, and The Free Design. Website | Facebook | Instagram
The Brian Jonestown Massacre
The ever-evolving musical vehicle for notorious psych-rock musician Anton Newcombe, the Brian Jonestown Massacre has endured numerous phases and iterations since arriving in the mid-’90s, becoming something of an independent institution in the process. Early highlights like 1996’s Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request showed Newcombe’s propensity for melding late-’60s psychedelia with textured shoegaze, while later standouts like 2015’s imaginary soundtrack Musique de Film Imaginé took a more cerebral and experimental approach. Undoubtedly, the band’s most visible period followed the release of the 2004 documentary film DIG!, which focused on the contentious relationship between Newcombe and Dandy Warhols frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor. With the film criticized by members of both groups for what they considered to be an unfair portrayal, the Brian Jonestown Massacre nonetheless survived the media attention and moved into a particularly fertile period of creativity throughout the 2010s. The band’s first release of the next decade was 2022’s Fire Doesn’t Grow on Trees, quickly followed by 2023’s Your Future Is Your Past. Website | Facebook
Christopher Owens
Christopher Owens – the celebrated singer-songwriter and former frontman of beloved indie rock band Girls – announces I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair, his first new album in seven years and his return to True Panther Records, out October 18, 2024. Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Spotify | YouTube
Broncho
Prepare to be spellbound. Broncho’s fifth studio album, Natural Pleasure, doesn’t just flirt with greatness—it obliterates boundaries and redefines what an indie rock album can be. This is more than music; it’s an odyssey of sound, a kaleidoscopic dreamscape where lo-fi textures collide with psychedelic wonder. Imagine Radiohead’s Kid A filtered through a haze of pot smoke and reimagined for a generation craving both grit and transcendence. This is an album meant to be savored with headphones, a masterful contender for Indie Rock Album of the Year and a long-playing experience that invites listeners to lose themselves in its rich textures and hypnotic soundscapes. Broncho has always been synonymous with reinvention, and Natural Pleasure marks their boldest transformation yet. This long-awaited follow-up to 2018’s Bad Behavior dives headfirst into lush, hypnotic atmospheres without abandoning the raw, gritty energy that made them a household name in indie rock. The Tulsa-based quartet—Ryan Lindsey (vocals), Ben King (guitar), Penny Pitchlynn (bass), and Nathan Price (drums)—has crafted a sound that’s as intimate as it is otherworldly, blending introspection with euphoric release. Since their breakout hit “Class Historian” in 2014, Broncho has been at the forefront of indie innovation, earning accolades from legends like Josh Homme and Jack White. Their music, equal parts gritty rock and dreamy psychedelia, has found its way onto HBO’s Girls, Apple’s Platonic, and FX’s Reservation Dogs, further cementing their status as cultural touchstones. But Tulsa remains their spiritual home, a city whose musical lineage—from Leon Russell and JJ Cale to The Flaming Lips—infuses every note they play. From the opening tracks, “Imagination” and “Funny,” Natural Pleasure sets the stage for a sonic journey defined by playfulness and introspection. “Imagination” envelops listeners with layered production and Ryan Lindsey’s understated but captivating vocals, pulling them into a dreamy haze of possibility. “Funny” follows with its offbeat charm and infectious groove, encapsulating the duality of introspection and levity that defines the album. Thematically, Lindsey reflects on love, relationships, and the natural pleasures of life, creating a cohesive yet unpredictable tapestry of sound. Each track is a meticulously crafted world of its own, inviting listeners to lose themselves completely. “I Swear” marries the infectious sing-along energy of their breakout “Class Historian” with a downtempo, more hypnotic pulse. Its instantly addictive “da da da da da” refrain will feel like a homecoming for longtime fans while album closer “Dreamin” transforms from honky-tonk roots into an otherworldly finale, encapsulating the album’s transcendental essence. Recorded primarily at Blackwatch Studios in Norman, Oklahoma with Chad Copelin and completed at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas, the album balances spontaneity with meticulous craftsmanship. “Get Gone” pushes Broncho’s sound to exhilarating new heights, a late-night anthem designed for sweaty, MDMA-fueled dance floors, festival stages, or even impromptu kitchen discos. Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
The Arcadian Wild
The Arcadian Wild is a four-piece indie folk/pop group from Nashville, TN. Led by songwriters Isaac Horn and Lincoln Mick and Bailey Warren on fiddle, The Arcadian Wild confidently inhabits and explores an intersection of genre, blending the traditional with the contemporary. Combining elements of progressive bluegrass, folk, and formal vocal music, The Arcadian Wild offer up songs of invitation; calls to come and see, to find refuge and rest, to journey and wonder, to laugh and cry, to share joy and community and sing along. The band’s 2023 album Welcome marks the start of a captivating new chapter for the genre-bending trio, who returned to the studio with renewed purpose and insight after devoting the last few years to a series of critically acclaimed singles and EPs. Like much of the band’s catalog, the album blurs the lines between chamber folk and progressive bluegrass, drawing on everything from country and classical to pop and choral music with lush harmonies and dazzling fretwork, but this time around there’s a rawness to the writing, an embrace of candor and simplicity that cuts straight to the heart of things like never before. The result is perhaps the most arresting collection yet from a band known for its ability to stop listeners dead in their tracks, an exquisitely beautiful celebration of community, connection, and the power of belonging that feels tailor-made for these challenging times. Website | Facebook | Instagram
Young Medicine
Rising synthwave rockers Young Medicine pull the best from diverse genres to build a carefully constructed music identity that defies simple categorization. Thumping double-bass beats and crunchy guitar riffs hammer out hard-hitting rhythms while chorus lines partner with sparking retro synth tones for a stunning mix of audio ideas. If synthwave and metal got together and started a boy band, the result might sound something like Young Medicine, who have put themselves on the map as pioneers for a new era by bringing rockstar swagger to the retrowave movement. Website | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | Spotify
Be Loud! Sophie High School Music Showcase
Chief of Staff 3-Day Weekendz John Stevens Step Over Mars Scattertones Locally Sourced Weaponry MAZES CY&I Allycats Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Destroyer: Dan’s Boogie Tour
What is a “boogie”? In the common tongue, it’s a dance or an occasion to dance, a song or a shindig, an incitement to move, quickly, whether it’s on the floor or out of town, getting down or lying low. This being a Destroyer album and not the common tongue, the implications of a title like Dan’s Boogie are at once more alluring and dangerous. “A boogie is a hustle, a scam that doesn’t quite work, the moves we make when we’re up against it,” explains Dan Bejar. “I think of spy work, double agents, sleeping with one eye open, an eye on the exits. But I also think of petty street-level victories and losses and improv.” Dan’s Boogie is a breakthrough album for Destroyer, both in the sense that it makes moves that no Destroyer album to this point has made, and in the sense that, to record it, Bejar had to burst through a series of intentional and unintentional barriers to write the songs. Initially challenging himself to not write songs so the ideas would well up inside of him until they breached containment, the months following the completion of LABYRINTHITIS turned into one year then two, at which point Bejar gave himself a New Year’s resolution to play the piano every day for an hour. That lasted about four days, but the songs Bejar credits as coming from that resolution—“Cataract Time,” “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World,” “Bologna,” and “Dan’s Boogie” among them—are all-timer Destroyer songs across the vast spectrum Bejar and his collaborators have established for themselves: spectacle-laden pop epics, personal piano ballads, and smouldering works of mood that blur the lines between song and novel and cinema, each brimming with the urgency of a state secret in the mind of a tortured spy.Lead single “Bologna” is the most radical frame for this energy, as it’s the first time Bejar wrote a song where he imagined himself as a supporting character. Taking lead is Fiver’s Simone Schmidt, whose voice—tough and expressive, piercing through the murk of the scene—is a siren’s call that haunts the album. The gravity of their voice pulls Dan’s Boogie into order around a sense of impending doom, the way a fatale’s promise of the unusual and the ecstatic dooms the principal character of an erotic thriller. “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World” is a delicious bit of contradiction, a peppy song that came out of the havoc Bejar was intentionally wreaking on himself—its holiday cheeriness making the angst of its lyrics go down smoothly until the song veers off the road. “We are now entering a new phase,” Bejar intones, introducing layers of guitar and synthesizer that considerably darken the palette as he alternates between singing and speaking. The lyrics and vocals are improvised, invented as Bejar recorded the demo in his garage—a manic stream-of-consciousness and simultaneously exquisite display of his songwriting mastery. Contradiction informs much of Dan’s Boogie, the fog swirling around Bejar illuminated by the friction between competing truths and tastes, as when his interest in jazzy ballads runs aground on producer and bassist John Collins’ interest in bands like Led Zeppelin and Scritti Politti. Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
