The Frozen Charlottes, carcrashpoolparty, The Flowers of Beltane, Solar Illusion
The Frozen Charlottes are a four piece riot grrrl/emo/grunge band based in Moore County, NC. Their debut single and IG with performance videos can be found here: Spotify | Instagram Flowers of Beltane are a psychedelic grunge band from New Orleans. Their debut album can be found here: Spotify Car Crash Pool Party is an emo jazz collective led by Lucy Lopez. Their latest EP can be found here: Spotify Solar Illusion is a pop rock group based in Sanford, NC. They’ve recently returned from a 2-year hiatus. Their latest single can be found here: Spotify
The Cactus Blossoms
“Hey baby, do you wanna take a trip with me? / I’ve got a feeling there might be a silver lining all around.” So begins One Day, the captivating new album from critically acclaimed Minneapolis duo The Cactus Blossoms. Written and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, the record explores the tension between optimism and despair that’s defined much of the past few years of American life, examining the power (or naïveté, depending on your perspective) of positive thinking in the face of chaos and uncertainty. The songs here are tender and timeless, with straightforward arrangements centered around brothers Jack Torrey and Page Burkum’s airtight harmonies, and the performances are warm and intimate to match, delivered with a soulful, ’70s-inspired palette of playful Wurlitzer, breezy guitars, and muscular percussion. The Cactus Blossoms broke out nationally in 2016 with their JD McPherson-produced debut, You’re Dreaming. Dates with Kacey Musgraves, Jenny Lewis, and Lucius followed, as did raves from the New York Times and NPR, who praised “the brothers’ extraordinary singing.” The band was further catapulted into the spotlight in 2018, when David Lynch tapped them to perform in the return of Twin Peaks, and continued to build on their success with their 2019 sophomore LP, Easy Way, which led Rolling Stone to laud the duo’s “rock-solid, freak of genetics harmonies.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
FIDLAR
Sure, life’s a risk. But FIDLAR have proven that risks are worth taking. Starting out as a group of drunken punks playing gnarly house shows around Los Angeles, their fanbase exploded and congealed into “FIDIOTS.” Fan’s who show their dedication to both the band and their mantra of “fuck it” by etching “FIDLAR” onto their bodies by way of homemade stick-and-poke prison style tattoos. With songs like “Cheap Beer” and “Wake Bake Skate,” the light speed rocket that was 2012’s eponymous album blasted them into the stratosphere where they had the room to expand the idea of the band. Being thrust into the loneliness of space, they were confronted by the void and slog of touring. They responded to that introspection with 2015’s “TOO,” where songs like “40oz On Repeat” “Why Generation” and “Sober” grapple with how to age gracefully as hard partying punks headed towards their 30s. “Too” pushed the band further to the edges of their comfort zone where these four SoCal weirdos found themselves playing gigantic festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza, Reading and Leeds. Propelling them to refine and expand their sound with 2019’s “ALMOST FREE” where you can start to hear more than just their “punk and indie” influences. The Beastie Boys tinged “Get off My Rock.” The asphalt-groovy take on L.A. hipster culture “Can’t You See.” And the alterna-pop, radio friendly, heartbreak duet of “Called You Twice” featuring grammy nominated artist K. Flay. But that was in “the before times…” During the pandemic, unable to tour as a band, the guys all separately dove into their own pet projects and they all experimented with different styles of music (sometimes with the aid of psychedelics). Unintentionally, this caused them to shake off the impulse to layer “bells and whistles” (not literally, but kinda) to their songs. Like they had been doing progressively over the years. Now, after duck-diving the choppy waves that is the modern music industry, FIDLAR are ready for the next gnarly set. Armed with 3 Chords, the truth, and some jazz cabbage, FIDLAR has a new found appreciation of not only where they came from, but where they are now. And when asked what the new sound is, the response is simply “FUCKBOI ANTHEMS.”Well then… fuck it, dawg. Let’s get weird.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
The Dismemberment Plan
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Emergency & I, The Dismemberment Plan is playing a handful of shows in their current hometowns of Washington D.C., Richmond, VA and Durham, NC and the Best Friends Forever festival in Las Vegas, NV. Our schedules don’t align much these days, so these will be the only cities we’re playing. Website | Instagram | YouTube
Odie Leigh
Odie Leigh would never have called herself a musician before the depths of the 2020 pandemic, when her rapper roomies made a bet: Whoever records a song that goes viral first, wins. Slightly ticked off that they hadn’t included her in the wager, she decided to hit them with her best shot, and Odie was crowned the victor when a track she wrote blew up on TikTok. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna show y’all. I’m gonna win,’” she recalls, laughing. “Then I woke up to a bunch of comments on TikTok being like, ‘Oh my God, release this. This is amazing!’ Now, I’m a musician.”Four years after posting what she calls “that silly joke song” on TikTok, Odie Leigh has continued to transform and evolve as an artist — from what she calls “acoustic, ethereal folk sad girl music” to a harder-edge tunes that flirt with early Aughts pop-punktivism. That trajectory culminates in her first LP, Carrier Pigeon. “All the music I’ve released up until this point can kind of be thrown into the indie folk acoustic genre,” Odie says. “But I never set out to make Americana music. I never set out to make folk music. I’m just a girl with an acoustic guitar.”The fact that Odie Leigh never set out to make music is key here. Unlike a lot of musicians who grew up picking out tunes on toddler guitars or belting it out in garages, Odie never pictured herself on stage. Born and raised in Louisiana, she sang in the church choir, sure — her grandfather built the building, after all, and her family attended three times per week. But after moving to New Orleans to study English, she fully intended on making her bones in the film industry. That 2020 wager changed things, though, when she realized that she could win hearts in addition to bets. Although she’d taught herself to play guitar as a child, Odie didn’t know that much about music from the get-go, but she was inspired by the likes of ‘50’s singer-songwriter Connie Converse and her out-of-the-box style. “I didn’t realize that music could be like this. It was all so unique and not pretentious,” she says. “I was like, ‘I can do this.’” Her first real single, “Ronnie’s Song,” followed in 2021, a sweetly silly track she wrote to cheer up a friend. Coming from the film world, she found songwriting freeing, unbound from the rigidity of screenplay and discovered that simplicity can be a strength.She released her first EP, How Did It Seem to You?, in 2022, about a situationship gone wrong. Recorded everywhere from Louisiana to Miami, “That first EP was born out of desperation to feel heard and be connected,” she says. “Releasing that EP is probably like one of the scariest things I’ve ever done because it was just so real and embarrassing. All of my music is stuff I would never say out loud.” In 2023, Odie Leigh dropped her second, EP, The Only Thing Worse Than a Woman Who Lies Is a Girl Who’ll Tell Truths, which was recorded in the woods of Tennessee. “That second project was definitely like the edgier, angrier step up from: I’m a girl that makes folk music,” she says.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok
Amanda Anne Platt and The Honeycutters
The music of Asheville, North Carolina based outfit Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters is nuanced, bringing insight and wit to the stories Platt tells through songwriting. Lyrically driven, the band’s country roots music often inspires introspection, whether it be about life on the road, heartache or hope. There is an empathetic and charming wit ingrained in Platt’s songwriting. She has a knack for accessing a deep well of emotion and applying it to her storytelling, whether she is writing from her own experiences or immersing herself into the melody of emotions in another person’s life. Performing along with Platt, The Honeycutters are Matt Smith (pedal steel and electric guitars), Kevin Williams (keys/vocals), Rick Cooper (bass/vocals), and Evan Martin (drums/vocals). The band is currently on tour supporting their seventh studio album – “The Ones That Stay” – out August 9, 2024 on Mule Kick Records. Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
Bicycle Face
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Brigitte Calls Me Baby – CANCELLED
The music of Brigitte Calls Me Baby is equal parts elegant time warp and up-close exploration of our modern-day neuroses. The Chicago-based band ingeniously spans genres and eras, merging the lavish romanticism of mid-century pop with the frenetic energy and spiky intensity of early millennium indie-rock. Centered on Leavins’ hypnotically crooning vocal work, the result is a rare convergence of sophistication and style and unabashed sincerity.As shown on their debut EP This House Is Made Of Corners — a five-song project made with nine-time Grammy Award-winning producer Dave Cobb — Brigitte Calls Me Baby possess a singular musicality informed by Leavins’ eclectic upbringing. Originally from the Southeast Texas town of Port Arthur, he grew up listening to Roy Orbison records at his grandparents’ house next door, while his parents played him new-wave bands like The Cars and his friends turned him onto Radiohead and The Strokes. At age 13, Leavins took up guitar and began writing songs of his own, quickly discovering his distinct vocal style. “At first I didn’t like the way I sang and couldn’t really do anything about it, but as I got older I started to appreciate it more,” he reveals. “My whole inclination toward music came from being in this small town in Texas with nowhere to go and nothing to do, and wanting to be understood without having to say anything.”Upon moving to Chicago in 2016, Leavins immersed himself in the local music scene and soon linked up with guitarists Jack Fluegel and Trevor Lynch, bassist Devin Wessels, and drummer Jeremy Benshish, who joined him in co-founding Brigitte Calls Me Baby. As the band built up their catalog, Leavins was tapped to take part in recreating a series of Elvis Presley songs for Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic Elvis, a turn of events that found him crossing paths with Cobb. “Dave and I hit it off right away and started talking about the music we loved, and when we reconnected later he asked me to send him some of the songs I’d been working on,” Leavins recalls. Soon after sharing a batch of demos with Cobb (whose credits include modern classics like Jason Isbell’s Southeastern and Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music), Brigitte Calls Me Baby headed to Nashville to record their debut body of work at the legendary RCA Studio A.Co-produced by Cobb and Brigitte Calls Me Baby and mostly recorded live, This House Is Made Of Corners opens on a lush and cinematic track called “The Future is Our Way Out,” a prime introduction to the EP’s heightened yet palpably genuine emotionality. “I want to be earnest even when it’s uncomfortable, and write unapologetically about things like my intense fear of death,” says Leavins. “‘The Future is Our Way Out’ is about that fear, but it’s also about hoping there might be something beyond death, a way out of all the mess and the sadness that plagues us in life.” On “Impressively Average,” pounding rhythms and shimmering guitar tones form the backdrop to what Leavins refers to as a “a bit of a self-loathing song, about trying to cope with someone’s very high expectations of you.” And on “Eddie My Love,” Brigitte Calls Me Baby present a gorgeously aching portrait of obsession and despair. “‘Eddie My Love’ paved the way for all the songs that would come after it,” says Leavins, who first penned the track as a ballad. “It felt so vulnerable from the jump, and made me realize that there’s no point in being anything but vulnerable in what we do.”Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | TikTok
Buzzcocks
“Electric charge to blow you in, to the arms of raging sin/Wanna ride the tempest wind’ Buzzcocks ‘Senses Out Of Control’ In a darkening musical landscape where viral fads and AI-generated fakery share chart-space with the self-absorbed products of the nation’s stage schools, Buzzcocks shine out as a gleaming beacon of hope. A constant, ever-evolving presence over the last 45 years of pop culture, the band’s legendary status will be set in stone — literally — with their inclusion in the Music Walk Of Fame in September, joining an illustrious roll call including David Bowie, The Who, Madness and Amy Winehouse. The band’s never-better live shows, meanwhile, are electrifying reminders of rock music’s power to inspire, educate and inform. All delivered with an energy and conviction of a band half their age. “It’s my lifeblood,” says Steve Diggle — 68 years young — of a non-stop touring schedule which over the summer will see them play to thousands of fans across Europe and the UK. “I’ve still got the fire in my belly. Some musicians get bored of being on the road, but I’m institutionalised. I’ve done 50-odd years of staying in hotels. It’s what I signed up for. Ever since I saw Bob Dylan in the back of a black taxi in (D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary) Don’t Look Back, I always wanted to live this kind of life — being interviewed in the back of a black taxi on the way to the studio.” While most of their punk peers are content to traverse the globe in jukebox-style revue shows, Buzzcocks continue to move with the times, attracting new fans wherever they go. A case in point being the huge all-ages crowd the band pulled at the Iggy Pop-headlined Dog Day Afternoon in July. “There’s not a lot of intellectual or emotional thinking in music these days,” observes Steve. “People are being controlled. They’ll watch a video of someone falling over a banana skin and think they’re being entertained. They don’t realise the beauty of words, and the power of music. I’d like to think young kids who come to see us feel the same excitement I got from Little Richard and Chuck Berry. It goes back to the punk thing. It was about attitude and a way of thinking. We had the questions, but we didn’t have the answers. But the questions are the important thing.” This desire to challenge both themselves and their audiences was reflected in 2022’s Sonics In The Soul. An eclectic mix of gilt-edged power-pop (‘Venus Eyes’), Big Star-esque bangers (‘Nothingness World’) and Groundhogs-style riffing (‘Experimental Farm’), it was both a critical and commercial success — a reminder that Steve Diggle has always been a master songwriter: a Lennon to Pete Shelley’s McCartney. The album also caught the ear of rock royalty. ‘Little’ Steven Van Zandt put in a request to remix Who-like epic ‘Manchester Rain,’ while Elton John got in touch with Steve to rave about first single ‘Senses Out Of Control,’ playing the track on his Apple Radio show. “Sonics In The Soul was a bridge from the old Buzzcocks to the new,” says Steve. “At the time, a lot of people said, ‘You can’t carry on without Pete.’ But I’d always written my own songs. Looking back, we were like two mountain climbers. We needed each other. But since then I’ve taken [the band] on and it made it more heroic.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Daniel Nunnelee
With the arrival of his self-released breakout single “Pick and Choose” in 2022, Memphis-born singer/songwriter Daniel Nunnelee introduced the world to his sweetly offbeat and soul-baring form of folk/indie-rock. An instant viral sensation that amassed over a million streams in just ten days, “Pick and Choose” soon led to the making of June, Baby: a strangely enchanting debut album revealing both his old-soul sensibilities and wide-eyed perspective on finding your way in the world. With its title nodding to his birthday month and to the duality he embodies as a quintessential Gemini, June, Baby explores such emotionally heavy matters as anxiety and anticipatory grief, endlessly showcasing the graceful musicality he first developed by playing guitar in church as a kid. A lifelong nature lover who wrote much of June, Baby at his favorite park and at remote cabins in Mississippi and Colorado, the Nashville-based artist also sets his self-reflection to a one-of-a-kind sound matching its homespun charm with the unbridled energy he’s brought to the stage opening for artists like Madi Diaz and Shakey Graves (in addition to headlining his own tours). A truly gifted vocalist who brings an undeniably playful spirit to his existential questioning, Nunnelee ultimately hopes that listeners might take whatever they need from his songs — whether it’s a deeper communion with the natural world that incessantly inspires his music, or a monumental shift in their own outlook on life.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok
