French Police
Formed in Chicago, French Police is a darkwave ensemble led by vocalist and guitarist Brian Flores, lead guitarist Manny Herrera, and bassist Rolando Donjuan. Since 2019, their music has encapsulated indie and post-punk audiences with rhythmic guitar & synths, proving to be melancholic dance music for the passionate and romantic. Website | Instagram | Facebook | Bandcamp
Motherfolk
Serious songs from goofy people. That’s what you can expect from diverse, Midwest indie-rockers, Motherfolk. What started out as a writing project among two college friends turned into a fully realized band untethered to genres, with an endlessly bright future. Composed of Bobby Paver and Nathan Dickerson on vocals and guitar, bassist Clayton Allender, drummer Ethan Wescott, and Karlie Dickerson on keys Motherfolk are not only bandmates, but best friends. The band’s close-knit relationship allows each member to be their most authentic self, leaving every ounce of their souls to be poured into each song and high-energy performance. Despite their light-hearted, groovy-rock sound Motherfolk is dedicated to creating a much deeper connection with their fans. They don’t shy away from the taboo, taking on heavy topics with a light heart. The results provide us with music you can dance to, whose impact is felt long after the song has ended. The band’s quirky friendship and social media posts originally drew fans in, but their connection to the music kept those fans around. Since their formation Motherfolk has been on a steady upward trajectory, amassing well over 5 million Spotify streams on their three studio albums and selling out shows while touring heavily across the United States. While COVID-19 halted the band’s year of touring plans, Motherfolk spent the year hard at work, creating and self-producing new music and they came out anew. Late summer 2021 will invigorate fans with new singles adorning the most refreshing and versatile Motherfolk sound to date, leading up to a fall EP release. This next chapter is slated to be the most exciting one yet, don’t miss it! Website | Instagram | Facebook | Youtube | Spotify | Bandcamp
Tune-Yards
Tune-Yards has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 per ticket goes to supporting Street Spirit and their work as an independent newspaper dedicated to covering homelessness and poverty from the perspective of those most impacted. The paper is sold on the streets of Berkeley and Oakland by unhoused people, who keep 100% of the donations they receive. Formed by Merrill Garbus in 2006, Tune-Yards has become a name synonymous with creativity and forward motion. Known for explosive performances, surprising song structures, and danceable rhythms, their music also highlights connections between song and social consciousness. The New York Times praised their debut album, BiRd-BrAiNs, as “a confident do-it-yourselfer’s opening salvo,” and relentless touring established Garbus as a commanding live performer. Garbus stepped into the producer role with 2011’s w h o k i l l, a bold and sonically inventive album that earned critical acclaim, including the #1 spot on The Village Voice’s Pazz and Jop poll. By 2021’s sketchy., Garbus and bassist Nate Brenner had solidified their partnership, creating a fully collaborative work. The duo has announced their sixth studio record, Better Dreaming, to be released on May 16, 2025 on 4AD. Tune-Yards also excels in scoring, contributing to Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, I’m A Virgo, and the forthcoming I Love Boosters. Their artistry continues to expand across music, film, and television. Website | Spotify | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Alejandro Escovedo with Mitch Easter, Doug Davis, Rob Ladd, Robert Sledge, Caitlin Cary, & Tonya Lamm
ORCHESTRALeah Gibson Webster, celloLibby Rodenbough, violinRachel Kiel, flute and “concertmaster”Jeff Herrick, trumpet Featuring guest performances by:John Howie, Jr.Sara Bell & Jeffrey Dean FosterPeter HolsappleCaroline Mamoulides & Steve Howell Proceeds benefit Lynn & Ecki during this challenging time. Please visit their GoFundMe if you’d like to make an additional contribution.
Mipso
Mipso formed in 2012 as an excuse to play together between classes in Chapel Hill. Joseph Terrell came from a family of banjo-playing uncles and a guitarist grandma, and he’d gotten curious again about the string band music he’d heard as a kid. Jacob Sharp was raised on equal parts Doc Watson and Avett Brothers in the N.C. mountains and was hunting for a chance to sing harmonies. Wood Robinson added a Charlie Haden-esque interest in bridging jazz and grass sensibilities on the double bass, and Libby Rodenbough soon joined on fiddle, unsatisfied by her classical violin training but drawn like a moth toward the glow of old, weird Americana.Their first album, “Dark Holler Pop,” produced by Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse), included Terrell-penned fan favorites “Louise” and “Couple Acres Greener” and turned the recent grads into a full-blown touring band. Although it hung out on the Billboard Bluegrass top 10, its sonic mission statement was in the name: “Dark Holler Pop” was groovier and catchier than its string band contemporaries.2015’s “Old Time Reverie” earned them an invitation to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade wherein they rolled down 5th Avenue on a 12-foot bucket of fried chicken. They doubled down on touring, honing a telepathic, sibling-esque connection onstage.2017’s “Coming Down The Mountain,” produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee), added drums and pedal steel and put the band on bigger stages with an expanded Americana sound, including the Rodenbough-fronted title track, another streaming hit and live staple.Mipso considered hanging up their hats in 2018 while recording “Edges Run” with Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco, Anais Mitchell). After five years of near-constant touring, they had started to wake up in hotel rooms wondering what state they were in; they’d never had pets. The album took off. Sharp’s intimate vocal on “People Change” floated into dorm rooms and coffee shops across America, cementing Mipso as a bona fide streaming success across four albums and placing them in that rarefied strata of bands with three distinct lead singers. 2020’s self-titled start-fresh album on Rounder Records brought experimental Canadian producer Sandro Perri into the mix and minted a collection with moodier landscapes and unexpected textures.Post-pandemic Mipso is starting fresh again with “Book of Fools.” The songs might be their best yet. “Carolina Rolling By” shows Terrell at his most relaxed and confident—it’s a meditative cosmic country-tinged head bopper. “The Numbers” flirts with 60s surf rock while Rodenbough winks and wags a finger at our market-obsessed culture, and “Broken Heart/Open Heart” features Sharp at his most heart-wrenching and earnest. Other standouts “East” and “Radio Hell” will infect you with earworms made of guitar riffs, Robinson’s pretzel-twisted upright bass lines, and saturated “ooohs” drifting in as if on AM radio waves. Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
A Very Cy&I Album Release Show
CY&I
Mipso
Mipso formed in 2012 as an excuse to play together between classes in Chapel Hill. Joseph Terrell came from a family of banjo-playing uncles and a guitarist grandma, and he’d gotten curious again about the string band music he’d heard as a kid. Jacob Sharp was raised on equal parts Doc Watson and Avett Brothers in the N.C. mountains and was hunting for a chance to sing harmonies. Wood Robinson added a Charlie Haden-esque interest in bridging jazz and grass sensibilities on the double bass, and Libby Rodenbough soon joined on fiddle, unsatisfied by her classical violin training but drawn like a moth toward the glow of old, weird Americana.Their first album, “Dark Holler Pop,” produced by Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse), included Terrell-penned fan favorites “Louise” and “Couple Acres Greener” and turned the recent grads into a full-blown touring band. Although it hung out on the Billboard Bluegrass top 10, its sonic mission statement was in the name: “Dark Holler Pop” was groovier and catchier than its string band contemporaries.2015’s “Old Time Reverie” earned them an invitation to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade wherein they rolled down 5th Avenue on a 12-foot bucket of fried chicken. They doubled down on touring, honing a telepathic, sibling-esque connection onstage.2017’s “Coming Down The Mountain,” produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee), added drums and pedal steel and put the band on bigger stages with an expanded Americana sound, including the Rodenbough-fronted title track, another streaming hit and live staple.Mipso considered hanging up their hats in 2018 while recording “Edges Run” with Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco, Anais Mitchell). After five years of near-constant touring, they had started to wake up in hotel rooms wondering what state they were in; they’d never had pets. The album took off. Sharp’s intimate vocal on “People Change” floated into dorm rooms and coffee shops across America, cementing Mipso as a bona fide streaming success across four albums and placing them in that rarefied strata of bands with three distinct lead singers. 2020’s self-titled start-fresh album on Rounder Records brought experimental Canadian producer Sandro Perri into the mix and minted a collection with moodier landscapes and unexpected textures.Post-pandemic Mipso is starting fresh again with “Book of Fools.” The songs might be their best yet. “Carolina Rolling By” shows Terrell at his most relaxed and confident—it’s a meditative cosmic country-tinged head bopper. “The Numbers” flirts with 60s surf rock while Rodenbough winks and wags a finger at our market-obsessed culture, and “Broken Heart/Open Heart” features Sharp at his most heart-wrenching and earnest. Other standouts “East” and “Radio Hell” will infect you with earworms made of guitar riffs, Robinson’s pretzel-twisted upright bass lines, and saturated “ooohs” drifting in as if on AM radio waves. Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Mipso
Mipso formed in 2012 as an excuse to play together between classes in Chapel Hill. Joseph Terrell came from a family of banjo-playing uncles and a guitarist grandma, and he’d gotten curious again about the string band music he’d heard as a kid. Jacob Sharp was raised on equal parts Doc Watson and Avett Brothers in the N.C. mountains and was hunting for a chance to sing harmonies. Wood Robinson added a Charlie Haden-esque interest in bridging jazz and grass sensibilities on the double bass, and Libby Rodenbough soon joined on fiddle, unsatisfied by her classical violin training but drawn like a moth toward the glow of old, weird Americana.Their first album, “Dark Holler Pop,” produced by Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse), included Terrell-penned fan favorites “Louise” and “Couple Acres Greener” and turned the recent grads into a full-blown touring band. Although it hung out on the Billboard Bluegrass top 10, its sonic mission statement was in the name: “Dark Holler Pop” was groovier and catchier than its string band contemporaries.2015’s “Old Time Reverie” earned them an invitation to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade wherein they rolled down 5th Avenue on a 12-foot bucket of fried chicken. They doubled down on touring, honing a telepathic, sibling-esque connection onstage.2017’s “Coming Down The Mountain,” produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee), added drums and pedal steel and put the band on bigger stages with an expanded Americana sound, including the Rodenbough-fronted title track, another streaming hit and live staple.Mipso considered hanging up their hats in 2018 while recording “Edges Run” with Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco, Anais Mitchell). After five years of near-constant touring, they had started to wake up in hotel rooms wondering what state they were in; they’d never had pets. The album took off. Sharp’s intimate vocal on “People Change” floated into dorm rooms and coffee shops across America, cementing Mipso as a bona fide streaming success across four albums and placing them in that rarefied strata of bands with three distinct lead singers. 2020’s self-titled start-fresh album on Rounder Records brought experimental Canadian producer Sandro Perri into the mix and minted a collection with moodier landscapes and unexpected textures.Post-pandemic Mipso is starting fresh again with “Book of Fools.” The songs might be their best yet. “Carolina Rolling By” shows Terrell at his most relaxed and confident—it’s a meditative cosmic country-tinged head bopper. “The Numbers” flirts with 60s surf rock while Rodenbough winks and wags a finger at our market-obsessed culture, and “Broken Heart/Open Heart” features Sharp at his most heart-wrenching and earnest. Other standouts “East” and “Radio Hell” will infect you with earworms made of guitar riffs, Robinson’s pretzel-twisted upright bass lines, and saturated “ooohs” drifting in as if on AM radio waves. Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Gouge Away
Forming in South Florida with the intention to record a short EP and play one show, Gouge Away were driven by the need to write music and take a stab at topics they weren’t hearing in their local scene. They were influenced by bands like Fugazi, Unwound, The Jesus Lizard, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Paint it Black. A couple years later, they put out “, Dies” on local label, Eighty-Sixed Records, which they didn’t expect to reach beyond their hometown. After some touring, they released “Burnt Sugar” on Deathwish Inc. in 2018 which naturally took a more personal approach when Christina Michelle was dealing with her mom’s heart complications and misdiagnoses. Following the release of the album, they toured extensively throughout the US and beyond. While on tour and in their small pockets of downtime, they eagerly wrote and demoed songs for a third album, pulling influence not only from the nostalgia of the bands they grew up listening to, but developing and pushing the sense of urgency, noise, and introspective lyrics they felt most represented them. Touring came to a halt in 2020, canceling a full year of plans in an instant. Gouge Away took time for themselves to move to different parts of the country and focus on their personal lives. On New Years Eve just beginning 2022, they decided it was time to revisit their demoed material, and to do it justice by allowing it to see the light of day. They recorded with Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden East in March 2023, completely analog to tape and almost entirely live, without the use of a computer. The goal was to sound like five friends playing music in a room together, unpolished and far from being over-produced, which is what the heart of Gouge Away has always been. Website | Facebook
John Craigie
Much like community, music nourishes us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It also invites us to come together under the same roof and in a shared moment. In similar fashion, John Craigie rallies a closeness around music anchored by his expressive and stirring songcraft, emotionally charged vocals, lively soundscapes, and uncontainable spirit. The Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer invites everyone into this space on his 2024 full-length album, Pagan Church. Following tens of millions of streams, sold out shows everywhere, and praise from Rolling Stone and more, he continues to captivate. “The music is always evolving and devolving with each new record,” he observes. “With my last album Mermaid Salt, I really wanted to explore the sound of isolation and solitude as everyone was heading inside. With this record, I wanted to record the sound of everyone coming back out.” In order to capture that, he didn’t go about it alone… Instead, he joined forces with some local friends. At the time, TK & The Holy Know-Nothings booked a slew of outdoor gigs in Portland and they invited Craigie to sit in for a handful of shows. The musicians instinctively identified an unspoken, yet seamless chemistry with each other. Joined by three of the five members, Craigie cut “Laurie Rolled Me a J” and kickstarted the process. With the full band in tow, they hunkered down in an old schoolhouse TK & The Holy Know-Nothings had converted into a de facto headquarters and studio, and recorded the eleven tracks on Pagan Church. “At first, I knew ‘Laurie Rolled Me a J’ would sound great with a band, but we realized there was this chemistry between us,” Craigie recalls. During this season, Craigie listened to everyone from JJ Cale, Michael Hurley, and The Band to Donny Hathaway and Nina Simone. He also consumed music biographies and documentaries on the likes of Ani DiFranco, John Coltrane, The Velvet Underground, and Neil Young. Now, he introduces the album with “Where It’s From.” Dusty acoustic guitar underlines his warm delivery as he warns, “Be careful with this feeling. You don’t know where it’s from.” Meanwhile, he plugs in the electric guitar on the Southern-style boogie of “While I’m Down.” Bright organ wails over a palm-muted distorted riff as he urges, “Come on and love me up while I’m down.” Then, there’s “Good To Ya.” Setting the scene, glowing keys give way to a head-nodding beat. He laments, “Oh babe, I was good to you,” before a bluesy guitar solo practically leaves the fretboard in flames. The album concludes with the pensive and poetic title track “Pagan Church.” In between echoes of slide guitar, he repeats, “I sing a pagan song out in a pagan church.” “Taylor Kingman suggested the title Pagan Church to me,” he reveals. “I liked the multiple meanings. The album cover shows all of us in front of Laurelthirst Public House in Portland, which is an important gathering place for musicians in the area. It’s almost a church in a way. However, the song has an entirely different meaning.” Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
