Pedro The Lion
Pedro the Lion is the band name Dave Bazan has used off and on since 1995 to release six albums and two eps of his hooky, insightful, and mournful songs. This year, his critically acclaimed and fan favorite, first and third LPs, 1998’s “It’s Hard to Find a Friend” and 2002’s “Control”, turn 25 and 21 years old, respectively. To celebrate, Dave, along with guitar player Erik Walters and drummer Terence Ankeny, will play every song from each album on tour.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | SoundcloudErik Walters is an American songwriter and guitarist based in Seattle, Wash. Steeped in the local music community since 2008, he has written songs for several bands and played guitar for artists such as Telekinesis!, Perfume Genius, and is a current member of Pedro The Lion. He released his eponymous solo record in 2021.Website | Instagram | Spotify
Augustana
Augustana is back with new music, and through its formation, its creator Dan Layus has stepped into a new musical universe.While the artist is well-known for its anthemic indie-rock leaning hits like “Boston,” “Sweet and Low” and “Steal Your Heart,” Augustana’s consistent march of new and ever-evolving material has embodied a refusal to settle artistically. Never has that been more clearly evident than with the artist’s latest studio album, “Everyday an Eternity: Solo Piano Works,” a genre-shaking full-length record that redefines what can be expected from this artist.Composing and performing a series of piano pieces that can easily live in the contemporary classical world, Dan Layus confidently chooses to leave his singing voice aside for the project and instead finds his lyricism echoing through the hammers and strings of the piano. The album’ finds the composer’s unique melodic and structural stylings effortlessly blending between the classical, the romantic and the modern. Along the way, the unfamiliar terrain for the artist seems to become more familiar with each note, each modulation, each variation, as he makes his way out to the edge of musical expression and safely back home again.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
The National Parks
You know the feeling when the clouds part and the sun shines down on you, the rush you get when you run and jump into a lake at full speed, or the moment a gust of morning air brings new life as you step outside and look at the world around you? The National Parks translate these sensations into songs. The Provo, UT quartet—Brady Parks [vocals, guitar], Sydney Macfarlane [vocals, keys], Cam Brannelly [drums], and Megan Parks [violin]—breathe in inspiration from the world around them and exhale cinematic indie folk-pop powered by soaring harmonies, organic orchestration, and luminous electronics. Emerging in 2013, the musicians have consistently captivated audiences. They’ve generated over 150 million streams across Young [2013], Until I Live [2015], Places [2017], and Wildflower [2020]. As one of many highlights from the latter, “Time” amassed over 9.3 million Spotify streams as the album incited widespread critical applause. Parade raved, “Wildflower is chock full of adventure, wonder, freedom, and inspiration,” while The Line Of Best Fit attested, “it seems that the sky really is the limit for this quartet.” Mxdwn noted, “The National Parks have perfectly melded folk with catchy melodies, strong grunge chords and poetic lyrics in Wildflower.” The four-piece maintained this momentum with a sold-out headline tour and 2021’s A Mix for the End of the World pt.1. Now, the group expand their vision yet again on their fifth full-length offering, 8th Wonder.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
The Old Ceremony
The Old Ceremony plays lush, literate rock. With fourteen years of touring the US, Canada, and Europe and six albums under their belt, the Durham/Chapel Hill, NC band occupies its own darkly lit corner of the musical world. It is a corner filled with ominous rumblings and world-weary but hopeful characters. They have played with lots of well-known bands. Rock critics have written about them in their publications. TOC’s newest album, Sprinter, was released in July 2016 on Yep Roc Records. TOC is led by songwriter Django Haskins, and includes drummer Daniel Hall, vibes/organist Mark Simonsen, bassist Shane Hartman, and violinist Gabriel Pelli. Website | Facebook | Twitter | Bandcamp
Panchiko
On July 21st, 2016, a user on 4chan’s /mu/ board posted a photo of a demo CD they’d discovered in an Oxfam charity store in Nottingham, UK: titled D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, purportedly released in 2000. The listener uploaded the ripped audio to file-sharing sites, and later YouTube, where it began circulating around web forums. A cult of fans banded together to solve the origin story of the mysterious disc, until eventually a long defunct local band from Nottingham who called themselves Panchiko discovered their 1998 album (limited to 30 copies) had spread virally across the internet 18 years later.By popular demand Panchiko reunited touring the music of D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L to sold out audiences across the US and UK in 2022 and will self-release a new LP titled Failed at Math(s) on May 5 2023 followed by an expanded US tour.Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
Plastic Picnic
Plastic Picnic is a Brooklyn band made up of PNW transplants who found one other after moving to New York. Their indie dream-rock combines shimmering synths, atmospheric guitar, and bittersweet lyrics that deal with loss, isolation, and anxiety.Recorded in a cabin in upstate NY, their debut album, As Long As You Need, explores the space between joy and sorrow, searching for hope amidst dark times. The album reached #10 Most Added on NACC radio and #25 for Sub-Modern Albums.Plastic Picnic’s orchestral blend of indie-rock has garnered them song placements on TV shows such as Homeland and Shameless, as well as festival appearances. Following a set at Governor’s Ball and a west coast tour, they’re set to tour further in 2023.”Plastic Picnic has a real knack for making synthesizers sound epic” – NPR“Catchy, danceable beats paired with melancholy lyricism and shimmery melodies” – BillboardWebsite | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
JULIA., The Hourglass Kids
JULIA. WebsiteThe Hourglass Kids Website
Chessa Rich Deeper Sleeper Album Release Show
“I’ve been a vivid and frequent dreamer my whole life,” says Chessa Rich. “I feel that my dreams are a) the portal to my truest well of creativity and image-making and b) sometimes the most fun part of my day.”However, sleeping and dreaming do not always peacefully coexist. Or at least not for the North Carolina-based Chessa Rich, who wrote the shadowy and aquatic Deeper Sleeper about the years she spent living with an undiagnosed sleep disorder that dramatically influenced her relationship to sleep, productivity, dreaming and creativity.“Each song on this record reflects a different aspect of my relationship with sleeping and dreaming,” said Rich. “Some were born in frustration and anger at a body that won’t do what I want it to do, others sound more like giving up, and one is a literal retelling of a dream I had.”Recorded at Milan Hill in March 2021, Deeper Sleeper is the narrative of finally waking up. It showcases her informed rule-breaking songwriting steeped in a past not only of musical collaboration and performance, but of a gentle persistence to discover oneself amidst a vibrant landscape of others. The nine tracks divulge—in Rich’s distinctly seasoned sound—the heartfelt importance of having mindfulness of those closest to you. Across the LP’s sonic landscapes, Rich finds herself in various states of consciousness. Sleeping but unable to wake up, awake but wanting to be asleep, dreaming but not aware of the pieces that form the whole.“All my dreams leave me with a specific, unique feeling, but they rarely have linear narratives that I can follow to lead me to a nice tied-up moral or lesson,” said Rich. “I have to sit with them and let them accompany me throughout my day, letting my brain’s images be what they are. Pieces of the songs on Deeper Sleeper have been floating around with me like dreams for a while, and like dreams, I had to patiently sit with them to let them become what they needed to be.”The opening track “Paper Heart” instantly drops us into both her infectious sonic textures and empathetic lyrics. “I want to put myself in your space / Be there so I know you well,” she sings, her voice clear-cutting straight to the heart. In “Julia,” Rich apologizes to an imagined mentor for needing to strip herself down to a blank slate, devoid of expectation. “The things I need are very simple now,” Rich sings, her presence with herself quietly magnified. The waking becomes further amplified in “Wanderer,” and is paired with the truth that exploration is the continued prize of life. “I learned how to just skate by,” Rich sings. “And that if you die in your dreams you don’t die in real life / I’ve died so many times / Maybe I was wiser then, but I’m still a wanderer.”An affinity with Fiona Apple and Big Thief emerges on “Wanderer,” before arriving at the burgeoning textures of “River,” which ruminates in the sonic palate of Wye Oak and Loma. The indie rock semblances hold weight, as even the title Deeper Sleeper follows from a lineage of cardinal records that lent substance to Rich’s arrival at her own percolated mélange of buoyant indie pop: Talkie Walkie (Air), Wowee Zowee (Pavement) and Nilsson Schmilsson (Harry Nilsson). “I’ve been recalling more things / My lifetime is in the palm of my hand / Like a stone shaped by persistent waves of a changing shoreline,” she sings on the record’s last track, “Mary,” as if a testament to Rich’s own trajectory as a musician taking her own weather-worn shape.Bandcamp
The Church – VIP Meet & Greet
The Church VIP Tour Package Access to soundcheck performance Exclusive Meet & Greet with The Church Merchandise shopping before doors open to the general public VIP Merch Package inc: Tote Bag Signed Copy of New Album ‘Hypnogogue’ on CD Commemorative tour laminate and more…. Very Limited availability General Admission Ticket to Concert NOT Included – You must purchase a ticket here. Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Indigo De Souza
“Everything has to be said.” This is the conviction guiding Indigo De Souza’s sophomore album, Any Shape You Take. This dynamic record successfully creates a container for the full spectrum — pushing through and against every emotion: “I wanted this album to give a feeling of shifting with and embracing change. These songs came from a turbulent time when I was coming to self-love through many existential crises and shifts in perspective.”Faithful to its name, Any Shape You Take changes form to match the tenor of each story it tells. “The album title is a nod to the many shapes I take musically. I don’t feel that I fully embody any particular genre — all of the music just comes from the universe that is my ever-shifting brain/heart/world,” says Indigo. This sonic range is unified by Indigo’s strikingly confessional and effortless approach to songwriting, a signature first introduced in her debut, self-released LP, I Love My Mom. Written in quick succession, Indigo sees these two records as companion pieces, both distinct but in communion with each other: “Many of the songs on these two records came from the same season in my life and a certain version of myself which I feel much further from now.”Throughout Any Shape You Take, Indigo reflects on her relationships as she reckons with a deeper need to redefine how to fully inhabit spaces of love and connection.”It feels so important for me to see people through change. To accept people for the many shapes they take, whether those shapes fit into your life or not. This album is a reflection of that. I have undergone so much change in my life and I am so deeply grateful to the people who have seen me through it without judgment and without attachment to skins I’m shifting out of.”Lead single “Kill Me,” written during the climax of a dysfunctional relationship, opens with the lines “Kill me slowly/ Take me with you.” This powerful plea, that begins within the quiet strum of a single electric guitar, is diffused by Indigo’s ironic apathy — a slacker rock nonchalance that refuses to take itself seriously: “I was really tired and fucked up from this relationship and simultaneously so deeply in love with that person in a special way that felt very vast and more real than anything I’d ever experienced.”Across the table from that irreverence sits the sincerity of the single “Hold U,” a more energized, neo soul-inspired love song that substitutes apathy for a genuine expression of care. “I wrote ‘Hold U’ after I left that heavy season of my life and was learning how to love more simply and functionally. I wanted to write a love song that was painfully simple.”Growing up in a conservative small town in the mountains of North Carolina, Indigo started playing guitar when she was nine years old. “Music was a natural occurrence in my life. My dad is a bossa nova guitarist and singer from Brazil and so I think I just had it in my blood from birth.” It wasn’t until moving to Asheville, NC that Indigo began to move into her current sound, developing a writing practice that feeds from the currents that surround her: “Sometimes it feels like I am soaking up the energies of people around me and making art from a space that is more a collective body than just my own.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok
