Impulsive Hearts, Phil Yates & The Affiliates, Mammals
Chicago’s “sad-surf” indie-rock band Impulsive Hearts. They shared their third album Fit 4 The Apocalypse last year via legendary indie-rock label Cavity Search Records (Elliott Smith, Helio Sequence) and dropped a remaster of their debut album Sorry In The Summer this spring.Echoing the likes of Best Coast and Dum Dum Girls, the all-women band adds a “hint of indelible Midwestern sadness” to the band’s garage pop sound that the band has dialed in since a decade ago. Atwood Magazine shared their last music video last month, writing, “Impulsive Hearts’ Fit 4 the Apocalypse is the Chicago indie rock band’s boldest, warmest, and most ambitious offering to date.” As a staple in the Chicago music scene for the past decade, Impulsive Hearts has received plenty of local acclaim across their body of work. Jessica Hopper wrote in the Chicago Tribune before that Danielle’s “songs are studies in contrast, sweet melodies and then distortion and rage.” “Hyperliterate pop-rock with shades of Elvis Costello and Big Star…” – Chicago’s Phil Yates & The Affiliates specialize in three-minute hook-filled pop songs loudly played. Phil Yates’ merry band of Affiliates include Michael Kennedy on guitar, Jay Lyon on bass, and Bill Urban on drums. Mammals is a 4-piece rock ‘n’ roll band from the Chicagoland area that brings heart and soul from the garage to the stage. They draw inspiration from classic ’60s rock ‘n’ roll, ’70s power pop, and more modern garage rock and punk to create their own energetic, melody-driven originals.
Milkswarm, Daundry, Paper Hotel
Milkswarm- Chicago music farm Daundry is a three-piece grungagze band from Chicago IL. Paper Hotel is an experimental indie rock band- with themes of tension, push and pull, and vulnerability.
Model Living, Rocco and His Bones, Riddle M
Model Living are a Chicago-based post-punk quartet formed in spring 2023. Their angular songwriting & urgent-yet-poetic lyricism seek to capture life in Your City (USA) & the ever-encroaching doom surrounding them. Guitarist Jay Martinez, drummer Nico Ciani, & bassist Matt Ciani create a hazy backdrop of repetition & tension for vocalist Geoff Daniels’ frantic depictions of a city ravaged by displacement, restaurant groups, & Exponential Growth.Model Living formed as an opportunity for Daniels, also of art rock project Upstairs, & the Cianis, joining from Chicago dance-punk outfit Arthhur & synth-doom dirgers Flesh of the Stars, to collaborate, having worked out of the same rehearsal space for years & finding similar interests in post-punk luminaries The Fall, Priests, & Protomartyr. Building on the rhythm section’s unyielding, ripples-in-your-water-glass intensity, Martinez brings a nervy sharpness & dissonance in his guitar playing, conjuring squalls of feedback & sharp stabs of melody in equal measure. Together, Model Living craft propulsive rock songs with a strong point of view. Rocco and His Bones is a psych/garage punk band born out of a DIY barn venue in upstate SC. Touring up the East Coast and Midwest following the release of their singles “On Display/Trees,” the band fuses early 2000s garage & 80s new wave into their set of songs influenced by The Oh Sees, early The Misfits, and Prison Affair. Riddle M has dug through the trenches using 4 track tape recorders bringing sounds from the dead. A Lo Fi glam gem looked to pioneers like The Cleaners from Venus, Joe Meek, and Ariel Pink. Peal your eyes for a surprise from one who grew up in Decatur IL (Pride of the prairie) and took his spaceship out to the industrial city of Chicago to bring his sound to the big ones.
Miniskirt, The Scratch-Offs, Wallplant
Miniskirt is a Chicago four piece that draws on a love of 60’s girl groups, garage rock, power pop, and punk to make a dreamy and energetic sound. They inspire a raucous pit or a joint to be passed around. From the hazy hippie hangover that is Madison, WI come the Scratch-Offs, with their dumb power chords, garage pop riffs, and X-inspired harmonies, ready to take a fat ol’ chance on the lottery of life. Wallplant makes bedroom pop inflicted post punk
Brainwaiver, Big Drama (AR), Bum Rush with DJ Magic Triangle and Visuals by Hydrosonic Light Show
Brainwaver is improvised space age traveling, noise and deep space doom scroll Big Drama is an Arkansas based post-punk power duo collaging scraps of kraut rock, DC post-hardcore, and experimental weirdo noise into sonic medicine for sufferers of technocapitalist malaise. Bum Rush is an irreverent and sonically adventurous punk trio from Chicago that always delivers when they take the stage. Like if the Minutemen leaned more into their bebop influence and used fuzz pedals
toss! , Consort, Anteeter
toss! fuses the raw energy of ’90s/2000s post-grunge and alternative rock with the dreamy textures of modern psychedelic, post-punk, and shoegaze. Blending decades of influence into a sound that’s both nostalgic and new, they deliver emotionally charged, genre-blurring rock. Consort makes Instrumental, progressive, post hardcore and jazz. Music to zone out to. Anteeter and Normal Writing- Frequent collaborators Anteeter and Normal Writing join forces to bring an exciting, bass-heavy electronic audio/visual performance featuring their film scores, unreleased music and reworked material. Best played loud.
Ryder the Eagle, Hannah Sandoz
DIY hero, fallen Romeo, karaoke weirdo — the Mexico-based French balladeer is everything (and nothing) you might expect from an art-rock divorcé chasing dreams at your local dive bar. With lo-fi synthy soundscapes, lyrical melodies, poetic songwriting, and cathartic one-of-a-kind performances, Ryder The Eagle tells his history with love more than his love stories – coating romantic despair with a chiseled wit that’ll transport you straight into a Kaurismäki movie soundtracked by a caffeine-driven Leonard Cohen.
Why DOMS, Mr. Phylzzz, Nude
Why DOMS- The undisputed tag team champions of the Louisville rap scene Mr. Phylzzz- A two piece well dressed mess from Chicago. NÜDE is an experimental duo composed of Chicago-bred musicians Ruby Lucinda and Luke Clohisy. Both multi-instrumentalists, Lucinda and Clohisy write music that pulls from indie rock, drone, no wave, and grunge. The duo seeks to write honest music, about what feels like to be home— comforts and complications alike.
Linnea’s Garden, Oddysseys, Sex Dream
Linnea’s Garden plays glam punk rock you can dance to. Imagine the angular guitars of Television, primal bass lines of The Clash, danceworthy grooves of Blondie, and otherworldly songwriting and stage show of David Bowie, fronted by a queer singer/songwriter/scientist. Loud, shiny and full of distortion: they do it cuz they like to do it. There’s no such thing as taking it easy when it comes to Oddysseys. The Boston born and Chicago-based trio has always operated under a strong DIY ethos and work ethic. The band has forged their own organic growth in the underground music scene, leaving their impression on basements, warehouses, and legendary venues across the U.S. and Canada, offering dynamic performances that take their audience on a journey through a sonically diverse discography – leaving plenty of room for moshers, dancers, and arm-crossers alike. Sex Dream is a 3 piece female fronted punk band from the suburbs of Chicago, highly influenced by the Ramones, 90s pop punk, twee pop and Britney Spears who describes themselves as hello kitty punk
Annabel, Joie De Vivre, Lettering
Annabel has spent the last 20 years quietly building one of indie rock’s most heartfelt and enduring catalogs. On Worldviews—their first album in nine years—the Ohio band returns not with a comeback, but with a natural evolution. Anchored by brothers Ben and Andy Hendricks, Worldviews finds Annabel confronting time, memory, and meaning with the clarity that only comes from growing older together. From jangly midwestern rock to spectral piano ballads and ambient textures, they sound both wiser and more energized than ever. In a world that feels increasingly uncertain, Annabel’s steady presence feels like something to believe in. Joie De Vivre Emo band from Rockford Il. One time someone said we sound like a combination of Mineral and Pavement. Another time someone said we sound like The Get Up Kids but shittier. We don’t agree (or disagree) with either of these descriptions. Lettering Loud. Blu-ray core.