VIAL
Minneapolis’ VIAL magically met each other through a Tinder post in 2019, brought together by a shared love of 90’s punk, indie, and grunge. Launching into their home scene with their debut Grow Up they quickly became local favorites with everyone from The Current to Music In Minnesota. Signing to LA’s Get Better Records in 2021, their follow up full length, Loudmouth, was an evolution of their indie-pop and alt-rock beginnings but began to hint at other leanings, especially in the tracks Ego Death and the fan-favorite Piss Punk. A little less reflection on the past and a little more anger at the future. Even though their third release, Burnout, retained the whimsy, the fiercer side of things kept creeping in. Tales of betrayal and teen drama were also being matched by a hardness reflective of our fractured society. With their 4th record, HELLHOUND, the gloves have come completely off. There’s a wee trace of the jovial in the LP’s title track/interlude but the rest of the record is one shredder after another – deceit, revenge, frustration and vitriol are nailed incessantly into the tracks from start to finish. Produced by Martin Cooke (Death Cab For Cutie, Of Monsters And Men, Destroy Boys), the LP is a powerhouse that draws from vintage punk, classic metal and all in between. Anyone who’s crossed them is a target and asking to get cut. First single CREEP SMOOTHIE pulls no punches in calling out disrespect from the worst kinds of men and would-be’s alike. IDLE HANDS channels the rage inward. Overall the record is a culmination of influences and experience and an explosive chapter in VIAL’s life. Behind everything they do is an underlying dedication to causes ranging from gender equality and abortion rights to supporting indigenous arts and refugee aid. The band constantly helps on a material level, funneling income directly to these groups. Many artists pay lip service to making the world a better place. VIAL put their money where their mouths are and their steel toes where the sun don’t shine.
Psyclon Nine
In Tongues
Lash’s Propane Drive
A benefit show for the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Sioux Reservation. All funds raised will be used to purchase propane to be used for heating the homes of the families on Pine Ridge, one of the most poverty stricken communities in the country. A grassroots effort from Larry “Lash LaRue” Dunn, who for 20 years orchestrated the Toy Drive For Pine Ridge. In memory of Dick Warsocki, a close friend of Lash’s. Dick and Lash shared a love of the Lakota people and their spiritual ways as well as a damn good sad roots song about heartbreak and heartache.
Semler – The Mirages Tour
VIP Includes: -1 GA Ticket -Meet & Greet Before the Show -1 Free Piece of Dad Merch -Early Access to Merch -Intimate Acoustic Performance Semler (Grace Baldridge, all pronouns), a queer singer-songwriter and content creator, has just announced their latest offering, Stages of a Breakdown, out April 13, 2022. The 5-song EP chronicles the saga of emotion following the demise of a pivotal relationship. This is not the first time Semler has rustled feathers through their strikingly honest and heartfelt music. Their February 2021 EP Preacher’s Kid, recorded independently and reaching over a million streams in the first few months, broke barriers when it rocketed to the #1 spot on the iTunes Christian music charts—making Semler the first openly queer artist to hold that position. In October 2021, Semler repeated the feat again rising to #1 – with their EP Late Bloomer. It racked up more than 250k Spotify streams in its first week, with double that on Apple Music. Semler’s bookends of Preacher’s Kid and Late Bloomer found humor, hurt, and healing at the intersection of queerness and faith and ignited grassroots support for the artist who began booking shows around the US – both headlining and sharing stages with Katie Pruitt and Relient K. Semler takes a leap of faith in questioning aspects of Christian culture and Christian responses to the LGBTQIA+ community through satire, love, and earnest feelings of hurt. Semler’s steady growth and candid songs & content have both touched a nerve and united a community, not to mention earned the attention of hundreds of thousands of listeners eagerly awaiting their next project. Stages of a Breakdown continues this momentum through a hard-hitting, brutally honest narrative of an EP. Over a two-week period in December 2021, Semler’s oldest friendship devolved into a total collapse because of anti-queer religious sentiment. Through the accusations, late-night text messages, and heartbreak, Semler wrote Stages… each song capturing a piece of what Semler felt during those two weeks. The first track “You’re Not My Friend,” released as a single with accompanying music video on April 1, 2022, is cathartic, tongue-in-cheek storytelling and sets the stage for the narrative to unfold. Next, “Don’t Tell Anyone” is a sultry, indie-pop bop written from Semler’s ex-friend’s perspective. “Twenties” then provides Semler’s response to that judgment and loss of love. The final tracks, “Raise Up” and “Outro,” narrate a resolution to the pain and find Semler once again searching for divinity amidst chaos.
DeVotchKa
In a serendipitous moment on “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” the radio station KCRW in Santa Monica changed the trajectory of both indie cinema and one of Denver’s most distinctive musical voices. When filmmakers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris heard DeVotchKa’s evocative sound drifting through the airwaves, they knew they’d found the emotional heartbeat for their film “Little Miss Sunshine.” That instinct proved prophetic. DeVotchKa’s soundtrack and score for the 2006 film became inseparable from its story. The bittersweet orchestration to the Hoover family’s cross-country journey, captured the themes of hope, resilience, and beautifully imperfect dreams. The band’s signature sound gave the film its unmistakable soul, turning moments like young Olive’s final dance into cultural touchstones. The work earned DeVotchKa a Grammy nomination for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album and the film won two Oscars. Introducing the world to the band’s cinematic, lush orchestral sound, songs like “Til the End of Time” and “How It Ends” transcended the screen to become anthems. Now, two decades later, DeVotchKa will be celebrating this landmark collaboration with a special 20th anniversary tour, “A Tribute to the Music of Little Miss Sunshine.” The performance honors not just the music that helped define a generation of independent film, but the unlikely journey that began with a radio station, a perfect song at the perfect moment, and a story about never giving up on what makes you different. Join DeVotchKa as they revisit the soundtrack and score that launched them into the cultural conversation – a reminder that sometimes the most beautiful twists of fate create the most lasting art.
Carly Cosgrove
Remember Sports
Remember Sports have always sounded like a band in motion—chasing a feeling, chasing each other, sometimes running from themselves. Over the past decade, the Philadelphia-based band has built a cult following on the strength of bruising live shows, emotionally honest lyrics, and an ever-evolving sound that refuses to be pinned down. With their newest album, The Refrigerator, out February 13, 2026 via Get Better Records, the band captures the messy, cathartic energy of transformation: it’s a record born from uncertainty, grief, growth, and ultimately, love—for the music, for each other, and for the many past selves colliding into the present.
Houndmouth
Houndmouth is an American alternative blues band from New Albany, Indiana led by Matt Myers (guitar, vocals). Houndmouth formed in the summer of 2011. After playing locally in Louisville and Indiana, they performed at the SXSW music festival in March 2012 to promote their homemade self-titled EP. Geoff Travis, the head of Rough Trade was in the audience and offered a contract shortly after. In 2012, the band was named “Band Of The Week” by The Guardian. In 2013 Houndmouth’s debut album, From the Hills Below the City, was released by Rough Trade. This led to performances on Letterman, Conan, World Cafe, and several major festivals (ACL, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Newport Folk Festival). SPIN and Esquire.com named Houndmouth a “must-see” band at Lollapalooza, and Garden & Gun said, “You’d be hard pressed to find a more effortless, well-crafted mix of roots and rock this year than the debut album from this Louisville quartet.” On their latest album Good For You, Houndmouth share a collection of songs set in places as far-flung as the Alamo and the Hudson River, each populated by a motley cast of characters: fairy-tale princesses and vampires, parking-lot lovers and wanna-be beauty queens. The result is a lovingly gathered catalogue of those wild and fleeting moments that stay lodged in our hearts forever, taking on a dreamlike resonance as years go by. In a departure from the shambolic spirit of past work like Little Neon Limelight (Houndmouth’s 2015 breakout, featuring the platinum-selling “Sedona”), Good For You bears a hi-fi minimalism that beautifully illuminates its finespun storytelling. “From working with Brad and Jon we learned to go for the simplest parts that best support the melody, and to let the frequencies take up more space in the songs,” says Myers. On the album-opening title track, Houndmouth bring that approach to a sweetly languid breakup song set against the surreal backdrop of the Kentucky Derby (“I wrote that before Covid, but at the time I was sort of emotionally going through a pandemic,” Myers points out). On “Miracle Mile,” Houndmouth pay homage to the many misfits they’ve met on the road, including a woman they’ve nicknamed after the Greek god of wine and ritual madness (“Sweet Dionysus/She never really liked us/Hangs on and stays too long/And then supplies us all with vices”). And on “Cool Jam,” Houndmouth eulogize a doomed romance, embedding their lyrics with so much broken wisdom (e.g., “Ain’t no heaven when you’re having a good time”). On its closing track “Las Vegas,” Good For You shifts into a far rowdier mood, offering up a freewheeling anthem that once again reveals Houndmouth’s ability to build a novel’s worth of tension in just a few lines (“You wore makeup for three days straight/Half a Xanax for the holidays/By the look on your face/You’re rolling eights the hard way”). In assembling the tracklist for Good For You, Houndmouth nearly withheld the song due to its outlier status, but ultimately found its joyfully unhinged energy well-suited to a world waking up from a year of grief and isolation. For Houndmouth, the making of Good For You allowed for a major leap forward in their songwriting and sound while recalling the pure abandon of the band’s early days. “I remember the first time I ever came to the Green House and saw what was happening here and I thought, ‘I’m never leaving this place,’” says Myers. “This album felt like being back in that time again, only now everything’s a little more dialed-back and cared-for. It was like a return to the way we fell in love with playing music.”
Fust & Merce Lemon
