As the circular simplicity of their name suggests, O. are a true self-contained unit. They formed in London during lockdown, when Joe and Tash – both veterans of a string of London ensembles – found themselves in a bubble together. When they started jamming, it was with no preconceptions: don’t overthink it, just play and see what happens. Before long, though, they were augmenting live instruments with effects – Joe routing his saxophone through a pedal board, Tash treating her drums with reverb and delay. As their sound grew and grew, it gradually became clear there wouldn’t be space for anyone else.

O. played their first show at Brixton Windmill, and the venue’s booker Tim Perry invited them back to support Black Midi. Immediately after their set, Black Midi’s Morgan Simpson invited them out on tour around the UK and Europe – a true trial by fire. “I think our fifth gig was at Alexandra Palace – it was terrifying,” remembers Tash. “But the main thing we learned was that we can be as weird as we want to be. Black Midi’s whole approach is that it’s OK to be playful. We both really liked that because there’s a playfulness to our music, too.”

It was this experimental urge that saw Joe and Tash run their own nights, O Zone, at Brixton Windmill – collaborative live sessions that saw O. improvise onstage with luminaries including Nerija’s Rosie Turton, Edna from Goat Girl, Melt Yourself Down’s Pete Wareham and Steam Down’s Wonky Logic. Following a tour with Dublin’s Gilla Band, though, O.’s music has just been getting heavier, louder, more intense. “People have come to see us and said they’ve enjoyed the fact it feels about two centimetres from falling apart,” says Tash. “With two instruments, you have to push yourself, physically, right to the edge to keep it interesting. But we enjoy that challenge.”

When Nashville-based singer-songwriter Mali Velasquez traded her Texas panhandle home for the verdant foothills of Tennessee, she did so with a newfound perspective that mirrored her environment, culminating in the lushly raw edge of her folk-rooted indie rock. Wistfully openhearted and incisive, Velasquez tips the fulcrum between reflection and remedy with melody-forward unction and lyrical tenderness. Her forthcoming debut, I’m Green, is a perennial introspection into the wild animal of young adulthood and the renewing realization that the person we’re most often seeking permission from, crucially, is ourselves.

“I know you’re delicate / But so am I,” sings Velasquez on “Medicine,” her voice a subtext of her disposition, warbled yet controlled, uncertain but sharpening over a fuzz of guitars that crash into epiphanic clarity. Like rounding a mountain road to that first sunlit outlook, Velasquez’s vocals begin to hit you: building, winding, closing in, and then opening, the expanse unfiltered and strikingly primal.

Lead single “Tore” sees similar themes of biting candor as Velasquez confronts a tendency towards shame and self-sabotage over distorted brass and a steady, pastoral groove.

“Being comfortable in my skin is something that feels out of reach a lot of the time…What all of these songs are about is my relationship with myself, but also the relationship of ‘self’ as a reflection of my relationships to other people.”

I’m Green sees these familiar feelings of discomfort as an opportunity for release, the through-line being both the hesitancy that precedes the acceptance and the acceptance itself. It’s a restorative exhalation of stored energies and a practice in stretching the limbs to that which we’ve deemed unreachable.

This through-line is never clearer than on opening track “Bobby,” which sees a high school-aged Velasquez attempting to catalog memories following the loss of her mother. Computerized blips and glimmers cut through the sparse guitarwork like bytes of fleeting recollection, the data of hospital bed imprints and the sacred nature of shared phrases flooding back in a crescendoed wash of swelling percussion.

“Getting these songs out has been really healing for me. Before, the way I was grieving was just kind of holding it all in, waiting for it to release. These songs have given me a new perspective on grief. At one time, I didn’t think anything good could come from this. There’s nothing left of my mom on the planet, and that can be super strange to talk about, but I do feel like there are little pieces of her living in these songs, which is very comforting to me.”

In reaching for healthier coping mechanisms, Velasquez realized a reborn appreciation for nature and nurtured a more disciplined love for oil painting.

“I love to paint, and I love to paint outside, especially coming from such an arid place. Moving here to Nashville, I remember saying out loud, all the time—it’s so green! The cover art for ‘Bobby’ is a photo of my grandparents holding me as a baby that I painted, and that’s something that I absolutely want to keep doing, is just painting old photos.”

She also found producer Josef “Jos” Kuhn (Samia, Annie DiRusso, Venus & the Flytraps, Hannah Cole), who, after seeing a video of Velasquez performing an early version of “Bobby,” reached out about recording the song. The pair hit it off, and recording one song quickly became recording an album. “It’s been so helpful with Josef, because I would come to him with the songs, and it’d be us sitting on the couch or me sending a voice memo and his response would be so unexpected, and welcoming, and appreciative, which is really new for me.”

On closing track “Death Grip,” Velasquez muses about the passage of time and whether her efforts to reconcile the turmoil of a long-term relationship are futile. Like grief, her outward frustrations often turn inward as a mirror and as a chance to reflect on her longest relationship to date: the relationship she has with herself. I’m Green is the result of these reflections becoming meditations on the transformative power of both loss and shame and what emerges when we allow ourselves to surrender to their potential.

Huron John is always evolving. A 23-year-old multimedia artist from Chicago, Illinois now based in Nashville, Tennessee, Huron provides a new layer of definition to the “do-it-yourself” indie standard. Entirely producing, writing, and engineering a now multi-album discography, the project’s genre-defying sounds proudly shapeshift into a rainbow-spectrum of moods and flavors. Using a wholesomely grassroots approach to independently amass over 30 million listens worldwide, they have carefully supplemented album rollouts with a multimedia angle including physical art books, psychedelia-soaked visuals and philanthropic campaigns. Utilizing a ‘mystery-ridden online persona’ (-MTV) and a ‘day-tripper sound that delivers glitch juxtaposed with groove’ (-Ones To Watch), a mesmerizing melting-pot of alternative, electronic & sound-collage are delivered with ease.

Taking almost 3 years to meticulously craft their upcoming 3rd LP, the album marks Huron incorporating a variety of firsts for the project. Utilizing an eclectic arsenal of musical collaborators, visual artists (sizeably including Milan-based oil painter Tommaso Di Raimondo) and experimental recording techniques, the album marks a dramatic step forward in the Huron John story. Created with an almost method-actor-esque attitude of “pretending during recording as if this would be my last opportunity to ever make music”, the upcoming release was treated with painstaking intentionality. Patiently embarking on a process taking place in over 25 studio spaces across America, a large part of recording occurred inside an all-concrete commercial warehouse / music venue in East Los Angeles in which they lived throughout. Daringly fusing a vintage-tinged-twist on modern pop music with ethereal textures like harp and a live orchestra, the album is experienced as the musical equivalent to flipping through paint color samples at an interior design firm. Thematically centered around the concept of “becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable”, the upcoming LP easily functions as the Huron discography’s defining statement.

Finding its footing in 2018 as a virtually unknown project, their catalog has become essential listening within D.I.Y-arts communities. Making ample noise in 2020-2021 with an almost-absurdist concept album about a young Andy Warhol persuading extraterrestrials to not destroy the Earth, the now cult-favorite double album “Apocalypse Wow / cartoon therapy” uniquely built the Huron project a smile-inducing foundation. Aiming for the creation of a grander discography-wide statement, every subsequent release marks an upgrade in all aspects of quality and concept “to try and describe the short lifetimes we all share”. Forever aimed at being an inclusive world of solace for “people from all walks of life”, the Huron John project is a reflective musical guest book for all passersby to write their name into.

Huron John is always evolving. The 23-year-old multimedia artist from Chicago (now based in Nashville) has entirely produced, written, and engineered a now multi-album discography delivering a melting-pot of psychedelic alternative, electronic & sound-collage. Genre-defying sounds tastefully shapeshift through a ‘mystery-ridden online persona’ (-MTV) and a ‘day-tripper sound that delivers glitch juxtaposed with groove’ (-Ones To Watch).
Taking 3 years to meticulously craft their upcoming 3rd LP, the album marks Huron utilizing an eclectic arsenal of musical collaborators and recording techniques to take a dramatic step forward. Created with a method-actor-esque intention of “pretending as if this would be my last opportunity to make music”, the upcoming LP is the Huron discography’s defining statement. Recorded in over 25 creative spaces but mainly crafted in an LA commercial warehouse / music-venue in which they lived throughout, the upcoming 2023-release breaks bold new ground.

Finding its footing in 2018 as a virtually unknown project, their catalog has become essential listening within D.I.Y-arts communities. Making ample noise in 2020-2021 with the now cult-favorite double LP “Apocalypse Wow / cartoon therapy”, the project aims for a discography-wide statement. Bombastically loud but equally meditative, Huron John is an interactive musical guest book for all passersby to write their name into.

“I was in a long-distance relationship with music for many years,” jokes songwriter Vienna Teng. “Now we’re finally moving back in together.”

Long-distance, perhaps, but long-running. In 2002, Vienna released her debut album Waking Hour, landing her on NPR’s Weekend Edition, The Late Show with David Letterman, and the top of Amazon’s music charts. Four more albums followed, most recently Aims in 2013, which became the first album to win four Independent Music Awards. She also composed the music for The Fourth Messenger by playwright Tanya Shaffer, which premiered in 2013 and was a featured production in the 2017 New York Musical Theater Festival. Together with Vienna’s captivating live performances and thoughtful online presence, her work has built a devoted following across generations and continents.

Still, other pursuits have always beckoned. A computer science major before she was a recording artist, Vienna is a nerd at heart, as comfortable in spreadsheets as the spotlight. She returned to academia in 2010 to study environmental sustainability, which led to a new career working on climate change, energy and waste issues. She also became a bonus parent to her partner’s two kids, and in early 2020 welcomed a newborn addition to the family - just in time for pandemic lockdown.

“I learned a lot about what it means to hold two truths in your head at the same time, as the saying goes,” Vienna says of that period. “The situation can be dire and full of possibility. Both kindness and fierceness are so very necessary.”

She wondered: what if two songs, with seemingly contradictory perspectives, were written so they would “mash up” into a duet? The result is her song-pair “We’ve Got You”: one about serving as a beacon for one’s community, the other about leaning on that community in one’s darkest hour. It’s some of the most intricate and impassioned songwriting she’s ever done. When she performs it on stage - solo, live-looping her voice, keyboards and percussion to layer the two songs together - the audience response is electric. “And there are so many ways for songs to be in dialogue with each other,” she notes. “I’d love to keep exploring that idea…hopefully in dialogue with other creators, too.”

Fittingly for a piece about reinvigoration and connection, “We’ve Got You” marks the start of a new chapter for Vienna, where her environmental and musical vocations converge. In 2022, she launched a “music x climate action” community on Patreon, combining monthly livestream shows and recording studio updates with Zoom climate action sessions, as well as working one-on-one with patrons on their own climate projects. On the road, she’s started hosting workshops between concerts, bringing members of her audience together to share knowledge and take real steps for climate - events that participants have described as “life-changing,” “rocket fuel,” and “the perfect antidote to despair.”

The long-distance phase is over. Now it’s time for communion - and moving forward.

Action/Adventure shouldn’t be here. At least, that’s what the Chicago-based five-piece seem to think. They’re wrong – very wrong – but that’s the overriding theme of their debut album. That’s partly why they named it Imposter Syndrome – because when the band signed to Pure Noise Records, they couldn’t quite believe it. Even after they released their seven-track EP Pulling Focus in 2021, and even after that EP’s lead track “Barricades” went viral on TikTok, it didn’t feel real. After all, this is a label that’s put out some of their favorite albums by some of their favorite bands, and now they were a part of it. That sense of confused bewilderment was compounded by the timing of it all.
“For us,” says lead vocalist Blake Evaristo, “having a debut on Pure Noise is insane. Especially because, when “Barricades” blew up for us and we got all that TikTok clout, it happened during the pandemic, so we didn’t even play a show till nearly a year later. And I feel like in that time, we were having imposter syndrome, hence the title. It didn’t feel real.”
“And honestly,” adds vocalist/guitarist Brompton Jackson, “it still doesn’t even feel real. We’ve just been asking questions like is this real? Do we belong here? Is this even happening?”

Much as the band – completed by drummer Adrian Brown, bassist Manny Avila and guitarist Oren Trace – might feel that way, the facts are simple: it is real, they do belong here and it is definitely happening. But their imposter syndrome runs deeper than that, namely because they’re an entirely BIPOC band in the pop-punk scene, which automatically adds an extra layer of depth and uneasiness to everything. It’s what the TikTok video for “Barricades” was all about, and it’s an inherent part of their identity. That video was never meant to blow up, nor was it meant to be overtly political. It simply captured how they felt about who they were and was uploaded to TikTok by Jackson one day on a whim.
“It was the first video we put on TikTok,” says Evaristo. “Brompton made the account that same day, and to see it connect with people has been amazing. But we’re also here now to show that we’re more than that one song! We’ve had hate comments saying that we’re race baiting, which is so frustrating.” “But we’re 100% not,” adds Jackson. “Me, Oren and Adrian have been playing music together for the past 16 or 17 years. We went to high school together and grew up playing music. Manny was originally
friends with Oren’s wife, and we found Blake on Craigslist. It was kismet.”
Still, Action/Adventure are acutely aware their existence is nevertheless important in terms of visibility. They’re just also keen to stress that their initial intentions were all music-focused, and that it’s chance, not design, that they’re all BIPOC.
“Those two parts have to co-exist on completely even playing fields,” explains Jackson. “One can’t really outshine the other. Growing up in the scene, I almost felt like a pariah – I could count the amount of other black people going to shows on one hand. One of them is Adrian! You’d always see the same four or five other black people at shows, so you get to know each other. So it’s important to not lose sight of that, but I also don’t want us to be a token band. We’re just a band. We’re a group of people playing music that we like to listen to and that we like to write – and we just all happen to be people of color. It was an accident, it wasn’t planned.”
“We just wanted to play music,” adds Brown. “We all played music individually and ultimately it just seemed easy to play that music together. And while you don’t see a lot of people of color doing this kind of music, not many people I knew in high school liked metalcore and pop-punk, so when you find those people you’re naturally drawn to together. I just wanted to create the feeling that I got when I saw bands play.”

If that was the band’s intention, they’ve achieved it. Imposter Syndrome begins with the emphatic rush of the title track. Its blitz of flurried, angular guitars that are simultaneously aggressive and poppy, before doubling down on the main concern that plagues the record: ‘We’re the imposters’. The irony is
that that song, and this record, proves otherwise. Elsewhere, “Save Yourself” is a powerfully urgent call to arms that brutalizes (in a positive way) the typical pop-punk template, while “Losing Streak” lays bare their insecurities, but pits their defiance and determination against it.
“In good times,” says Brown, “I can listen to it and be like ‘Hell yeah, I survived.’ And in bad times I can hear it and be like ‘Don’t forget to keep pushing.’ It hits me and my spirit 110%.”
“There’s a lyric in that song that goes ‘No matter what the cost is we’re still chasing losses’,” adds Avila, “and that’s so true. Because no matter what it does cost, we’re still chasing it, still going, still pushing.”

One of the other hesitations that manifests itself in this record is the fact the members of Action/Adventure are older than most pop-punk bands who release a debut album. If it’s not quite a chip on their shoulder, it’s certainly something that’s nesting in the back of their minds. But it also lends their music – as youthful and full of vitality as it is – an extra level of gravitas. It makes it matter so much more.
“We joke that it’s pop-punk for adults,” smiles Evaristo. “But our ages do add to our imposter syndrome. Age and time has just always been a struggle, and you can hear it in the lyrics too. A lot of it talks about the frustrations of that, because pop-punk is always seen as young persons’ genre and we’re just getting started. We are a little older, but we want to show that it’s never too late.”
“Over the years,” adds Jackson, “I feel the genre has really become like a meme. A lot of people don’t take it seriously – when people ask what kind of music we play and I say I’m in a pop-punk band, I’ve gotten responses like ‘I used to listen to pop-punk when I was in high school.’ It’s real tongue-in-cheek. But having it feel very genuine and being able to articulate that these are our actual feelings and emotions and thoughts is very important to all of us.”

One listen to this record, and that’s clear. It’s emotive and erudite, sophisticated and serious, fun but also full of the trials and tribulations, insecurities and uncertainties that make us all human. All that is channeled into these 10 impassioned and precise, vigorous and spirited songs. The fact that it hits so incisively and profoundly demonstrates why – even if they use the term with tongues firmly in cheek – pop-punk for adults is the perfect description. It’s precisely because they’re adults and have known each other for a very long time, that it’s able to be that.
“I’ve existed with these people for so long that they’re integral parts of my life,” admits Jackson. “They’re not my bandmates, they’re my family. We’ve all been in many different projects, and this is by far the easiest project I’ve ever been involved with. It’s not hard at all. I mean, it’s hard for the reasons that being a band is hard, but being in a band with these four other people is completely second nature at this point. That part of it isn’t work at all, and I’m eternally grateful for that.” “Even if half of the lyrics are whining about being in a band,” chuckles Evaristo. “But I hope people listen to it and see through our own eyes that being in a band is fun, but that there’s some real shit going on, too. This might be our first album, but we’ve all been through the wringer, and I hope people hear that we have real stuff that we’re dealing with – whether that’s being in a band, being a person of color in the scene or chasing a dream that seems so hard and unattainable. I really hope people can feel what we’re feeling.”

Change and perspective expand quickly in tight quarters—and no one knows that as well as married couple Solange Igoa and Andrea Walker. It’s true of each of their time as queer kids in need of an escape from conservative towns; of their years living together in a van, traveling the country to play music and busk; of settling down in a studio apartment just prior to the pandemic. And now, partnered with a rhythm section and produced by Chris Funk of the Decemberists, they’re harnessing the lessons from this closeness and cracking them wide open into a whole new world with their band Glitterfox.

The duo first met at a coffee house open mic in Long Beach, California, where Walker had recently relocated after growing up in North Carolina and Virginia. She quickly fell in love with Igoa’s voice, knowing that if their vocals and her guitar came together that would only flourish— and it did, the two now married and having spent more than a decade as a pair. Musically, channeling Walker’s Southern warmth through Southern California indie shine, Glitterfox carves out lithe, nostalgia-fueled anthems powered by the intimacy of their relationship. “A lot of our songs are about serious challenges in our lives,” Walker says. “All the struggles in my life get poured into the music, but always with this silver lining of hope, this drive not to quit before the miracle happens. Making a living as an independent musician is hard, but we’ve always had each other and always made it work.”

Igoa and Walker quickly found new roots when they moved out of their van and settled down in Portland, Oregon, in 2018, quickly cementing a reputation for their boundless energy and positivity. Soon they were joined by Eric Stalker, a singer-songwriter who got along with the couple so well that he volunteered to learn bass as a way to join their band. Drummer Blaine Heinonen followed, the quartet now capable of producing grander leaps of musical gravity to crash through the couple’s golden-hued compositions.

The group’s soaring intimacy quickly won over Pacific Northwest fans and heroes in addition to Funk, with Kill Rock Stars label head Slim Moon who jumped at the opportunity to sign them. Despite that rapid growth, the beating heart of Glitterfox will always be Walker and Igoa’s love. “Having a band that’s built around a healthy marriage is cool because it has longevity. We’re a very stable unit and we’re a family,” Walker says. “We’ve learned how to trust each other’s instincts. When Solange and I play together, it’s so second nature—their voice and my guitar are so intimately bound”