6:30PM Doors | 7:00PM Show

“When I wrote ‘Fire Alarm,’ I decided then and there to quit my day job and focus solely on music,” says Castlecomer frontman Bede Kennedy. “That song marked this cathartic moment where I really put a stake in the ground and committed to going all in. For the next twelve months, I did nothing but write for nine hours a day, every single day.”

Kennedy clearly sensed he was on to something special with “Fire Alarm,” but little did he know he’d just written the tune that would lead the Sydney rockers halfway around the world and propel them from local favorites to international breakout stars. With its driving beat and earworm of a melody, “Fire Alarm” was a runaway hit on Spotify, where it reached #6 on the Global Viral chart and racked up more than five million streams. The band garnered airplay everywhere from Australia’s legendary alternative music station, Triple J to LA’s KROQ to SiriusXM’s ALT Nation and drew comparisons to The Strokes and Daft Punk, with Rolling Stone Australia praising their “amalgamation of emotion and unashamed catchiness.” The band played more than 500 shows and festival dates Down Under, building up a devoted fanbase and honing their set into a concentrated blast of pure energy and ecstasy. By the time they got to SXSW in 2017, Castlecomer was ready to take America by storm.

“We didn’t know anybody in the industry,” says Bede, “but we felt confident that if we had the opportunity to get onstage in front of a lot of people, that would be enough. We played eight shows in three days and just tore it up. From those gigs, we got management, a record deal, publishing, and a booking agent. We’re like the poster boys for what you can still achieve at South by Southwest.”

Castlecomer has never been lacking when it comes to drive and ambition, and their tenacious belief in the potential of their band goes all the way back to its earliest days. Consisting of four cousins and a close childhood friend, the group began playing live during their teenage years and took their band name from a plaque mounted outside their grandfather’s house, one they later found out referenced the Irish village his family had emigrated from. Much like the band’s music, their name possesses deep personal meaning while still retaining an air of evocative mystery, hinting at places they’ve never been but still somehow course through their veins.

Australia’s in their blood, too, and Sydney will always be home, but after signing with Concord Records, the band took a leap of faith in early 2018 and moved to Nashville.

“We wanted to live in a 24/7 music community,” says Kennedy. “As soon we arrived, we discovered that there was live music happening from 1pm onwards in every bloody corner of the place. It was exactly what we needed.”

Despite their newfound love for Music City, Castlecomer won’t be spending too much time there this year considering the already-extensive headline and festival dates lined up behind their

track, “Move.” Recorded with producer Adrian Breakspear (Gang of Youths) and mastered by GRAMMY-winner Joe LaPorta (The Weeknd, The Killers, Foo Fighters), the track is a funky dance jam that pairs Kennedy’s silky-smooth vocals with a disco-tinged arrangement that’s pure 1970’s bliss.

Such is the contagious energy of Castlecomer. One listen and you’re hooked, sucked into their rapturous world of angular guitars and hypnotizing grooves. With a sound this meticulous and infectious, it’s hard to believe that the band hasn’t even released their debut LP yet, but these singles are only the tip of the iceberg from a group that’s doggedly determined to fulfill every bit of their seemingly limitless potential. It’s already been a wild ride, but Castlecomer is just getting started.

Murphy's Red Hots, the 32-year-old hot dog stand that closed last August in Lakeview, returns to Schubas for Labor Day weekend! Stop in anytime from 11am to 4pm on Saturday, August 31st through Sunday, September 1st for some of the best damn hot dogs this city has ever seen. Half Acre will also be taking over our taps with old favorites and specialty drafts!

Murphy's Red Hots, the 32-year-old hot dog stand that closed last August in Lakeview, returns to Schubas for Labor Day weekend! Stop in anytime from 11am to 4pm on Saturday, August 31st through Sunday, September 1st for some of the best damn hot dogs this city has ever seen. Half Acre will also be taking over our taps with old favorites and specialty drafts!

Pinegrove are a band from Montclair, NJ.

MANNEQUIN PUSSY
Colins Rey Regisford (bass, samples, vocals) - Kaleen Reading (drums, percussion) Marisa Dabice (guitar, vocals) - Athanasios Paul (guitar, keys)

The third full-length from Mannequin Pussy, Patience is an album fascinated with the physical experience of the body, its songs tracking the movements of mouths and hands and racing hearts, skin and spit and teeth and blood. Deeply attuned to the power of their own physicality, the Philadelphia-based band channels complex emotion in blistering riffs, thrashing rhythms, vocals that feel as immediate and untamed as a gut reaction. But throughout Patience, the Philadelphia-based band contrasts that raw vitality with intricate melodies and finely detailed arrangements, building a strange and potent tension that makes the album all the more cathartic.

The follow-up to Romantic—a 2016 release praised by Pitchfork for “combin[ing] punk, shoegaze, death metal, and more, with the ferocious push-pull energy of a mosh pit”—Patience came to life at Studio 4 in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. In creating the album, Mannequin Pussy worked with producer/engineer Will Yip (Quicksand, The Menzingers), shaping an explosive sound that never overshadows the subtlety of their songwriting. “In the past there’s been a chaotic feeling to the recording process, but working with Will put us in a different headspace,” says Dabice. “It helped us show our progression over the past few years and make a very crisp-sounding record, without losing the dirtiness of what Mannequin Pussy really is.”

Opening with its gloriously frenetic title track, Patience matches Mannequin Pussy’s wild volatility with a narrative voice that’s often painfully vulnerable. On “Drunk II,” for instance, Dabice’s vocals shift from fragile to furious, the track’s stormy guitar work colliding with lyrics capturing the grief of post-breakup inertia. “I wrote that song one night when I was very heartbroken, after I’d been out with friends trying to pretend like I wasn’t feeling so hopeless,” says Dabice. “I went home and just started playing guitar and crying, and stayed up working on that song till about four in the morning.”

On the delicately sprawling “High Horse,” Patience takes on a more restrained tone but still maintains a devastating intensity, with Mannequin Pussy presenting an intimate portrait of an abusive relationship (“Pushing me up against the kitchen sink/I feel your breath on me/I can taste it in my teeth”). Meanwhile, “Who You Are” shifts into a brightly tender mood, assuming a classic-love-song sweetness in its message of self-acceptance. “I turned 30 as we were working on the record, and it changed my whole perspective on my life and relationships and everything,” says Dabice. “‘Who You Are’ came from thinking about what I’d want to say to myself when I was still in my 20s and wasting so much time not believing in myself.”

Elsewhere on Patience, Mannequin Pussy transmit an unstoppable fury: the 39-second “Clams” delivers as a brutal blast of vitriol against those who’ve tried to hold them back, while “F.U.C.A.W.” unfolds in unhinged riffs and relentlessly pounding beats. And on “In Love Again,” the album closes out with a magnificently epic anthem driven by dreamy guitar tones, lilting piano melodies, and a particularly elegant performance from Reading (“I’m really proud of the nuanced drum beat and the percussion odyssey at the end,” she notes. “And yes, there are bongos on the track”). The most undeniably hopeful moment on Patience, “In Love Again” telegraphs utter joy and awe in its heart-on-sleeve lyrics. “I always want our records to end in a place of optimism,” says Dabice. “The songs take you on a journey through all these very toxic emotions and traumatic experiences, but what I’m trying to articulate is that something good can come from getting through all that.”

The push toward transformation has long propelled the songwriting of Mannequin Pussy, who formed as a duo when childhood friends Dabice and Paul reconnected after years apart. At the time, Dabice had recently returned to the East Coast from Colorado in order to help take care of her mother, who’d just suffered a stroke. “It was one of the most trying times of my life, and at some point my mom suggested that I try going to therapy,” Dabice recalls. “But instead I was like, ‘I think I’m just gonna learn to play guitar.’ I didn’t want to talk to anyone; I just wanted to lose myself in the creative process.” Once she and Paul played music together, they discovered a chemistry she now describes as magical. “We created so much in such a short period of time,” Dabice says. “We never even thought of making records or anything—it was just this pure emotional outlet, just us screaming onstage with our guitars.”

As they continued collaborating, Dabice and Paul later added Reading and Regisford to the lineup, making their debut with GP in 2014 and releasing Romantic in fall 2016. Recently signed to Epitaph, Mannequin Pussy found themselves newly revitalized in the writing and recording of Patience, their creative connection stronger than ever. “I’m so proud of how hard we’ve worked to get to this point,” says Dabice. “This album sounds exactly how I’ve always wanted us to sound—I’ve never listened to something we’ve made and felt so inspired by it.”

As Dabice explains, the band’s journey toward the making of Patience partly inspired the album’s title. “I think you have to be patient that you’ll find the sound that’s in your head,” she says. “It’s okay to take your time if you can’t figure it out right away—you’ve got to just trust that you’ll get there eventually.” And within that process, Mannequin Pussy have continually found the emotional release that ultimately makes their music so powerful. “Feeling isolated in your most toxic experiences can slowly destroy you from the inside, but going through the motion of creating something can make you feel at peace,” Dabice says. “And the real beauty is that, by sharing your experience, it helps other people to feel less alone as well. That’s what we’ve always searched for with our music, and I don’t think that will ever change for us.”

Worlds collide, and alchemy ensues.

Inside the music of Keshi, ethereal melodies and lo-fi beats entwine with handcrafted instrumentation and understated guitar wizardry, emitting modern transmissions by way of a traditional beacon. This bold blend of R&B, hip-hop, and pop remains a signature of the Houston singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist born Casey Luong. Tallying over 40 million cumulative streams independently and inking a deal with Island Records, he uncovers bits of himself in each and every song. 

“Keshi is literally the most undiluted parts of my being that come out,” he exclaims. “I’m not copying anything. Instead, I’m fleshing out a little spot for myself. It explores sultry R&B crooning, but there’s also a level of old school songwriting and melodic sensibility I learned from playing so much guitar. It all speaks to who I am.”

At 12-years-old, Casey initially decided to pick up the instrument. His grandfather possessed a “fat classical guitar” and a music book in Vietnamese. From there, he taught himself how to play and developed a deep passion for music, “sitting in front of the computer for hours on end every day and soaking it all up.” His influences grew from All Time Low and John Mayer to Frank Ocean, The 1975, Drake, and Bryson Tiller as he learned production on GarageBand throughout high school.

Following graduation, he kicked off a career as a registered nurse. In between grueling shifts, he shared an early composition entitled “if you’re not the one for me who is” online. He entered it into a competition on a Joji reddit fan page. Receiving “validation from strangers for the first time,” he continued to share more songs online. “over u” made waves on Spotify and generated over 7 million streams as “just friends” surpassed the 9-million-mark. Meanwhile, he claimed real estate on popular playlists such as Low-Key and antipop with his 2018 breakout THE REAPER EP, boasting “like i need u.”

Everything set the stage for his Island Records debut, SKELETONS EP.

“THE REAPER combined classic writing and new production,” he elaborates. “Whereas THE REAPER is melodramatic in a romantic sort of way, SKELETONS is melodramatic in a grown-up sort of way. A lot of people my age are trying to figure out how to live life on their own after graduating college, getting jobs, and moving out. The transition sucks. You realize the real world isn’t what you thought. I’ve seen most of my friends have trouble coping. I’m combining their stories and mine in the music. At the same time, I’m exploring guitar in ways I haven’t before.” “summer” and “atlas” preceded the project as he unveiled its heart on the single “xoxosos.” His falsetto glides over lithely plucked acoustic guitar as he confesses through vocal modulation— “All we ever do is have sex anyways”—before a glassy seductive chant.

“I was going through a rough patch with my girlfriend,” he admits. “It felt like all we were doing was coming home, fucking, and fighting. I was wondering if there was any merit to the relationship anymore. The song is overt as it shows a fear of leaving what’s comfortable. I like writing about those strange vulnerabilities you have with someone you’re so close to.”

Meanwhile, “Skeletons” shares the “exhaustion with my routine as a nurse and wanting something more” over delicate strumming and stark production.

Within this framework of catchy and confessional off-kilter pop, you’ll get to know Keshi.

“When you hear me, I want you to realize it’s okay to be vulnerable,” he concludes. “All of my skeletons are out for the taking, so don’t be ashamed of yours. I’m being as real as I can be. The closer it is to my heart, the closer it is to everyone else’s hearts.

girl in red – Meet & Greet Package includes:
•One general admission ticket
•Early entry into the venue
•Exclusive meet & greet with girl in red
•Autographed personal polaroid photo with girl in red
•Customizable girl in red gift bag (exclusive to VIP packages only!)
•Tour poster
•Specially designed girl in red pin set
•Official meet & greet laminate
•Limited availability

Join us for 805 + Schubas' first annual Thunder on Southport Motorcycle Rally on Saturday, September 28th from 12PM - 5PM.

The day starts off at 10AM over at Federal Moto (2021 W Fulton St) for some refreshments and a hang. From there, we’ll have a group ride over to Schubas. Kick stands up at 11:30AM sharp, and all makes are welcome!

There will be cheap beer/booze/food, vintage moto movies, live music, raffles, and more!

We'll have some awesome raffle items from Federal Moto, Biltwell, Ride Chicago, Harley Davidson Wrigleyville, and Schubas Tavern + Lincoln Hall - and more TBA.

Cosmo Sheldrake is a singer, songwriter, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist from London. He collects and plays a variety of instruments, from the bass clarinet to the banjo. The music he makes with them, inspired by and often incorporating field recordings and natural soundscapes, is essential listening for anyone interested in hearing truly unique new sounds.

Sheldrake grew up surrounded by both music and a deep understanding and fascination with the natural world. His father, Rupert Sheldrake, is a biologist who comes from a long line of church organists. His mother, Jill Purce, whose own mother was a concert pianist, inspired a revival of group chant, teaches Mongolian overtone chanting and spent four years working with the avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

This meant that from an early age Sheldrake was introduced to a whole world of unconventional music. "My mother had a had a big record collection of early ethnographic recordings," he recalls. "One of my early memories is going to a world music conference and hearing Tuvan throat singing, then listening to flamenco and Georgian choirs. I was mesmerised by the whole thing."

Sheldrake began playing classical piano at the age of four, learning by ear using the Suzuki method which essentially teaches music as if it were a language to become fluent in. By the time he was seven he had moved on to playing New Orleans-style blues and boogie-woogie. At 15, he was studying minimalism and using Logic to program drums and beats.

His work with singer Noemie Ducimetiere and rapper Elian Gray led him to form his first band, Gentle Mystics, at the age of 16. He has also played and toured with Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit. He composed music for a series of Samuel Beckett plays at the Young Vic and for Relax & Dream, a project which brought bringing soothing music and nature videos to children in hospital and hospices. Until 2013 he ran a community choir in Brighton, and he has worked as a facilitator, running music workshops in Europe and North America.

Throughout his career, Sheldrake has continued to be fascinated by sound collection and field-recordings. In 2013, he gave a Tedx talk entitled 'Interspecies Collaboration' during which he created a symphony of sounds featuring the sun and British birds in collaboration with his own vocal improvisation. In 2017, he composed the soundtrack for 'Moving Art,' a Netflix nature series in which filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg explores the beauty of oceans, forests, deserts and flowers.

As a solo musician, Sheldrake released his first single 'The Moss' in 2014, which was followed by the 'Pelicans We' EP in 2015, which was mastered by Mandy Parnell.

This April he will release his debut album 'The much much how how and I.' It was mixed by electronic producer Matthew Herbert.

Written under the influence of a diverse group of musicians ranging from The Beatles and The Kinks to Moondog and Stravinsky, the record was also shaped by a trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Sheldrake's study of anthropology at the University of Sussex as well as his longstanding interest in ethnomusicology. After composing the music at home, he decamped to east London analogue recording base Soup Studios to work with live woodwind and brass players.

"It feels to me like the record has captured a period of time and a thought-process," says Sheldrake. "It's taken me three years to write, and over that time the identity of this thing has emerged and revealed itself."

Of the record's idiosyncratic title, he explains: "I was working on this youth camp in America and a friend of mine, Nadia Chaney, who's an amazing artist and poet, had come up with a workshop called Oracular Poetry. Basically you freewrite on a subject for a couple of minutes, and then you chop up what you've written so that you have this pool of your words. Then you give them to your neighbour and they patch them back together. Often this process can shed light on the thing you were thinking about. A friend of mine, Evan, was the one putting my words back together. The last sentence of the poem that came back was: 'The much much how how and I.' It just popped out at me. I thought if I ever made a record I would call it that. I like the combination of the much-ness, the expanse, with the questioning, the 'why-ness.' Then also how that relates back to the individual. That's always been a sort of guiding idea for the album."

The record's lead single 'Come Along,' is a suitably epic introduction to Sheldrake's expansive and accomplished musical ambition. "That song began when I decided to make the most preposterously over-the-top introduction that I could," he says. "I made this ridiculously grandiose beginning, and then it developed from there into the song as it is now. It was one of the first songs that I wrote for this record, so it's always felt like a good place to start. It feels like the doorway in to everything else."

Another key track is the album's ear-worming second tune 'Wriggle.' "That's the song I feel most excited about people hearing," says Sheldrake. "I wrote it after the rest of the album was already finished, so it's the freshest and I think it really pops out. It feels quite celebratory, and it takes things in another direction."

'The much much how how and I' is that rarest of musical propositions: a truly original piece of work. While many musicians will claim to have influences outside the norm, in Sheldrake's case it's actually true.

"I've never been able to answer when people ask me what kind of music I make," he says. "Often just listening to the sound of a gale in Scotland, or sampling the sound of bats chewing, has given rise to a tune."

You haven't heard anyone quite like Cosmo Sheldrake before. But now you can.

-Kevin EG Perry

Based in Washington D.C., electro-pop trio SHAED balance effervescence and atmosphere. Consisting of lead singer and one-time solo artist Chelsea Lee and producers Max and Spencer Ernst, the group's second single, "Thunder," landed on the viral streaming charts in mid-2016. They released their debut EP, Just Wanna See, in September 2016.

Chelsea Lee and the Ernst twins first met in high school and began writing music together a few years later. Soon after releasing their debut single, "Just Wanna See," in March 2016, they had a viral streaming hit with the anthemic synth pop tune "Thunder." Both songs were included on their first EP, Just Wanna See, issued that September. It was followed by tours in support of Marian Hill and Bishop Briggs. SHAED released the stand-alone single "Too Much" in mid-2017, shortly before the trio moved in together and worked on recording much of their second EP at home. In May of 2018, they re-emerged on tour with X Ambassadors, and Photo Finish Records issued "Trampoline," the lead single from Melt, which followed in July.

Absofacto is the solo project of songwriter/producer Jonathan Visger. Through a handful of unique projects, Visger became a fixture of Michigan's indie rock scene and in 2008 began recording his solo work under the Absofacto moniker, self-releasing singles and EPs via Bandcamp and on his own website. Fusing intelligent, often surrealist songwriting with a strong emotional core, he created a stylistically fluid sound that pulled from bedroom pop, art rock, and electronic music.

When Plague Vendor were about make their new album By Night, singer Brandon Blaine didn’t exactly know what he wanted it to sound like, but he did know what he wanted it to look like. “A house that’s falling apartbut lit uplike crazy,” he says now, six months after finishing a record that captures that exact feeling of ruin and regeneration, of charisma and catastrophe and of slashing at the night with nothing but pure electricity. Where 2016’s BLOODSWEATended with a to-be-continued moment and Blaine shouting “Romance!” into the silence, By Nightends with a second of feedback and noise. It's a perfectly spent finish to an adrenaline rush of a record that asks, “What just happened?”Plague Vendor are already usedto making nothing into something. It’s a place where the only way things happen is if you make them happen. A fearless our-way-is-the-hard-way work ethic and famously physical live shows won the band a ferocious fan base, a flash-bang debut album and place of pride on the Epitaph Records roster. When they called that album BLOODSWEAT they might’ve just been explaining what it took to make it. (Or they could’ve just been talking about those live shows.) And when they stepped back into the studio in the latesummer of 2018, they were ready again to do something new. They spent eleven days locked in at Hollywood’s legendary EastWest Studios (Brian Wilson, Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop) with StVincent/Chelsea Wolfe producer John Congleton, with all visitors banned and all distraction eliminated. (Well, one blood relative has was allowed once.) Theyhad the instinct to delay the sessions until they knew they could get Congleton, and when they met, they connected intensely and instantly, more like co-conspirators thancolleagues. They would even complete each other’s sentences, says drummer Luke Perine. With Congleton’s precision production, they found their own way between the powerful-but-too-polished sound of right now and the engaging-but-aging reinterpretations ofclassic punk/rock albums of the 60s and 70. And with Congleton’s limitless encouragement, they did things Plague Vendor never did before: chorused bass in endless waves, lightning-strike flashes of synth, motorik man-machine drums that sound inhuman and human at once and even a string section that’ll be a surprise if they ever do it live.“We knew we could trust him to take us as far as we wanted,” says Perine, and inspired by the opportunity, the band stretched and warped their songs, discovering a merciless sense of tension and apprehension that set every moment on edge. (That’s how they play live, too, says bassist Michael Perez: “It’s all a performance—building energy and releasing it.”) Blaine broke out new vocal ideas, new vocal styles, new depths of imagery and intensity that feel like flashbacks instead of pop songs. If BLOODSWEATwas a primal scream, By Nightwould be a precision attack. And, says Blaine, “I had my ammunition ready.”The record starts like you’re in the studio with them.There’s a second of chatter to check if you’re ready, and Perine’s drums, Perez’ bass and Rogers guitar aligning in formation. Then a snap dynamic change and anxious heart-pounding piano as Blaine slides in, out of breath and into a scream before the minute mark. That’s “New Comedown,” and the rest is just as stark, raw and out of control—even the love songs, when there are love songs. (“You gotta have light to have dark,” says Blaine.) The brooding “All Of The Above” is an internal monologue disintegrating over a sci-fi punk drumbeat, while sing-along-gone-wrong “Let Me Get High\Low” is an infinity mirror of echo, effects, illusion and delusion: “Toward the end,” says guitarist Jay Rogers, “it just gets cinematic.” The menacing “Night Sweats” is like the soundtrack to some kind of crime spree as a cruise through town in a camouflage Cadillac starts to fall apart. “Snakeskin Boots” is a shattering battle with temptation and closer “In My Pocket” is a song for the first bleak light of dawn—it’s exhaustingandexhilarating at the same time, with a final rush moment that screeches to an instant stop. Think of it as the moment the sun finally comes up, which is exactly when an album called By Nighthas to end. As Blaine says: “Nothing cool happens duringthe day.”

In the midst of a sprawl of council estates and terraced houses that snake down the high street on the way east to the Tynemouth coast, there’s a square patch of parched grass with goalposts at each end. Before his guitar offered an escape route from North Shields, Sam Fender would roll around its cracked pavements with nothing much to do and nowhere to go. Invariably, he’d be kicking a ball around or smoking cigarettes, always with a song in his head.

“I love my hometown, but when I was growing up I did feel trapped,” he begins. “I felt suffocated, it was claustrophobic.” Fender couldn’t stand the inertia, and turned to his guitar rather than his A-Levels to find a way past it. A sense of abandon informs his urgent, heartfelt, already essential rock‘n’roll songs, which tell stories of a life on the fringes.

“I grew up in a place where there are lots of kids that came from families that didn’t work, and then they didn’t work,” he says. “There’s a lot of fear involved when you grow up in a town like that, fear that you’re not going to make something of yourself. I mean actually having a life and seeing places, I never wanted to be stuck there. I butchered my A Levels ‘cause I was too busy being an idiot and playing the guitar. I ended up working in the pub for two or three years and I had no direction really, I didn’t know how I could get me music off the ground. It looked almost inevitable that I’d be stuck there…”

Now, Fender has no reason to be afraid. Last year, the taut noise of his introductory singles Friday Fighting and Start Again sparked a breakthrough, and the rolling stone is now gathering momentum down an endless hill. He snuck into the BBC Sound Of 2018 poll and has spent the past twelve months either on stage, cramped in a van on the road with his three-piece band, or experimenting with sound in his self-built studio in an old warehouse space within stumbling distance of where he grew up.

To see Sam Fender live is to see an artist who really f’kin means it. When he delivers his songs, with that cavernous, direct-to-the-back-of-the-room-and-through-the-wall vocal he’s playing it like his life depends upon it. Off stage he’s a joker, a looming, magnetic, Damon Albarn before he turned so serious, cheeky-chappy presence, but up there he evokes the spirit and energy of his hero, The Boss. Not so much heart-on-sleeve, as heart-with-pin-removed-and-lobbed-into-the-pit-sized explosive. Having opened for a plethora of bigger names (from Catfish & The Bottlemen to Hozier to Jake Bugg to Michael Kiwanuka), the stage is where his story is told.

There’s an edge to Fender’s songs that can also make him tremble. The surging, urgent Dead Boys deals explicitly with male suicide and mental health issues, and has caused outpourings of emotion among a growing band of followers. All of Sam’s songs tend to feature a resonance and socially-aware, socially-pertinent message. It’s what helps to define him, and makes him leap-frog the endless slew of winsome singer-songwriters that sound fine, but have precisely nothing to say for themselves.

Dead Boys takes pride of place as the opening and title track on Fender’s forthcoming debut EP, and is quickly followed by the clamour of Spice, named after the titular legal high that has wreaked havoc up and down Britain in recent years. “It’s about a boy who was really talented, clever and ended up destroying his life because of legal highs,” he says. “There are so many kids across Britain who have ruined their lives and ended up homeless because of spice. It’s terrifying.”

The song strikes a chord, scraping close to the bone, and Fender’s explanation does similar. “With nothing to do and being out of work and out of any inspiration to do anything, people just want to be in oblivion,” he says.

Leave Fast is slower, plaintive chords allowing lines about boy racers, sand dunes and shitty pubs to bring the stark images of Fender’s hometown to life. “It’s my hometown so I know it like the back of my hand. My writing has to be about what I know, but it’s also what I care about. These are things that affected me to the point where I wanted to say something.”

The spiky riffing on Poundshop Kardashians finds Fender struggling to make sense of vacuous celebrity and the throwaway nature of vast swathes of modern culture.

“I’m ranting about the stupid stuff we idolise in the western world, but feeling helpless because I’m not smart enough to pose an argument for its destruction,” he explains. “I’m panicking all the time. I just don’t understand the world we live in and I think a lot of people feel like that.”

That last point has allowed Sam Fender into the hearts of many. He’s speaking frankly to a confused generation. His vivid stories make his messages loud and clear. This music doesn’t come easy.

“My songs come from a very real place, a lad from the North-East of England writing about what’s in front of his face,” he says. “I never will claim to be an expert about the issues I talk about, but I will try and talk about them.”

One thing Fender can claim to be an expert on is North Shields, the area that has shaped his gnarled, addictive songs more than anything else. “It’s a very proud place. My dad was a club musician, and worked as an electrician and various other jobs. He played social clubs for years, people I grew up with were grafting through the week in different jobs and playing gigs at the weekend,” Fender says. “They were part of a big community and industry that got destroyed in the ‘80s, so I grew up when everything was dismantled.”

The Dead Boys EP finds space for a thank you to music itself. His next gambit, the seismic That Sound, wriggles and bangs through a melody that supports the big-hearted idea that music keeps Sam Fender on the straight and narrow. It’s always been his only viable option.

“It pulls me out of the shit every time,” he says. “It’s the only reason I’m doing this, it’s the only thing I can do. Let’s go do it.”

The Dead Boys EP is released on the 20th November via Polydor Records.

The colour orange can cause one to experience a heightened sense of optimism, a boost in aspiration, and a stimulation of warmth and happiness. Mild Orange is an eclectic of 'melting melodies' – an energy and vibrancy derived from a lust for smooth sounds.

The soundbaby, Mild Orange, was born in 2017 in Dunedin, New Zealand, by early childhood friends Josh Mehrtens (vocals/guitar/production) and Josh Reid (lead guitar), and soon joined by good pals and experienced musicians, Tom Kelk (bass) and Jack Ferguson (drums).

Josh & Josh first became friends at age two, but were separated due to their families relocating. 19 years later, the pair oddly and unknowingly found themselves living together in a strange flat housing ten men, two lizards, two rabbits and one chicken all under one roof in their third year at university. Josh & Josh had not realised that they knew each other well as children until soon after they had bonded over their passion for music and began writing the bones of their debut album Foreplay. The full project came into fruition once Tom and Jack were on board, and the signature sound was created.

Foreplay was released independently April 18, 2018, receiving worldwide attention, with tracks quickly reaching millions of views on YouTube. The Mild Orange boys recorded Foreplay themselves in their practice room and in their flat in Dunedin. Front man Josh Mehrtens, then spent six months producing and mixing the project in his bedroom and at the library.

Mild Orange asks: “melt with us” – an expression to spark the enjoyment, creation, and participation in lovely experiences. The powerful, and at times pensive live show of the Mild Orange experience, seeks to do so.

With her honest, tuneful folk-pop songs and bright, youthful charm, British singer-songwriter Maisie Peters has amassed a widespread and devoted YouTube following since first uploading recordings in the mid-2010s. She released her debut single, ‘Place We Were Made’, in 2017 when she was 17 years old – it quickly became a viral hit, racking up millions of streams and earmarking her as a name to watch in the world of UK pop.

A natural storyteller who wrote her first song when she was just nine years old, Peters first began uploading her songs to YouTube in 2015, quickly earning fans and comparisons to artists like Birdy and Taylor Swift, the latter of whom Peters cites as a defining early influence. After releasing viral debut ‘Place We Were Made’, she has since gone on to put out a trio of follow-up singles; powerful, stripped-down piano ballad ‘Birthday’, and sleek, glossy pop tracks ‘Worst of You’ and ‘Best I’ll Ever Sing’, both released in 2018.

Looking ahead, her much-anticipated debut EP, ‘Dressed Too Nice For A Jacket’, releases on November 2nd via Atlantic Records and drops in the midst of an extensive run of dates that’ll see Maisie support Tom Walker across the UK and Europe throughout October, November and December.

Born on the streets of Los Angeles, Starcrawler is a band possessed by the spirit of its own hometown, every movement charged with a manic electricity. Since forming in 2015, vocalist Arrow de Wilde, guitarist/vocalist Henri Cash, bassist Tim Franco, and drummer Austin Smith have gone from bashing out songs in the garage to winning the love of such legendary artists as Shirley Manson and Elton John. They’ve also opened for the likes of Beck, Foo Fighters, Spoon, The Distillers, and MC5, bringing their unhinged energy to an already-fabled live show—a spectacle that’s simultaneously lurid and glorious and elegant as ballet. On their sophomore full-length Devour You, Starcrawler captures that dynamic with a whole new precision, revealing their rare ability to find a fragile beauty in even the greatest chaos.

Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, L7), Devour You takes the feral intensity of their 2018 self-titled debut and twists it into something grander and more gracefully composed. With its more elaborate and nuanced yet harder-hitting sonic palette, the album came to life at the famed Sunset Sound, where the band spent their downtime playing H-O-R-S-E at the basketball hoop and drinking lots of Mexican Cokes. Adorned with so many unexpected flourishes—choir-like backing vocals from a local Girl Scouts troop, tuba and trombone riffs courtesy of Cash (the band’s 18-year-old musical polymath)—the result is a selection of songs radiating both raw sensitivity and untamable power.

Heavy and swinging and brutally catchy, “Bet My Brains” shows the psychic kinship at the heart of Starcrawler’s songwriting. “That song came from thinking about the mole people in New York and Vegas and the Catacombs in France, and the underground village of people who live in the sewers of the L.A. River,” says de Wilde. “I was fascinated with the fact that there’s whole other world happening right under our feet.” Cash adds: “Arrow and I hadn’t even talked about it yet, but I’d already written something about the same thing—about how these people’s eyes adapt to pitch-blackness, and they end up going crazy from never seeing the sunlight.”

Elsewhere on Devour You, Starcrawler drifts from the dreamy piano lilt of “No More Pennies” to the rock-and-roll disco of “You Dig Yours” to the pure punk vitriol of “Toy Teenager” (a song about de Wilde’s refusal to be abused the fashion industry, and about how “people look at my body and just want to put me on a platter”). And on “Born Asleep” the band lets their love for country music shine, slipping into a modern-day murder ballad spiked with pieces of hazy poetry (sample lyric: “I remember when you cut your lip, sippin’ on a soda can/And the time when you fell and tripped, screaming at the ice cream man”).

Elsewhere on Devour You, Starcrawler drifts from the dreamy piano lilt of “No More Pennies” to the rock-and-roll disco of “You Dig Yours” to the pure punk vitriol of “Toy Teenager” (a song about de Wilde’s refusal to be abused by the fashion industry, and about how “people look at my body and just want to put me on a platter”). And on “Born Asleep” the band lets their love for country music shine, slipping into a modern-day murder ballad spiked with pieces of hazy poetry (sample lyric: “I remember when you cut your lip, sippin’ on a soda can/And the time when you fell and tripped, screaming at the ice cream man”).

All throughout the album, Starcrawler taps into the kinetic chemistry they discovered soon after forming—a process Smith describes as a “slow-burning candle of finding the right people to play with.” In assembling the band, de Wilde first contacted Smith after seeing a Facebook photo of him playing drums (“I hit him up and he came to my birthday party, and then he turned out to be a really good drummer,” she recalls. “Right away it was like, ‘Jackpot!’”) In searching for a guitarist, de Wilde next approached Cash, a fellow student at her performing-arts high school in downtown L.A. “I saw him one day and thought, ‘That guy looks cool,’” she says. “‘He’s carrying a tuba, he’s got long hair, I’ve seen him wearing Cramps T-shirts: he’s gotta know at least something on guitar.’” But while Cash has since emerged as a monster guitarist, her instincts were only partly right. “When I was younger I didn’t want to play guitar, I wanted to play the drums because my dad played guitar—although sometimes I’d take a broomstick and jam along to AC/DC live footage,” says Cash. “It wasn’t until Arrow hit me up that I realized it was meant to be.”

Starcrawler then finalized their lineup with the addition of Franco—an old friend whom de Wilde reached out to after a moment of strange serendipity (“I was in the car with my mom and stressing out about finding the right bass player, and then Tim and his brother turned out to be on their bikes right in front of us,” she says). With their early band practices mostly consisting of Runaways covers, the band quickly bonded over a shared love for L.A.’s most unglamorous spaces. “I’ve been obsessed with Hollywood Boulevard ever since I was little,” notes de Wilde. “People travel so far and spend so much money to see it ’cause it makes them think of Marilyn Monroe—when in reality it’s so disgusting, which is why I love it. But really a lot of the L.A. that I grew up with and reminisce about is kind of fading now.”

As an antidote to the toxic mildness overtaking so much of the city, Starcrawler’s live show has only become more outrageous over the years, an element strengthened by their increasingly telepathic connection. “We all know each other in a much deeper way now,” says Smith. “Like, Arrow knows exactly when I’m going to hit the crash cymbals, so she moves to match up with that. It’s completely changed how we play together.” Prone to spitting fake blood and slapping phones from the hands of crowd members, de Wilde has proven to be a once-in-a-lifetime performer, captivating enough to command a room with just the widening of her eyes. “We want to put on a real show and give people some kind of escape from all the shit going on in the world,” she says. “And with the album, I want people to put it on and feel excited, and hopefully get goosebumps. I always want there to be a dramatic response.”

Khary is a rapper from Providence, RI. Priding himself on having an energetic live show, he has performed both domestically and internationally while opening up for the likes of Megan The Stallion, Mura Masa, KYLE, and Tory Lanez.. His music has been featured on several high caliber outlets including Pigeons & Planes, The FADER, Lyrical Lemonade, Beats 1, and more. Khary is currently preparing for his upcoming Fall 2019 headlining tour.

In May 2016, Khary released his critically-acclaimed debut solo project Intern Aquarium, leading to a campaign with Sprite, a headlining slot at the Austrian festival Rap Against, and two independently funded tours. One of the lead singles “Find Me” was also featured on the NBA Live 18 soundtrack. Khary and Columbus producer Lege Kale followed up with their collaborative Tidal Graves EP.

Over the past year alone, Khary has kept the momentum going with his Captain LP, as well as two EPs uhhh and THIS. He also joined Sylvan LaCue on his North America tour at the end of 2018.

On her first proper album as Jay Som, Melina Duterte, 22, solidifies her rep as a self-made force of sonic splendor and emotional might. If last year's aptly named Turn Into compilation showcased a fuzz-loving artist in flux -- chronicling her mission to master bedroom recording -- then the rising Oakland star's latest, Everybody Works, is the LP equivalent of mission accomplished.

Duterte is as DIY as ever -- writing, recording, playing, and producing every sound beyond a few backing vocals -- but she takes us places we never could have imagined, wedding lo-fi rock to hi-fi home orchestration, and weaving evocative autobiographical poetry into energetic punk, electrified folk, and dreamy alt-funk.

And while Duterte's early stuff found her bucking against life's lows, Everybody Works is about turning that angst into fuel for forging ahead. "Last time I was angry at the world," she says. "This is a note to myself: everybody's trying their best on their own set of problems and goals. We're all working for something."

Everybody Works was made in three furious, caffeinated weeks in October. She came home from the road, moved into a new apartment, set up her bedroom studio (with room for a bed this time) and dove in. Duterte even ditched most of her demos, writing half the LP on the spot and making lushly composed pieces like "Lipstick Stains" all the more impressive. While the guitar-grinding Jay Som we first fell in love with still reigns on shoegazey shredders like "1 Billion Dogs" and in the melodic distortions of "Take It," we also get the sublimely spacious synth-pop beauty of "Remain," and the luxe, proggy funk of "One More Time, Please."

Duterte's production approach was inspired by the complexity of Tame Impala, the simplicity of Yo La Tengo, and the messiness of Pixies. "Also, I was listening to a lot of Carly Rae Jepsen to be quite honest," she says. "Her E•MO•TION album actually inspired a lot of the sounds on Everybody Works."

There's story in the sounds -- even in the fact that Duterte's voice is more present than before. As for the lyrics, our host leaves the meaning to us. So if we can interpret, there's a bit about the aspirational and fleeting nature of love in the opener, and the oddity of turning your art into job on the titular track. There's even one tune, "The Bus Song," that seems to be written as a dialog between two kids, although it plays like vintage Broken Social Scene and likely has more to do with yearning for things out of reach.

While there's no obvious politics here, Duterte says witnessing the challenges facing women, people of color, and the queer community lit a fire. And when you reach the end of Everybody Works, "For Light," you'll find a mantra suitable for anyone trying, as Duterte says, "to find your peace even it it's not perfect." As her trusty trumpet blows, she sings: "I'll be right on time, open blinds for light, won't forget to climb."

J.S. Ondara offers a unique take on the American dream on Tales of America, his debut album. Ondara grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, listening to American alt-rock and making up his own songs for as long as he can remember. After discovering the music of Bob Dylan, he moved to Minneapolis in 2013 to pursue a career in music. There he began making his way in the local music scene, continually writing songs about what he saw, felt and experienced in a place far different from home.

From a stockpile he says is hundreds of songs deep, Ondara chose 11 for Tales of America. They're captivating tunes built around acoustic guitars and adorned with subtle full-band accompaniment for an openhearted folk-rock feel. He sings in a strong, tuneful voice well-suited to the gorgeous melancholy he expresses on the wistfully lovelorn "Torch Song," or his steadfast infatuation on "Television Girl." Ondara sings rueful lyrics in an anguished tone on "Saying Goodbye," and leaves plenty of room for interpretation on "American Dream," the first single.

"I knew I wanted a song called 'American Dream' on the record, but I didn't have that song," Ondara says with a laugh. "I couldn't find it. I wrote like twenty songs called 'American Dream' before I found the one that ended up being the record."

His persistence is evident throughout Tales of America, which is indeed a classic American tale. It's the story, told in song, of an immigrant seeking a new life, who dedicates himself to achieving his vision through hard work and determination.

When did you begin learning English?

I had studied it in school, so when I'm speaking it, I'm just assuming I'm in a class. I don't know how good I am at it, but I think it's like when you study any other language as a second language: you grow into it over time. I think listening to a lot of Western music and watching a lot of movies, stuff like that, helped inform my vocabulary.'

How big of a challenge is writing song lyrics in a second language?

I think I just naturally wrote songs in English, because the songs I first fell in love with were in English, and were Western songs. Jeff Buckley songs were some of the first songs I ever started singing. I didn't necessarily know what I was saying. I just sang them because I thought they sounded cool to me, and as I grew up

I started understanding, "Oh! That's what that word means." My sister had brought home a mix-CD that had some Nirvana songs, some Pearl Jam songs, some Jeff Buckley songs, a bunch of rock music, and I was like, "This is so cool." I have memories of listening to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and singing the words completely wrong.

You're self-taught as a singer, songwriter and guitar player. Would you ever consider lessons?

There's a magic about just fooling around and finding it. When I'm just holding my guitar and I'm putting my finger here and then there and then, "Oh, wow, this is cool. Maybe this sounds like a song, it sounds like a chord." Or when I'm free-writing in my journal and I come up with a string of words that sound like a song. I appreciate the magic about it and I'm sort of afraid that I'd lose it if I study how to write songs or how to play guitar, how to sing.

How has living in Minneapolis shaped you as a songwriter?

The thing about Minneapolis is that it's low-key, so I had time to grow and find my actual voice and find the songs that I wanted to put out to the world, slowly. There was no one trying to turn me into a particular thing. If I had moved to a place like Los Angeles, or New York, then it probably would have been a little frustrating with all the people saying, "This is what you should do." I maybe wouldn't have had time to learn the guitar, because I couldn't really play guitar when I moved here. So I think it offered me this security of a place to grow at my own speed.

You started out with around a hundred songs you were considering for this album. How did you narrow it down?

The title of record ended up informing a lot of the songs that made the final cut. I always knew that my first record was going to be called Tales of America. I made a record before this one that I threw away, because I didn't like it at the time, and it was called Tales of America.

So the title has stuck with me for a long time -- it came before the songs. I don't usually write with an idea in mind, but when I looked at what I had written, I was like, "Oh, there's this sense of a theme, of what this particular record is about."

So are these songs about America, or about being in America?

There's a combination of both. Some of them are about America. Some of them are about the journey to America. A lot of them are about time in America, inspired by events that have happened in my life in America. I think most importantly I wanted to highlight my journey from home to here and to make the new record.

Are there specific things that inspire you to write?

It's everything really. It's film, it's other records, it's a river, a lake, it's the sky. It's where I am at the moment: cities, and all kinds of things. Anything can inspire me at any particular point.

How do you keep yourself open to it all?

Just by being present really to every moment, being present and being open to accepting new experiences, and then taking time to document these experiences through your own perspective. So it's like you take this experience and you sort of compare it to your other experiences and turn it into this story that ends up being a song.

mxmtoon (pronounced em-ex-em-toon) is the moniker of 18-year-old Maia, the Oakland-based singer, songwriter, and ukulele player who has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers online for her highly relatable songs that either make you want to belly laugh or weep along with her and her selfdeprecating and goofy youtube videos. she sings of love, friendship, racial identity, and more, lyrically taking a dive into the common insecurities of the coming-of-age teenager. On her debut EP, due out later this year, she continues that run of thoughtful considerations with more songs about romance, body confidence, and more, all recorded from the confines of her parents' guest room. Passionate, genuine, and warm, mxmtoon feels like a friend you can rely on, in bad times and good.

Abhi the Nomad. Rarely has an artist name so aptly described the person and passion behind the music. Abhi spent his formative years roving from home to home, country to country, community to community. This constant movement created a strong sense of displacement in young Abhi, lacking the strong roots that stem from knowing that where you are living is your settled place in the world.

At the same time, it allowed him to gain a holistic worldview where he continuously noticed the same patterns, regardless of the place. Waste. Decay. Trash. That's what Abhi's next album, Modern Trash, is all about. A cry to the planet. The same planet that is clearly crying out to us, to stop the destruction. We can’t save it all, but we can each do our part.

At just 20 years of age, Dave has quickly established himself as one of Britain’s most exciting new talents. His debut album Psychodrama topped the UK charts in its first week, making it the fastest streamed British debut album of all time.

Dubbed ‘one of the most thoughtful, moving and necessary albums of 2019’ by The Independent, a ‘masterpiece’ by the NME, and ‘the boldest and best British rap album in a generation’ by The Guardian, Psychodrama has since earnt a slew of 5-star reviews and international critical acclaim.

Dave’s meteoric rise to the top has been characterised by a series of boundary-breaking moments; from Drake remixing early single ‘Wanna Know’ in 2016 to becoming the youngest recipient of an Ivor Novello Award for his 7-minute politically charged 2017 track ‘Question Time’, to his street anthem ‘Funky Friday’ debuting at No.1 on the Official Singles Chart - the only British artist to do so in 2018.

By continuing to boldly defy convention and refusing to compromise, Dave is constantly redefining the model of success within contemporary British music, and while the success of Psychodrama has firmly underlined this, it is just the beginning. 2019 sees Dave embark on a year-long international ‘Psychodrama Tour’, beginning with his sold-out UK leg, which kicks off in Dublin on April 8th and ends in his hometown of London with two back-to-back Brixton Academy shows on May 2nd and May 3rd.

Claud is the solo project of Claud Mintz. After releasing their debut EP made out of their college dorm room under the name Toast with Terrible Records, Claud dropped out of Syracuse University to move forward with their music career. Since then they've toured and played with the likes of The María's, Clairo, Triathalon, and more. After being sued by Wonder Bread and making the name change -- Claud is now working with various collaborators and will be sharing new music -- a new chapter following the project formerly known as Toast.

ROLE MODEL - MEET & GREET PACKAGE
Package includes:
- One (1) GA ticket
- Meet & Greet and Photo with Role Model
- Commemorative laminate
- Early entry to the venue

WHO IS ROLE MODEL?
ROLE MODEL amalgamates influence from R&B, world music, neo soul, surf rock, dream pop, synth pop, avant garde, and more, injecting his own introspective fervor and synthesizing a characteristically soft flock of unforgettable new-age tracks. The single deals in human emotions and is an unabashedly candid glimpse into the nascent perturbations that define adolescent coming-of-age. It won't get easier, but recounting life in all its varying emotions helps us to relate to one another.

Situational anxiety plays a large role in Pillsbury's tendency to gravitate towards the melancholic tug of emotional distress. ARIZONA IN THE SUMMER began in March of 2017 when Pillsbury suffered a life threatening ski accident, putting him in a cast for months. Soon after healing from his first injury, Pillsbury suffered the unfortunate fate of breaking both of his wrists, back-to-back sending him back down the black hole that is bodily injury and the subsequent isolation and disquietude that follows.

Stylistically, Pillsbury's vocal aesthetic beckons to a fleeting past, igniting the hippocampus with gleeful memories of being tucked in at night, first love, and the thermal sense of security of a loved ones embrace. ROLE MODEL's sonic environment is a discourse on human nature, and even those with a rudimentary understanding of such matters need not look further than their own intuition to understand that such feelings of security and comfort come at a pricy cost. "Creating this piece was shutting my eyes, turning into my escape from the despair -- I hope it can do the same for others" says Pillsbury, the saccharine vocals that lay the groundwork for the project are tinged with a hint of dejection. For all of its unadulterated glisten, Pillsbury's voice is equal parts the incandescent flicker of the suffering: it's human.

ROLE MODEL eases ones tensions across all identities. He vocalizes the pieces and emotions of life we are most afraid of. He provides us with support...something to hold onto. ROLE MODEL proves to us that we all have our flaws and emotional discouragement, but it can help to be honest with ourself during those times.

A role model isn't picture perfect. A role model isn't just one person. A role model is who you choose to be.

After a childhood and adolescence spent adrift - shuttling through the haze of split households in Tennessee and Florida - 21-year-old Briston Maroney's life finally comes into focus with the four songs on Indiana. Settling in Nashville, Maroney has developed a style steeped in the sweat and scrappy sounds of the city's DIY house parties, winning over fans one living room at a time.

Indiana follows the release of 2018's Carnival EP, Maroney's take on the modern coming-of-age story and his debut for Canvasback Music/Atlantic. Those songs have amassed millions of streams and opened the door to tours with Liz Cooper and Wallows. Recorded at Thunder Sound studios in rural Kentucky, Indiana meditates on the disparities between juvenile dreams and adult realities. Consequence of Sound praises his music as "vulnerable and empathetic, but balanced out with just the right amount of conviction," while Austin's KUTX says that he "sings with such contemplation, confidence, and ease that it's almost surprising to find he's only 21 years old." Briston Maroney will play Austin City Limits Festival this fall with more touring planned for later in the year.

Nashville-based singer-songwriter, Ron Pope, has been navigating a sea change as of late. In the immediate aftermath of the birth of his first child, before he’d found his footing in this extraordinary new reality, a jarring incident left him contemplating his own mortality. After completely scrapping early recording sessions for the upcoming album Bone Structure (TBA, 2020), Pope set out on a new path, crafting incredibly candid songs directed squarely at his newborn daughter. Some songs speak to her directly and muse on the experience of fatherhood, while others reflect on a personal experience that has a lesson or a moral. Pope's 2017 release, the critically-claimed "Work" drew comparisons to Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, while also refusing to put him squarely into one category. Uncompromising and relentless, Pope has evolved into one of the top grossing independent acts in the business while garnering a legion of devoted fans the world over. Taking the industry-road-less-traveled and holding fiercely to his independence has proven fruitful for Pope; to date, he has sold out shows on three continents and in more than 20 countries, sold over 2 million digital tracks, had over 350 million streams on Spotify, 825 million plays on Pandora, 150 million views on Youtube, and has more generally crushed every metric used to measure what is possible for independent artists.