Trouble’s Braids just released Live at Stone Cottage including intimate and lively versions of “Precipice” and “The Pines.” The former is a lighthearted song about living on the edge of mainstream society and striving to pursue one’s passions with integrity. The latter a more somber composition telling the story of being pulled between two types of live, one more safe and predictable and one more satisfying and liberated. The spare guitar work and vocal harmonies really draw the listener into the song’s heartfelt storytelling. Both songs come in the wake of the late June release of the Americana duo’s debut EP, The Big Tourist. The warmly rendered songs from the EP have an earnest energy mixed with a knack for creating mood that one doesn’t always associate with music associated with folk Americana. Trouble’s Braids consists of Oliver Franklin and Emily Pennington who got their starts in music in Seattle and Los Angeles respectively but now call Boulder home. The two new songs were recorded at Stone Cottage Studios in Boulder and highlight the project’s diverse musical instincts and style.
The Silver Snails has been percolating its new album Speed of Light for over a decade since the 2012 release of its debut album The Seven Melodies. The core of the group is husband-and-wife duo Lucas Ward and Elisa Fantini and fashions itself a “glam rock space pop family band.” Even a casual listen to the new album reveals great attention to songwriting detail, performance and production. It has a huge, uplifting, deeply melodic sound and in moments it may remind listeners of something Jeff Lynne and Trevor Horn had their hands in making. In fact, the group covers “Video Killed the Radio Star” by Horn’s New Wave band The Buggles (the video for the original song was the first to be broadcast on MTV) for Speed of Light including a music video made by the members of The Silver Snails. The couple’s three children Jasmine, Celeste and Elias also contribute to the project’s creative efforts including live performances. Long before The Silver Snails became a band Ward was a close friend of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith from whom Ward took some inspiration in his own musical endeavors as someone who writes and records his own songs with keen attention to craft and performance. The album is indeed like a glam rock affair but one that is just as informed by the playful, experimental and imaginative psychedelic rock of Flaming Lips with some sonic resonances with the more space rock end of ELO. Co-produced by Dylan Magierek, mixed by Peter Katis and Adam Selzer and mastered by Greg Calbi and Sterling Sound, its an album that sounds like something from a classic era of pop but with an immediacy that hooks you in with every song. Speed of Light was released on September 5, 2025 on streaming, digital download and CD.
Listen to our interview with Lucas Ward on Bandcamp and follow The Silver Snails at the links below.
Laveda formed as a dream pop band in Albany, New York in 2018. The core duo of Ali Genevich and Jake Brooks released two outstanding albums of deeply introspective, atmospheric and tender records with 2020’s What Happens After and 2023’s A Place You Grew Up In. As though the title of the latter was a prompt to evolve creatively Laveda relocated to New York City the same year and whether it was already happening then or more came together once in the big city the band evolved in a decidedly different sonic direction without losing its instincts for crafting memorable melodies and vivid, emotionally vibrant and immediately relatable lyrics. 2025’s Love, Darla marked a change in style for a more gritty, more angular, almost No Wave sound as though Genevich and Brooks had delved further into the Sonic Youth catalog and found their way to the likes of Live Skull and, perhaps unrelated, The Cleaners From Venus. The new album sounds like the work of people who made the move to pursue their art further and didn’t come out the other side jaded. Instead transformed and challenged to do something to reflect their own development as people and artists.
Listen to our interview with Genevich and Brooks on Bandcamp and follow Laveda at the links below.
Tuesday | 12.02 What:The Home Team: The Crucible of Life Tour w/Arrows in Action and Makari When: 6:30 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Seattle’s The Home Team is touring in the wake of the release of the deluxe edition of its 2024 album The Crucible of Life. The record is a combination of its post-hardcore roots, R&B and modern alt-pop with the kind of production and electronic elements one would imagine out of that melding of sounds and styles. Also on the bill is Arrows in Action who recently released their new album I Think I’ve Been Here Before (Nettwerk). Since forming in 2017 the group’s fusion of modern rock and pop songwriting with R&B vocals and electronic pop production has garnered a bit of a wide online following. But live the band’s energy and commanding performances are proving it’s more than a studio creation capable of delivering a more visceral version of the slick production of its recordings.
Death Possession, photo from Bandcamp
Thursday | 12.04 What:Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest: Denver pre-fest with Terror Corpse, Vimana and Death Possession When: 7 doors Where: Ratio Beerworks 2920 Larimer St. Why: Decibel Magazine’s Metal & Beer Fest has been pretty reliable for booking some of the most interesting bands in the realm of extreme metal since its inception. This pre-fest event includes performances from Texas-based blackened death metal group Terror Corpse, technical death metal/grindcore band Vimana and the ominous sounds of Denver-based death metal outfit Death Possession.
Story Of The Year, photo by Ryan Smith
Friday and Saturday | 12.05 and 12.06 What: Story Of The Year and Senses Fail w/Armor For Sleep When: 7 Where: The Summit Music Hall Why: Two of the better and more popular bands out of that post-hardcore and pop-punk crossover in the early 2000s are sharing the bill on this tour with Senses Fail and Story of the Year. The latter settled on the name in 2002 after forming in 1995 in St. Louis. It’s intricate yet hooky guitar riffs and emotionally charged vocals weaving between emo sensitivity and more distorted screaming meant Story of the Year was in the pocket of a popular style with younger fans of punk looking for something with more edge than the typical pop punk of the day. The band split for a couple of years in 2011 and reconvened in 2013. For this tour you may be able to hear some of the quartet’s forthcoming album A.R.S.O.N..
Blood Incantation, photo by Julian Weigand
Friday and Saturday | 12.05 and 12.06 What: Decibel Metal & Beer Festival Day 1 (12.05) Blood Incantation, Chat Pile, The Red Chord, Panopticon and Castrator, Day 2 (12.06) Acid Bath, Eyehategod, Deadguy, Primitive Man, Conan and Necrofier When: 6 (12.05) 5 (12.06) Where: Fillmore Auditorium Why: Decibel Magazine brings to Denver a generous sampling of the best of current extreme metal for a two day festival. Attendees can opt to buy a ticket that includes getting in on the beer varieties being showcased at the event or a mere “Metal Only” pass for just the music. The first night is headlined by Denver-based psychedelic, progressive death metal band Blood Incantation and one might argue also the political noise rock legends Chat Pile. The second night is indisputably headlined by influential and foundational sludge metal group Acid Bath who are reuniting for a handful of shows this year. Also on that night earlier on is Denver’s death grind trio Primitive Man who recently released their latest sprawling epic of an album Observance with its even more pointed and withering commentary on a corrupt and self-destructive society and economic order and even their own part in its continuance.
Primitive Man, photo by Vanessa ValadezWet Leg, photo by Alice Backham
Sunday | 12.07 What:Wet Leg w/Capture This and Bob Moses (club set) When: 5 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Wet Leg is the scrappy post-punk/pop band from the Isle of Wight that started garnering a bit of a cult following after the release of its debut single “Chaise Longue” in 2021 followed by the full-length including that song in 2022. The song and the band’s general presentation is frank in its depiction of sexuality but with a wit and charm and undeniable hooks that keep you coming back to listen. The full length was brimming with tales of everyday life delivered with the spirited sass that you would hope would inform the rest of the songs. The group released its sophomore record Moisturizer in 2025 and its own eclectic set of songs delivered on the promise of the debut including lead single “Catch These Fists” about not defaulting to being polite when you get harassed in public places.
House of Harm, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 12.09 What: House of Harm w/Past Self and killyouclub DJs When: 8 Where: The Crypt Why: House of Harm is a post-punk band from Boston whose sparkling melodies and melancholic vocals could be like any other band out of recent darkwave. But there seems to be a bit more emotional urgency in the singing and keen attention to the electronic end of the soundscapes that drive the music. Past Self is a darkwave/death rock band from Las Vegas with leanings toward more ethereal dream pop.
Belly, photo from the band’s Facebook
Friday | 12.12 What:Belly 30th Anniversary of King – 2 sets one night When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Belly Formed in 1991 shortly after Tanya Donelly left influential post-punk band Throwing Muses. She had spent a brief stint in the early version of The Breeders but after 1992 Belly became the singer/guitarist’s main creative focus and the 1993 release of the group’s debut album Star landed the music on regular rotation on MTV during that first great wave of alternative rock. Founding bassist, and former Throwing Muses member, Fred Abong left the outfit a few months after the release of the record to be replaced by Gail Greenwood (who would go on to play in L7 and recently Gang of Four). The new lineup would record the follow up album, 1995’s King. At the time grunge was, in face, king, and the jangle-y, atmospheric power pop of the record meant it didn’t perform as well commercially as its predecessor but artistically it was a step forward into interesting directions. Belly gets the chance to revisit those songs live with you if you show up and there’s a better than average chance that some material from the first record and 2018 album Dove will end up on one of the two sets.
Flutter, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 12.13 What:Lawsuit Models, Flutter, Black Dots, State Drugs When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Lawsuit Models is the kind of modern punk band that clearly has roots in 90s and early 2000s pop punk but didn’t get stuck completely in that sound. But preserved is the best of that music and its relatable yearnings and an ability to take topical cultural references and make them into statements of more enduring human experience and struggle. The rest of this bill is also interesting because Flutter is a great power pop band who seem to have translated an older sound and sensibility into a modern context with a charismatic live show. Black Dots are a veteran punk act from Denver that has also made a transition into a more modern mix of sounds from a pop punk adjacent early sensibility to something more seemingly informed by a touch of Americana and more straight ahead rock. State Drugs come from that stand of punk that as into power pop of the late 80s and early 90s like they listened to the cooler end of The Goo Goo Dolls, Gin Blossoms and Soul Asylum and decided the songcraft in those bands and a knack for a melodic hook and earnest emotional expression was perfectly fine a well of inspiration as any other.
Jorma Kaukonen, photo by Vernon Webb
Saturday | 12.13 What: Jorma Kaukonen When: 7 Where: Paramount Theatre Why: Jorma Kaukonen was one of the members of the classic lineup of Jefferson Airplane. The latter helped define the San Francisco Sound of the late 60s and the early psychedelic rock of the era. Kaukonen came into the group as a blues guitarist who had earlier played a gig with Janis Joplin before either came to anything resembling prominence. The Airplane had hits like “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” and its 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow is a classic of the 60s with songwriting that endures because it was unlike much of anything else in its then realm of rock music. Kaukonen’s instrumental “Embryonic Journey” and its elegantly intricate guitar work brought more than a touch of experimental folk to one of the great psychedelic rock albums of all time. Later in the 60s Kaukonen and some of his bandmates in the Airplane formed Hot Tuna, a group that continues to this day. Somewhere between a psychedelic country blues band and free improvisation outfit, Hot Tuna was a little difficult to pigeonhole though today would be considered on the higher end of the jam band spectrum. Kaukonen has also had an acclaimed solo career in which he can no more easily be classified but in which his energetic and free-flowing finger style guitar and seemingly endless ability to find ways for the guitar to express great feeling with nuance remains. For this tour, possibly the musician’s last on a wide scale at age 84 (soon 85 on December 23) Kaukonen will be joined on stage by heavy hitters R. Carlos Nakai & Will Clipman, David Hidalgo, Jack Casady, Justin Guip, and Ross Garren.
Silver West, photo by Tom Murphy
Tuesday | 12.16 What: Silver West (album release and Hali’s birthday) w/Marty Nation and Whitless When: 7:30 Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room Why: Silver West will release her debut album Ballads of a Heartbroken Hunter at this show. The songwriter/musician is relatively new to performance but has been around music her whole life and as a sound person at various clubs and other live show situations she’s certainly been witness to her fair share of music stories as well as firsthand experience with what works best in a live music format. How much of that shaped her songwriting, hard to say, but surely in the recording there will be an uncommon level of attention to detail and production. But if you’ve seen Silver West there is a compelling vulnerability to her particular style of cosmic Americana that is refreshingly raw and thoughtful.
Takipnik, photo from Bandcamp
Thursday | 12.18 What:Takipnik, Lost Relics, Chew Thru and Sungrave When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Takipnik is a Denver-based heavy band that formed in 2019 and recently released its third album Awakened. The record reveals the band has a keen ear for ethereal atmospheric elements mixed in with those more distorted and raging. Think something like Agalloch and Russian Circles and you have an idea what to expect. Lost Relics bridges the gap between extreme metal and noise rock. Some of its members came out of the more interesting end of the Denver stoner rock scene of the 2000s and 2010s and found a way to sharpen the sound some without losing the ability to maintain a solid groove and thus hooks. Chew Thru has more roots in post-hardcore but still has the aggression and knack for a touch of melody that one might expect from a band with influences in 1980s thrash. Sungrave is in the metal universe as well but its sound clearly has some origins in psychedelic rock and the kind of post-metal one heard in the various incarnations of Isis and Neurosis. In moments the shoegaze fusion has Sungrave sounding more like the majestic pastoral side of Jesu.
Cop Killer, photo from Bandcamp
Friday | 12.19 What: Cheap Perfume, Arson Charge, Gunk! and Cop Killer When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Arguably the punk show of the month headlined by feminist/political punk band Cheap Perfume from Colorado Springs. Its latest album Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask. really does pushes its critique of society and capitalism to new heights and connects the dots in many realms of human life in the intersectional way that the current moment requires. Arson Charge includes former members of Native Daughters, Chieftain and Love Me Destroyer and fronted by SPELLS singer Ben Roy. It’s thrashcore and Roy takes on a different vocal style than you’d expect from him and it’s potent stuff tackling issues related to deeply personal experiences with abuse and the legacy of that for one’s own life in ways that the adult mind is beginning to grapple with. Gunk! Is a like-minded hardcore band from the Springs with a raw, caustic sound. Cop Killer recently released its self-titled EP and it is five tracks of the kind of aggressive hardcore you’d hope with the verbal content you’d hope was there including an updated rework of the Body Count classic.
Salads and Sunbeams, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 12.20 What:Salads and Sunbeams and Gadget Cats When: 8 Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room Why: Salads and Sunbeams are one of the premier Denver-based indiepop bands. Coming out of noteworthy previous bands Fingers of the Sun and The Pseudo Dates (among others), the band’s songs are literary and steeped in 60s and 70s psychedelic pop but informed by modern experiences in the current socio-economic context. Its songs are tonally colorful and heartfelt and filled with creative storytelling. Gadget Cats are a grunge pop group from Fort Collins whose songs released so far seem to reflect some inspiration from 90s underground punk and indiepop.
Pons, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 12.20 What:Pons w/Bitchflower and Plastik Mystik When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Pons is a mutant art punk/neo-No Wave noise rock band from Brooklyn, New York that incorporates classical instruments used in unorthodox ways. Often its songwriting sounds like it’s been influenced by experimental electronic music and left field jazz with splintered, fragmented tempos and imploded structure. Bitch Flower from Fort Collins sounds like it was inspired equally by the most jagged and confrontational punk and dark psychedelic rock like the Stooges and its own blues roots. Plastik Mystic is sort of a strange blend of psychedelic garage rock and something like moody punkers Wipers.
DJ boyhollow aka Michael Trundle of Lipgloss in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy
Wednesday | 12.31 What: A Lipgloss New Years Eve When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Lipgloss has been held at various venues since starting as the prominent indie DJ/dance night in Denver and one of if not the longest running such nights in the country. Currently helmed by longtime DJ Michael Trundle aka boyollow, the night is being held perhaps for the first time at arguably the best small club in Denver, the Hi-Dive. Expect indie hits from the 90s, 2000s, 2010s and now with some sprinkling in of 80s and maybe even 70s music that inspired the music that launched the event.
Colfax Speed Queen, photo from Bandcamp
Wednesday | 12.31 What:Colfax Speed Queen, Jesus Christ Taxi Driver and Glueman When: 8 Where: Lost Lake Why: If a night of high energy punk is how you want to spend your New Year’s Eve this is the best bet. Colfax Speed Queen is really a psychedelic garage rock band that has made a name for itself in Denver and beyond. But its charismatic and charged performances propel its whole thing into the realm of punk. Jesus Christ Taxi Driver sounds like it came out of the American southeast with its blues-infused rock and roll. But its attitude is definitely adjacent to the irreverent spirit of punk and its live shows are played with a palpable intensity. Glueman these days sounds like its members were inspired by strands of the gloriously frayed and ferocious punk from Memphis, Tennessee from the 80s to now. Just raw and unmindful of a need for clean tonal lines and tapping into some wild energy. If you’re Oblivions you’ll probably be into Glueman.
Broken Record is a Denver-based band that formed after singer/guitarist Lauren Beecher and bassist Corey Fruin moved to the Mile High City from Connecticut in 2017. Both had roots in the underground and DIY scene in and around New Haven and in forming Broken Record around some material Beecher had been working on what emerged was music that reflected the influence of punk and hardcore, certainly in the ethos of the group, as well as the atmospheric melodic qualities of The Cure. If you caught the band early on you might be excused to hearing in the music a touch of Hüsker Dü’s emotionally rich and fierce yet gentle aesthetic. The fledgling outfit found a home in the local hardcore scene and played early shows with the likes of then relatively newly founded bands like Destiny Bond and Ukko’s Hammer. And yet Broken Record never seemed out of place even though the catharsis of its music wasn’t formed from the same set of sounds but the emotional core of the songwriting shared a similar vulnerability and intelligence in expressing emotion with a keen sensitivity in the language of emotionally charged rock music.
The quartet released its debut full-length I Died Laughing on April 24, 2020 and of course could not tour around the record due to the global pandemic. But on that album one hears the knack for melodic jangle and shimmer embedded into earnestly energetic hooks with the expert pacing and Beecher’s warmly thoughtful vocals that strike the perfect emotional coloring for songs that are often poignantly melancholic and always deeply observant. For the 2023 album Nothing Moves Me the songwriting seemed to experiment further with tone and style incorporating delicately minimal guitar leads and triumphant choruses while seeming to be able to mine the more interesting ends of adolescent angst as a lens by which to understand the sometimes disillusioning aspects of adulthood. Like an entire record of what your teenage self might have to say about your current adult self. The 2025 album Routine (via the band’s own imprint Power Goth Recordings) and its cover of suburban American would-be normalcy takes the band’s established themes further to seemingly comment with great insight into the compromises and perils of navigating life in late capitalism and how that can cast a pall over your life if you’re not equipped to find some meaning in a socioeconomic environment seemingly designed to erode your joy and ability to live a full and dignified life. But also on the album the band seems to find the threads of psychic resistance to it all in creative acts and writing songs that feel like a shaking off of the gloom with music that feels like an expression of basic human solidarity.
Listen to our interview with Lauren Beecher and Corey Fruin on Bandcamp and follow Broken Record at the links below. The band is celebrating the release of Routine with a show at The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room on Saturday, November 15, 2025 with Precocious Neophyte and Safekeeper, doors 8 p.m., show 9 p.m.
Saturday | 11.01 What: Moon Pussy w/Old Deer When: 3 Where: Mutiny Information Cafe Why: This is your last chance of 2025 to see the noise rock juggernaut trio Moon Pussy. Whereas many noise rock bands are a permutation of post-hardcore and sludge metal, Moon Pussy is genuinely strange and both humorous and ferocious which is not a combination one sees often enough. Vocalist Crissy Cuellar’s on stage banter and absurdist (in the delivery) jokes does little to mask how smart the band’s music is or its inherent sophistication of concept and execution. Old Deer brings the doom to posthardcore in its own weighty style of noise rock.
Native Daughters, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 11.01 What:Native Daughters, Abrams and BleakHeart When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Instrumental, heavy noise core outfit Native Daughters doesn’t play out often these days and usually at bigger venues. But its epic, cinematic sprawl of post-rock post-metal has evolved to a degree of highly expressive and vivid sonic storytelling without words. Abrams is the perfect amalgamation of shoegaze and atmospheric post-hardcore like Torche and Cave-In. Fantastic, melodic harmonies and transporting guitar streams in heavy momentum and luminously gritty leads. BleakHeart will likely be in its new manifestation but probably still have the gorgeously dark and orchestral fusion of dream pop and heavy post-rock.
Ada Lea, photo from Bandcamp
Sunday | 11.02 What:Ada Lea w/Porlolo and Autumnal When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Ada Lea released her third album when i paint my masterpiece in August 2025 and further established her status as a modern master of finger picking style with expressive and beautifully intricate guitar work paired with her delicate yet assured vocals. She is currently signed to Saddle Creek Records which is fitting since an act to which she might be favorably compared is Azure Ray. Porlolo is the indie/acoustic band from Denver whose own aesthetic is adjacent to that of the headliner but Porlolo has been around considerably longer as a live act. Erin Roberts’ existential and poignant lyrics and occasionally dryly humorous stage banter with commanding vocals is what has keep the project a local favorite. Fort Collins’ Autumnal comes out of the indie folk corner of the Colorado music universe but its songs will assuredly appeal to those with a taste for pastoral slowcore and the tenderest of indiepop.
Ryan Davis, photo by Christina Casillo
What: Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band w/Caspar Milquetoast When: 7 Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Acclaimed songwriter Ryan Davis and his band released one of the secretly great albums of 2025 with Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band “New Threats from the Soul.” On the surface it’s like some indie Americana thing but not long into the first song it becomes apparent that what you’re hearing is weirder and more creative but not in expected ways. It has the dapple lap steel flourishes enhancing the melodies like you’d expect from a solid country record but there are synths in the mix and tape loops so that at times things seem otherworldly and unpredictable but in the pocket of strong songwriting. It’s a fascinating effect. Plus Will Oldham contributes vocals to the album so you know it’s definitely coming from a different kind of place. The lyrics are also like something out of a Cormac McCarthy novel but sung like an artist out of the whole Laurel Canyon scene of the early 1970s.
they are gutting a body of water, photo by Kasey Agosto
Tuesday | 11.04 What:they are gutting a body of water w/Fib When: 7 Where: Marquis Theater Why: For several years Philadelphia’s they are gutting a body of water has been stirring noise and grime into drifty, warping shoegaze to create something like the equivalent of a lo-fi cassette only release by one of those weird late 2000s bands that would have belonged on Siltbreeze. Like Times New Viking or Eat Skull. But if those bands were more into Slint and Planning For Burial. Crush yet transcendent guitar tone, left field rhythmic structures or none at all and just stretches of raw sound that drops into fragmented melodies like these people listened to a lot of Canadian band Women coming up as well. The group’s new album LOTTO pushes the songwriting into even more unpredictable territory.
Martin Dupont, photo from Bandcamp
Wednesday | 11.05 What: Martin DuPont w/Church Fire and French Kettle Station When: 7 Where: HQ Why: After a nearly 25 year hiatus, French coldwave/New Wave band Martin Dupont re-emerged as a live project in 2023 and a new album of re-recordings of older songs titled Kintsugi. In 2025 a record of new material dropped called You Smile When It Hurts establishing that the members of the group were capable of crafting quality resonant songs on part with its acclaimed earlier material. Church Fire is Denver’s premiere industrial dance pop group. The impassioned performance style of the band always made it a standout but with expanded production as a trio and a dynamic light show Church Fire brings a large stage show visual impact to any venue. French Kettle Station is a one-man New Age dance project with no small amount of visceral energy of his own even when he’s triggering prepared electronic passages or performing live synth.
Packaging, photo by Andy Thomas
Thursday | 11.06 What: Packaging w/Barbara, Paw Paw and DJ Ryan Wong When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Packaging is the new group formed between Daniel Lyon of Spirit Award and Daniel “Connor” Birch of Flaural. Their debut, self-titled album dropped October 10 and no surprise, perhaps, its lush and enveloping psychedelic pop benefits from the contributions of multiple artists out of the wider indie rock realm including Luke Temple (Here We Go Magic), Ash Reiter (Sugar Candy Mountain), James Barone (Beach House), Andreas Wild (Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats), Curt Kiser (Carriers) and Andy Rauworth (Gauntlet Hair). Its luminous melodies and melancholic urgency helps to set the music apart from yet another post-2010s psychedelia project. Its songs have emotional heft and the music is entrancing and commanding.
Death to All, photo courtesy the artists
Friday | 11.07 What:Death to All playing Spiritual Healing and Symbolic w/Gorguts and Phobophilic When: 6 Where: The Gothic Theatre Why: Death to All features former members of foundational extreme metal band Death including Gene Hoglan, Steve DiGiorgio and Bobby Koelble as well as former Cynic member Max Phelps on guitar and vocals. This tour the assembled band will perform the classic albums Spiritual Healing (1990) and Symbolic (1995), both albums that represented a progression of the band in new directions that would shape where technical death metal of the future worth listening to would go. Anyone that has caught the Death to All tours in recent years can attest to how legit the presentation and musicianship has been with some of the greatest heavy music of all time getting a live performance treatment that honors the legacy of founder Chuck Schuldiner’s vision with some of the only musicians that can make it happen.
Supreme Joy, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 11.07 What:Hi-Dive 22 Year Anniversary Night 1: Nuclear Daisies, Cleaner, American Culture and Supreme Joy When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Hi-Dive has arguably emerged as the premiere small club in Denver with solid bookings every week across a fairly broad spectrum of genres, styles and subscenes. Pick any week and there is at least one show that’s worth going to but probably really a few. It has had some of the best sound in a room of its size with a skilled sound crew. This two night celebration of Hi-Dive begins with sets from garage-psych giants Cleaner, shoegaze/indie pop legends American Culture, left-field post-punk/post-garage phenoms and headlined by noisy shoegaze dance dream pop group Nuclear Daisies.
Daniel Donato, photo by Jason Stoltzfus
Friday and Saturday | 11.07 and 11.08 What: Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country Tour w/The Fretliners When: 7 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Daniel Donato started developing ideas for his version of “cosmic country” while playing in bands around Nashville and coming up with a fusion of country, rock and roll, the free associating improv he heard in the Grateful Dead and folk psychedelia. Think a sound and vibe more like a honky tonk end of Gram Parsons and you’ll have an idea what you’re in for. The live shows are imbued with a spirited creativity in the performance and inspired free flowing improvisation that goes beyond where most bands operating in musically adjacent territory seem to be able to conjure. The band is currently touring in support of its 2025 album Horizons.
Melodies Never Lie, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 11.08 What:Melodies Never Lie, Salads and Sunbeams, Mouth Cathedral at Squirm Gallery, benefit for Jeanette Vizguerra When: 7 Where: Squirm Gallery Why: Jeannette Vizguerra was detained by ICE on 3/17/25 with the aim of deporting the well-known immigration activist and remains in custody at the ICE detention center in Aurora. Her case received some press attention and despite the charges against her, Vizguerra’s situation parallels that of many others who are struggling with a broken and now very punitive system of immigration in the USA particularly with the involvement of the militarized and extremely politicized ICE organization which is an extension of the failed and catastrophic “War on Terror” that is now being used to persecute thousands in America and is essentially a private army of the most corrupt president in US history employed to terrorize people living in America. So this show is a benefit for one of the most visible people targeted by ICE and will hopefully help to create a ripple effect of resistance to the wave of fascism and tyranny plaguing not just America but the world. For more information helping Vizguerra click on the link in the band names. Melodies Never Lie is the ambient indie pop shoegaze solo project of Isaac Rivera whose roots in Denver underground pop, experimental rock and avant-electro goes back two decades. Salads and Sunbeams is the finely honed psychedelic indiepop group from Denver whose members came up in the DIY world and the underground scene developing skills and aesthetics that incorporate classic songwriting methods with modern sensibilities. Mouth Cathedral creates gorgeously transporting, ethereal dream pop.
Palehorse/Palerider in 2017, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 11.08 What: Hi-Dive 22 Year Anniversary Night 2: Glacial Tomb, Palehorse/Palerider, Mournful Ruin and Eagle Wing When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: This second night of the Hi-Dive anniversary celebration features music on the more heavy side. Glacial Tomb is a long-running death metal doom trio from Denver. Palehorse/Palerider makes a cinematic, unclassifiable heavy music that blends psychedelic, dark Americana and tribal post-punk. Mournful Ruin is more on the grindcore-influenced end of sludgy death metal. Eaglewing is a sort of throwback to early New Wave of British Heavy Metal sound akin to Judas Priest in moments and includes Yancy Green formerly of Aberrent and now of Roskopp.
Steven Lee Lawson, photo courtesy the artist
Saturday | 11.08 What: All Through the Night and Steven Lee Lawson When: 3 Where: Mutiny Information Cafe Why: All Through the Night is an Americana band that sounds like it makes music for a Jim Jarmusch film set in the highways and byways of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming meaning moody, emotionally immediate and drawing from eclectic roots rather than a more traditional country or rock and roll base. Steven Lee Lawson is a brilliant songwriter, lyricist and multi-instrumentalist whose music is also tending toward an Americana sensibility but he clearly draws inspiration from the likes of Harry Nilsson and 60s psychedelia.
Ax and the Hatchetmen, photo courtesy the artists
Saturday | 11.08 What:Ax and The Hatchetmen w/Kids That Fly When: 7 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Chicago-based Ax and The Hatchetmen haven’t been around long enough to have played the legendary Chicago venue Lounge Ax but its brand of melodic indie rock with elements of jangle-y psychedelia wouldn’t have been out of place had the club endured through to today. Though the band has been around since 2018 its debut album So Much to Tell You debuted on October 24 via Arista Records. But the group has had EPs and singles along the way and the whole early pandemic stretched everyone’s timelines a bit so this band had time to incubate and hone its songwriting. The new record showcases how the band is able to orchestrate diverse influences into a sound that feels like a blend of power pop, turn of the century New York post-punk, soul and garage rock.
Sunday | 11.09 What: Emergence w/Voicecoil and Absynthe of Faith When: 8 Where: Club 404 Why: Emergence was one of the prominent EBM/industrial bands of the 2000s that went on hiatus toward the end of that decade. The band commanded large audiences at the time in Denver and toured nationally before splitting around 2005. In 2024 the core of the group with new collaborators reconvened to re-start Emergence with a new sound palette.
Agriculture, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 11.11 What: Agriculture w/Rhododendron and Clarion Void When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Agriculture is the black metal band from Los Angeles whose sound struck a chord among fans of noise rock for its forays into wild sonic strangeness in its songs. The group’s new record The Spiritual Sound isn’t short on classic thrash style riffs and melodic breaks yet still feral rawness in the vocals and the erupting and imploding song dynamics and escalating sense of surreal hysteria. Agriculture is currently touring in support of its excellent new album The Spiritual Sound. Presumably Rhododendron is the experimental prog noise thrash band from Portland, Oregon and Clarion Void the death/blackened doom/sludge metal band from Colorado Springs.
Boris, photo by Yoshihiro Mori
Thursday | 11.13 What: Boris w/Cloakroom When: 7 Where: The Gothic Theatre Why: Boris is celebrating the 20 year anniversary of the release of its 2005 album Pink. The sprawling epic of a record was and still is a peak for the group in its complete disregard for needing to fit in with being a metal band, a shoegaze group, a heavy psych blues outfit, a noise project or post-rock. The sounds have grit and edge while simultaneously ethereal and uplifting and dense with tone and texture that swims and hurtles in often unpredictable directions. Pink sounds like it could have come out in the late 70s, the early 90s or in any of the most recent two decades and still come off as something mind-altering in its maximalist sonics. Opening is the Indiana-based heavy shoegaze band Cloakroom whose 2025 album The Last Leg of the Human Table proved it was capable of not only searing and transporting psychedelia but also pop hooks worthy of the best indie rock bands. Something about Cloakroom’s music feels like it’s coming from a near future science fiction universe where the world is both in deep civilizational decay and an underground cultural renaissance transmitting the kind of music we want to hear.
King Princess, photo by Connor Cunningham
Thursday | 11.13 What:King Princess w/spill tab When: 7 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: King Princess has built a body of work that uses lush production and introspective lyrics to explore the nuances of personal psychology, social dynamics and relationships with creativity and sensitivity. The latest album Girl Violence and its masterful use of saturated synths, tonal processing and layers of atmospheric noise help to place the singer’s soulful vocals in settings that immerse the listener in the emotional moment of the song. It’s a bit of a journey of a record with contributions from Joe Talbot of IDLES fame.
Underworld, photo courtesy Magnum PR
Friday | 11.14 What: Underworld When: 7 Where: The Fillmore Auditorium Why: With the 1994 release of its landmark album Dubnobasswithmyheadman, Underworld helped to usher in an era of music fusing progressive house, techno, ambient, downtempo and psychedelic electronic music that proved influential on at least a generation of like-minded artists. The record is structured to be a little like experiencing the music at a rave with expert pacing and layers of rhythm and atmosphere to craft a sustained mood of sensuous transcendence. The duo’s latest album Strawberry Hotel (2024) is decidedly less dark and brooding than the aforementioned but still brimming with mysterious moods and the completely enveloping production one would hope to get from masters of the art.
Friday | 11.14 What: Kill You Club 8 year anniversary w/Nuxx, Puerta Negra, Lazer Bullet and Severed Reality When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Kill You Club has been bringing some of the most interesting and cutting edge darkwave/Goth-adjacent bands to Denver for several years now. The kinds of artists the more traditional Goth scene seems to bypass and be unaware exists until a half decade or more later. Possibly because Brian Castillo has his finger on the pulse of what’s cool in that realm of music whether the more electronic end or the post-punk acts that are pushing the boundaries of what that music has been. Headlining this night is the edgy, synthwave punk/industrial trip hop artist Nuxx.
Felly, photo by Olof Grind
Friday | 11.14 What:Felly w/Breakup Shoes and Lady Denim When: 7 Where: Fox Theatre Why: Felly released his latest album Ambroxyde in June further solidifying his reputation as an artist who can take the gentle and delicate and turn it into something feels like it has some emotional substance even as his vocals are often bordering on the ethereal. The title track sounds like it coalesced out of the surrounding weather and that’s a feeling you get from the new album. It’s like something that feels instantly comfortable yet able to build in energy and enthusiasm without losing a sense of intimacy. It makes the music impossible to simply dismiss as another indie folk thing as the songwriting itself is more lush and sophisticated than appears on the surface.
Suzanne Ciani in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 11.15 What: Suzanne Ciani w/Clarice Jensen When: 7 Where: Central Presbyterian Church Why: Suzanne Ciani is an innovator in synthesizer music composition with an influential career spanning more than fifty years. Her work, musical and sound effects, has been featured on soundtracks, television and in a pinball machine game called Xenon. In the 1980s her compositions became associated with new age music and by extension modern ambient. Ciani in recent years seems to have expanded her live performance itinerary and her 2023 appearance at this same venue showcased her gift for imaginative soundscaping on a large format with an inherent sense of play in the performance and songcraft.
Broken Record, photo by Chris Carraway
Saturday | 11.15 What:Broken Record album release w/Precocious Neophyte and Safekeeper When: 8 Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room Why: Broken Record is a Denver-based band that formed after singer/guitarist Lauren Beecher and bassist Corey Fruin moved to the Mile High City from Connecticut in 2017. Both had roots in the underground and DIY scene in and around New Haven and in forming Broken Record around some material Beecher had been working on what emerged was music that reflected the influence of punk and hardcore, certainly in the ethos of the group, as well as the atmospheric melodic qualities of The Cure. If you caught the band early on you might be excused to hearing in the music a touch of Hüsker Dü’s emotionally rich and fierce yet gentle aesthetic. The fledgling outfit found a home in the local hardcore scene and played early shows with the likes of then relatively newly founded bands like Destiny Bond and Ukko’s Hammer. And yet Broken Record never seemed out of place even though the catharsis of its music wasn’t formed from the same set of sounds but the emotional core of the songwriting shared a similar vulnerability and intelligence in expressing emotion with a keen sensitivity in the language of emotionally charged rock music.
The quartet released its debut full-length I Died Laughing on April 24, 2020 and of course could not tour around the record due to the global pandemic. But on that album one hears the knack for melodic jangle and shimmer embedded into earnestly energetic hooks with the expert pacing and Beecher’s warmly thoughtful vocals that strike the perfect emotional coloring for songs that are often poignantly melancholic and always deeply observant. For the 2023 album Nothing Moves Me the songwriting seemed to experiment further with tone and style incorporating delicately minimal guitar leads and triumphant choruses while seeming to be able to mine the more interesting ends of adolescent angst as a lens by which to understand the sometimes disillusioning aspects of adulthood. Like an entire record of what your teenage self might have to say about your current adult self. The 2025 album Routine and its cover of suburban American would-be normalcy takes the band’s established themes further to seemingly comment with great insight into the compromises and perils of navigating life in late capitalism and how that can cast a pall over your life if you’re not equipped to find some meaning in a socioeconomic environment seemingly designed to erode your joy and ability to live a full and dignified life. But also on the album the band seems to find the threads of psychic resistance to it all in creative acts and writing songs that feel like a shaking off of the gloom with music that feels like an expression of basic human solidarity.
The Green Typewriters, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 11.15 What: The Green Typewriters, Mr. Pacman and Pythian Whispers When: 7 Where: Feldman Mortuary Why: A rare show at a mortuary in Denver with psychedelic, experimental indie pop group The Green Typewriters. The band’s songs seem to stem from philosophical concepts as projected through the lens of analog human experience and emotions. Mr. Pacman is visionary blend of synthwave and punk with performance costumes like video game characters. Pythian Whispers is a psychedelic ambient cinematic noise prog band.
Saturday | 11.15 What:Cap’N Jazz w/Rainer Maria When: 7 Where: The Summit Music Hall Why: Cap’N Jazz only released one full-length album, 1995’s Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards in the Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We’ve Slipped On, and Egg Shells We’ve Tippy Toed Over – often called Shmap’n Shmazz. But that record proved to be a template for a realm of math rock, emo and indie rock in all its messy and frenetic glory and its core of earnest emotions seemingly unleashed at once across twelve songs in thirty-one minutes, ten seconds. It sure wasn’t for everyone because those more into pristine arrangements and established, classic pop/rock songwriting structure and sounds probably found it just completely amateurish—which is an essential part of its appeal for others. When the group split in 1995 its members went on to groups like The Promise Ring, American Football, Joan of Arc and Make Believe. Cap’N Jazz has reunited a few times since it first broke up but this is its first wider tour since the 90s and along for this journey is Rainer Maria whose own poetic emo/space rock sound seems to resonate with the emo and shoegaze fusion that has been bubbling in the past several years.
Brighde Chaimbeul, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 11.18 What: Brighde Chaimbeul When: 8 Where: The Bug Theatre Why: Brighde Chaimbeul is a Scottish musician who grew up in a musical family and herself learned fiddle and piano before setting out to play the smallpipes and bagpipe for which she is perhaps most well-known these days. She has worked with experimental pop artist Caroline Polacek and composer Colin Stetson and she recently released her latest album Sunwise. It is a rousing journey of a record that establishes a strong mood with drone and folk minimalism. It helps to expand the aesthetics of ambient with a profound sense of place through unconventional instrumentation for a sound one immediately associates with that broad genre of musical experience. It has a folkloric feel like the sense one gets when watching the 1970s films of John Boorman. It’s a deep record and one whose songs performed live are sure to mesmerize in this rare performance at one of Denver’s premier venues for the avant-garde as presented by Creative Music Works.
PORTUGAL. THE MAN, photo by Nathan Perkel
Tuesday and Wednesday | 11.18 and 11.19 What: PORTUGAL. THE MAN w/Ya Tseen When: 7 both nights Where: Fox Theatre (11.18) and Mission Ballroom (11.19) Why: PORTUGAL. THE MAN has offered plenty of left field indie/psychedelic/hard rock/punk over the years with a body of work that is immediately identifiable if not so easy to pigeonhole into a simple marketing category. In 2025 the band has released one of its albums in its 21 years with Shish. The record is an endearing and at turns entrancingly melodic and harrowingly intense tribute the band’s home state of Alaska and the search for meaning not just in an edge of the world place like Alaska but in the tentative state of the world in general perhaps as embodied in the challenges of living in a place that is often so isolated and laden with snow. Jack London would certainly recognize what PORTUGAL. THE MAN is putting out there on Shish.
The Beths, photo by Frances Carter
Wednesday | 11.19 What: The Beths w/Phoebe Rings When: 7 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: The Beths are an acclaimed power pop band with a noteworthy career offering memorable songs often informed by a euphoric sense of joy in the performance even when the subject matter waxes heavy. But there’s something different about where the music is coming from partly because the group hails Auckland, New Zealand and its members have backgrounds in jazz. So the intricacy and attention to the delicacy of the performances comes off as natural and confident and fans of Kiwi rock in general and C86-era indiepop will immediately connect with its music. The band is currently touring behind its new album Straight Line Was a Lie which is rich with heartfelt lyrics, unconventional hooks and a keen ear for small sonic details that make the songs linger with you.
Diles Que No Me Maten, photo by Tom Murphy
Wednesday | 11.19 What: Diles Que No Me Maten, Pink Lady Monster and Sunswept When: 7 Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room Why: Diles Que No Me Maten from Mexico City is a band that on the surface is an odd psychedelic rock band with roots in Krautrock. But a closer listen and witnessing a live performance reveals the group seems to be coming from a background/interests in No Wave, experimental poetry and the more odd post-punk of The Fall with vocals that are part singing and part spoken word. So a good fit with Denver No Wave funk poetry weirdos Pink Lady Monster and the avant-folk psychedelia of Sunswept.
Juliet Mission in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 11.28 What:Juliet Mission, In A Darkened Room and Redwing Blackbird When: 8 Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room Why: Juliet Mission is the secretly great shoegaze/alternative rock band from Denver with one of its bonafide guitar heroes Doug Seaman who among other projects was and still is in influential alternative rock band Sympathy F. Tony Morales from that group is also in Juliet Mission and its exquisite soundscapes and emotionally expansive songs are rooted in Denver’s long tradition of moody, atmospheric rock partly in helping to establish that sound inspired by late nights and the former sprawl of urban decay inviting the imagination to project one’s dreams upon forgotten and neglected spaces. Redwing Blackbird is a darkwave band more in the vein of The Cure with the sparkling guitar jangle and mastery of melodic tone.
Malkasian, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 11.29 What: Malkasian – Heavy Blues album release, Riff Dealer and A Strange Happening When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Malkasian released its latest album Heavy Blues on October 22, 2025 but you can get a copy of the vinyl at this show. The band could be described as heavy, psychedelic blues rock but it is weirder than that simple designation suggests. The vibe with its references to the occult and, um, “Long Pig,” suggest that the title of its previous album Macabre wasn’t just a throwaway descriptor. The mood is reminiscent of the 1989, spooky debut album by stoner rock pioneers Masters of Reality. A Strange Happening must be friends of someone in one of the other bands but even if not its own ambitious alternative pop songwriting and high concept storytelling in an Neil Young-esque gone indie rock vein is strong recommendation in itself.
Ches Smith’s Clone Row, photo courtesy the artists
Ches Smith is a drummer, percussionist and composer originally from California and now based out of New York. His career as a musician has been varied and acclaimed including playing on albums with and playing with the likes of John Zorn, Mr. Bungle, Xiu Xiu, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros Terry Riley, Marc Ribot (as a member of Ceramic Dog), Secret Chiefs 3, Nels Cline and Dave Holland. Smith’s mastery of technique is not divorced from a creativity in crafting rhythms to whatever musical style and mode or mood he finds himself contributing to or writing himself with his various collaborators. In 2025 Ches Smith offered his latest opus, Clone Row which includes performances from avant-garde guitar legend Mary Halvorson, jazz luminary Liberty Ellman and multidisciplinary sound artist Nick Dunston. It’s an album of music that moves with imaginative flow of layered rhythms and tones like if one of those more gifted 2000s math rock bands like Hella and Battles were more into fusion and free jazz. Although instrumental the songs speak musically with a cinematic quality.
Ches Smith’s quartet for Clone Row is currently touring the USA with a stop at The Federal Theatre in Denver on Wednesday, October 15. Listen to our interview with Smith on Bandcamp and follow the musician and composer at the links below.
Shonen Knife is a pioneering Japanese punk band that started out in Osaka in 1981 inspired by the kind of music that influenced the Ramones like 60s girl groups and by the Ramones themselves. The trio were a rarity in Japan in the early days as an all-female group and its lyrics about food, animals and pop culture paired with infectiously upbeat melodies were all but a precursor to pop-punk and a focus on everyday joys over the horrible things we often face in the world we experience. After all, if you only focus on the negative it’s harder to get through tough times. Shonen Knife embraced by American artists and labels like K Records in Olympia, Washington and Sub Pop out of Seattle and Sonic Youth, Red Kross and Nirvana who were instrumental in getting the band a record deal with Capitol Records in 1992 for the release of its 1993 album Let’s Knife. Shonen Knife has remained a bit of a cult band since and its reliably fun music and charming and energetic live shows has justified its legendary status. The outfit’s latest album Our Best Place got a 2025 vinyl reissue available on the tour and afterward through the Good Charamel website. The album is vintage Shonen Knife with fun and sometimes surreal songs about good times, beloved food and personal empowerment.
Listen to our interview with Shonen Knife co-founder, vocalist and guitarist Naoko Yamano on Bandcamp and follow Shonen Knife at the links below. The band performs at HQ in Denver, Colorado on October 9, 2025 with The Pack A.D..
In the Company of Serpents began as a kind of doom band in early 2011 and its first few releases were crushing, heavy affairs that set the group apart from other doom acts of the time partly because the core of the songwriting was always a little different. The lyrics seemed informed by a more than passing familiarity with esoteric knowledge well beyond knowing who Aleister Crowley was or that the Ride-Waite Tarot deck had art illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. The band has also benefited from having immediately recognizable artwork including its double cross icon with the serpent in a crossed over Ouroboros image. Around the mid-2010s or so, singer Grant Netzorg, formerly of dark Americana band Bone Orchard, realized that trying to be the heaviest band in a world where many other artists were already in that league wasn’t where he wanted to be creatively. His deep interest in cinema and the cinematic possibilities in songwriting lead him to exploring more atmospheric guitar ideas in the vein of Ennio Morricone and Angelo Badalamenti with shades of Daniel Lanois. The 2017 album Ain-Soph Aur reflected this shift most fully and the next two albums Lux (2020) and A Crack in Everything (2025) expanded upon these instincts for crafting deep sonic narratives. The new record, though, is a new frontier for the trio now comprised of Netzorg (vocals, guitar), Ben Pitts (bass, lap steel) and Andy Thomas (drums) as it is Netzorg’s most personal album to date in terms of the lyrics that all but openly discuss his struggle with addiction and confronting his now former mentality with creativity and radical self-honesty. It’s easily the band’s finest and most emotionally stirring record and the first to feature the new line-up on a recording.
Listen to our interview with In the Company of Serpents on Bandcamp and follow the group at the links below.
Wednesday | 10.01 What: Modest Mouse w/Built to Spill When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Coming off the heels of a summer co-headlining tour with The Flaming Lips, alternative rock icons Modest Mouse is now touring with fellow Pacific Northwestern alt-rock legends Built to Spill. Modest Mouse’s idiosyncratic melodies and emotionally charged vocals that range freely from the vulnerable to the nearly unhinged and cathartic has made the group a cult band from its early underground days to international stardom. Built To Spill came out of the psychedelic post-punk band Tree People to carve out a legacy of being steeped in both punk and psychedelic improvisation. The group’s coherent yet eclectic style has been considered shoegaze by some or more deconstructed, slackery power pop by others but all held together by singer and guitarist Doug Martsch’s introspective poetry and colorful songwriting imagination informed by the broad swath of human experience layering melancholia with joy. Both bands started in 1992 and have managed to release vibrant later career material unlike many bands over thirty years into their existence.
Patriarchy in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Wednesday | 10.01 What: Patriarchy w/Spiritual Poison and Kill You Club DJs When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Patriarchy is the Los Angeles-based electro death rock band whose edgy lyrics and just as edgy stage appearance and performance art style has garnered it a wide underground following. Fortunately the band’s songs are more than the bombastic live show with commanding vocals and refraining from the usual tropes of modern darkwave and leaning into rich tones and embracing the industrial underbelly of the music as well as glitchy witch house and ambient washes of foggy harmonic gloom. Currently on tour in support of the new album Manual For Dying.
Malena Cadiz, photo by Mikael Kenedy
Thursday | 10.02 What: Malena Cadiz and Anna Ash When: 7 Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room Why: Malena Cadiz’s 2023 album Hellbent & Moonbound seems to be inspired by snapshots of experiences of life during an average week in Los Angeles and walking the neighborhood and imagining the lives of strangers based on intuitive observations and mixed with more than a touch of autobiography to breathe life into the storytelling. The songs are in the realm of Americana pop but with vibrant electronic touches that combine with spangled guitar flourishes that anchor the songwriter’s words in your mind. She is touring with Anna Ash who like Cadiz was born in Michigan but now calls the City of Angels home. Her own style seems more stepped in country but the kind that emerged from the folk pop and rock that spawned the likes of Phoebe Bridgers. Meaning some luminous moods, strong cadence and expressive vocals and stories that sound like they came out of astutely collecting anecdotes while working in the service industry and thus imbued with an undeniable authenticity.
Anna Ash, photo courtesy the artistFlutter, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 10.04 What: Flutter and The CDs When: 3 Where: Mutiny Information Cafe Why: Flutter is a Denver-based power pop band whose 2025 EP When You Love Somebody hearkens back to late 70s power pop. Its earnest lyrics about the nuances of love and relationships and how one’s emotions can be so strong but feel so complicated paired with sparkling, jangle-y guitar melodies render the band’s songs memorable beyond any tinges of nostalgic tone. Live the group has a surprisingly passionate performance style that elevates the music even further.
Die Spitz, photo by Pooneh Ghana
Sunday | 10.05 What: Die Spitz w/Flowers For the Dead When: 7 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Austin-based Die Spitz taps into the more melodic end of 90s grunge but clearly with a foundation in pop punk energy and knack for melodic hooks. Its 2025 album Something to Consume is moody and smoldering in tone and often reminiscent of early 2000s post-hardcore emo with some edge and vulnerability mixed in with the bombast. Some nice atmospheric layers and for the song “Throw Yourself to the Sword” an obvious taste for thrash metal somewhere in the band’s DNA makes Die Spitz a band that isn’t beholden to a narrow musical traditions.
Riki, photo from Bandcamp
Monday | 10.06 What: French Police w/Riki When: 7 Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station Perplexiplex Why: French Police is a Chicago-based post-punk band with a bit of a cult following for its melodic coldwave style with subdued moods and narrowly atmospheric melodies. Riki is an enigmatic synth pop artist from Los Angeles who has a bit of a following of her own among connoisseurs of darkwave for her dance music adjacent beats, vivid washes of synth and commanding vocals reminiscent of 1980s New Wave acts. With only two full length albums under her belt for the Dais imprint out in 2020 and 2021 respectively, Riki recently released a two song EP Pulser (2025) that hints at further newly developed material that may be experienced at this performance.
Dark Angel, photo from Facebook
Monday | 10.06 What:Dark Angel w/Sacred Reich, Vio-Lence, Midnight and Interceptor When: 5 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Dark Angel formed in the early days of Bay Area thrash and its early music was understandably compared to Slayer with the wild and menacing guitar pyrotechnics and urgent rhythms that broke and changed direction in an instant to switch up the tone of the song. Its most coherent early statement of style was the caustic and thrilling 1986 album Darkness Descends. It was the first to feature legendary drummer Gene Hoglan whose contribution to the sound and style of the better heavy metal of the era and since is undeniable as a pioneer of thrash and death metal. The group’s final album before splitting for the first time in 1992 Time Does Not Heal was primarily written by Hoglan and instead of occult themes it delved into issues mental health issues and the impact of culture, religion and failed political policy (including a complete lack thereof) on the individual and thus society generally. It was ahead of its time as a kind of masterpiece of progressive thrash. The band would not release another record until 2025’s Extinction Level Event, the first album following the death of founding guitarist Jim Durkin in 2023 to whom the record is dedicated. Also on this bill are other luminaries of 80s thrash like Sacred Reich and Vio-Lence.
Patrick Shiroishi, photo courtesy the artist
Wednesday | 10.08 What: Patrick Shiroishi: Forgetting is Violent Tour w/M. Sage https://hi-dive.com/listing/patrick-shiroishi-forgetting-is-violent-tour/ When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Patrick Shiroishi is a multi-instrumentalist composer based in Los Angeles who is most known for his imaginative and explorative saxophone work as a solo artist and as an inspired collaborator with projects like Fuubutsushi, We Bow to No Masters, Upsilon Acrux. This year he released his latest record Forgetting is Violent, a masterclass in using the idiom of music as abstract free jazz, field recordings and ambient composition to express ideas about colonialism and racism and its legacy for today and how both threaten human existence and yet both of which need not lead to dire inevitabilities when acknowledged and confronted with honesty and integrity. M. Sage is Matt Sage who was a pillar of the DIY music world on the front range when he was based in Fort Collins in the 2000s and 2010s before relocating to the Midwest for a spell and there further putting out cutting edge ambient and pastoral folk records on his Patient Sounds imprint. Lately, Sage has expanded his musical range further into the realm of avant-garde improvisational and electronic music.
Oliver Hazard, photo by Ross Bustin
Wednesday | 10.08 What:Oliver Hazard & The Last Revel: Head West When: 6 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Oliver Hazard is an indie folk band from Waterville, Ohio that recently released its latest album Raindrop River on Nettwerk. The band started prior to the 2020 pandemic and thus earned its audience the hard way through extensive touring in livingrooms and small venues and now headining theaters like The Gothic. The band’s delicate melodies and uplifting, bright energy ads a lift to songs that seem honest about everyday life struggles and simple joys, about tough choices and heartache and affection and a broad spectrum of human experience.
Shonen Knife, photo by Tomoko Ota
Thursday | 10.09 What:Shonen Knife w/The Pack A.D. When: 7 Where: HQ Why: Shonen Knife is a pioneering Japanese punk band that started out in Osaka in 1981 inspired by the kind of music that influenced the Ramones like 60s girl groups and by the Ramones themselves. The trio were a rarity in Japan in the early days as an all-female group and its lyrics about food, animals and pop culture paired with infectiously upbeat melodies were all but a precursor to pop-punk and a focus on everyday joys over the horrible things we often face in the world we experience. After all, if you only focus on the negative it’s harder to get through tough times. Shonen Knife embraced by American artists and labels like K Records in Olympia, Washington and Sub Pop out of Seattle and Sonic Youth, Red Kross and Nirvana who were instrumental in getting the band a record deal with Capitol Records in 1992 for the release of its 1993 album Let’s Knife. Shonen Knife has remained a bit of a cult band since and its reliably fun music and charming and energetic live shows has justified its legendary status. The outfit’s latest album Our Best Place got a 2025 vinyl reissue available on the tour and afterward through the Good Charamel website. The album is vintage Shonen Knife with fun and sometimes surreal songs about good times, beloved food and personal empowerment.
The Chameleons, photo by Mick Peek
Thursday | 10.09 What: The Chameleons w/The Veldt When: 7 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: The Chameleons are the legendary post-punk band that innovated a type of atmospheric and emotionally charged sound with two guitars playing off each other almost as one instrument. The effect and aesthetic is a sound that seems to have heavily influenced the shoegaze bands of the late 80s and early 90s by showing how effected guitars layered with synth could be a unified element in songwriting. Add Mark Burgess’ socially conscious yet deeply personal lyrics and commanding voice and you have a body of work that has aged well from the 80s and a clear inspiration for modern darkwave whether those bands know it or not. The band hadn’t released a new album since 2001 until this year with Arctic Moon, the first since the return of original guitarist Reg Smithies. The record’s songwriting reconciles the more acoustic rooted songwriting of the group’s later albums and the ambient moods of its classic 80s material for a surprisingly effective late era effort from one of the greats of 80s. Get there early to see The Veldt, one of the great, lost shoegaze and psychedelic post-punk bands of the 90s through today with a sound like a mix of R&B and dream pop.
Martin Rev, photo from Bandcamp
Friday | 10.10 What: Martin Rev (and VJ Divine Enfent) w/Loveshadow (SF), Fergus Jones (DJ-Denmark,Scotland) and Kill You Club DJs When: 7 Where: The Aztlan Theatre Why: Martin Rev is one half of pioneering punk/post-punk/electronic band Suicide. The latter pre-dated the classic CBGB’s scene while also part of that. Its confrontational/borderline dangerous early live shows are remembered vividly by those who were there with former lead singer Alan Vega alternatively swinging a motorcycle chain during the performance to crawling over broken glass into the crowd and other refinements. Rev’s more modern solo music is an adventurous foray into noise, playful soundscapes, abstract industrial and what might be described as harsh ambient.
The Milk Blossoms, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday and Saturday | 10.10 and 10.11 What:Aurora Borealis Festival When: 4:30 Where: High Prairie Park at Painted Prairie Why: This event promises an array of vendors and food and live music set to unique visuals inspired by the Northern Lights and taking place in the furtherst northeast reaches of Aurora, Colorado probably the final weekend of the year when it may not be too cold to hold an outdoor event. The first night of the festival is headlined by R&B pop and soul artist Kayla Marque whose songs stretch beyond the preconceived boundaries of genre with a commanding voice and charismatic stage presence. Also on that night are Destiny Shynelle, Kalpulli Mikakuikatl, Jade Oracle and DJ Polyphoni. The second night of the festival will be headlined by experimental dream pop quartet The Milk Blossoms who have been writing new music that expands what pop music can sound like with deeply poetic lyrics that invite you to feel your own emotional turmoil fully as a vehicle for personal transcendence through immersion in creative work. Earlier on that evening you can also witness Miss Flowers, Kalama Polynesian Dancers, Eye Yoob and DJ Rewild.
Bambara, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 10.11 What:Bambara w/Midwife When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Brooklyn-based post-punk band Bambara released its new album Birthmarks in March and built further its reputation for transporting and moody deathrock with bluesy vocals. The combination hearkens back some of the 80s bands that combined soul and R&B with dark, experimental rock. Live the band has a bit more grit than one would expect from the the records. Midwife is the internationally renowned underground artists whose pastoral, ambient, “heaven metal” has crossed from the indie and experimental/ambient realms of music into the heavy music world for the weightiness of her lyrics and the quiet intensity of her performances. The music frankly packs an emotional gutpunch more than virtually all metal bands and that makes a massive difference.
PUP + JEFF ROSENSTOCK, photo by Nestor Chumak
Saturday | 10.11 What:PUP & Jeff Rosenstock and Ekko Astral When: 6:30 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: When PUP from Toronto, Canada started out in 2010 it was part of a wave of underground bands that came up in punk, perhaps even 2000s hardcore, that seemed to figure out they could find a way to make fun, catchy songs in a pop punk vein with some integrity that realm of music had lost like its connections to punk spirit and ethos were more or less gone. So PUP and bands across North America in pockets seemed to come up with a similar idea around the same time without necessarily knowing about each other. And PUP absolutely tapped into that sound and that anthemic and heartfelt pop-punk and even emo aesthetic with lyrics that truly captured working class struggles, everyday challenges that anyone with any heart could relate to and the attainable triumphs that can sometimes seem so elusive. In 2025 PUP released its new album Who Will Look After the Dogs? On that record the group worked with Jeff Rosenstock who is co-headlining this “PUP + JEFF ROSENSTOCK PRESENT: A CATACLYSMIC RAPTURE OF FRIENDSHIPNESS” tour and of course they’ll play some or all of their collaborative material together with separate sets. Rosenstock has been in bands since the 1990s like The Arrogant Sons of Bitches and Bomb the Music Industry but he has rightfully earned his plaudits for his solo albums with his incredibly catch songs with scrappy energy and tenderness and an acute awareness of the things that make life challenging for everyone.
eHpH, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 10.12 What: Laether Strip w/Cervello Elettronico and eHpH When: 7 Where: HQ Why: Leæther Strip is the well-known electro-industrial/EBM band from Denmark that was part of the second wave of that music in the late 80s but which didn’t succumb to the temptation of the bland future pop trend of the late 90s and 2000s. The latest release from the project is Æppreciation VIII, a tribute album that includes versions of songs originally written by the likes of Garbage, Boy Harsher, Yaz, Robin, Ladytron and Madonna. Local opener eHpH has been on a bit of a mini-hiatus for a couple of years but has always been an example of how a project can draw from EBM and electronic-industrial and not be caught up in the tired tropes of that style of music. The band’s lyrics are often a poignant and sharply observed social commentary and the production more layered and deeply creative than that of many of their peers in the broader realm of modern industrial music.
The Mayday Parade, photo courtesy the artists
Sunday | 11.12 What: All Time Low w/Mayday Parade, The Cab and The Paradox When: 6 Where: Red Rocks Amphitheater Why: Mayday Parade is in the middle of releasing a three part album in 2025 to commemorate 20 years as a band. Sweet released in April and the second installment Sad dropped October 3. The group formed in 2005 around the time when the pop punk and emo scenes nationally were basically floundering but Mayday Parade came as a result of two other bands in Tallahassee, Florida coming together. The 2007 full length A Lesson in Romantics and its mix of earnest songwriting and humor won over detractors of the band’s early efforts as the group has set itself apart from late era pop punk. Since then the group has refined its sound while maintaining a knack for tapping into the sensitive emotional core that is at the heart of its stylistic roots and finding new ways of writing about experiences that people go through no matter what age. Headlining is All Time Low who slightly predate Mayday Parade but have been in a similar musical lane in anthemic power pop and emo. In one of the opening slots is The Cab who also came up in the mid-2000s pop punk milieu and were signed to the Fueled By Ramen imprint along with All Time Low. But The Cab’s sound seemed to be more informed by 90s R&B and mainstream pop and its electronic production than most of the band’s pop punk peers and because of that its music is decidedly different from any standard issue punk.
Superchunk, photo by Alex Cox
Monday | 10.13 What:Superchunk w/Case Oats When: 7 Where: The Gothic Theatre Why: Superchunk is one of the most well=known of the alternative rock bands of the 90s who helped ot not just define a sound with its upbeat, melodic punk at a time when punk had become mostly an underground scene. The group also helped to push other left field rock bands well past the 90s with its Merge imprint and though its own music is respectable and easily worth a listen for the wit and expert songcraft that larger effort of creating an environment in the culture for its own type of music thrive and be accepted is a massive legacy. Superchunk is now touring in support of its 2025 album Songs in the Key of Yikes, a record that not only has some of the group’s finest songwriting of recent years but a title and content that is very much a poignant summation of this moment in history and of the culmination of recent years to boot. Not enough bands have done so with such hummable conciseness. Case Oats is an Americana band based in Chicago fronted by Casey Gomez Walker that put out its debut album on August 22, 2025. Titled Last Missouri Exit it’s a reference to a sign near the Illinois border. Walker’s vocals are earnest and have enough raw vulnerability to give her performances an authenticity that lend her tales of growing up and growing beyond one’s place of upbringing a poignancy that is reminiscent of Rilo Kiley with a similar deftness in crafting turns of phrase that hit like sparks of the truth that can warm and sting at once.
Case Oats, photo by Braeden LongAcid Mothers Temple perform at Larimer Lounge on April 8. Photo by Tom Murphy
Monday | 10.13 What:Acid Mothers Temple w/The Macks and Los Toms When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: You don’t go to an Acid Mothers Temple show to see the legendary, Japanese psychedelic rock expecting they’ll play your favorite song from their copious recorded catalog. You go because it’s going to be pure musical weirdness and an experience to take you out of mundane reality for several moments and right now that kind of musico-psychological transmogrification is a welcome respite from a world in unfortunate historical times. Fans of space rock, shoegaze, heavy psychedelia, freak folk, ambient and noise generally will get something positive about witnessing this band’s wild live performances.
Bitchin Bajas, photo from Bandcamp
Monday | 10.13 What: Bitchin Bajas w/Prairiewolf When: 7 Where: Glob Why: Bitchin Bajas is a Chicago-based psychedelic ambient and experimental synth band and a side project of Cooper Crain of Krautrock/post-rock group CAVE. This is much more chill than CAVE but the gentle, hypnotic qualities of the music is more in line with an experimental electronic band even though aspects are generated by live instruments like sax and keyboards. The new album Inland See is like a cosmic New Age jazz with pop leanings like something composed on a paradisiacal island in a more pastoral future where everyone’s basics are covered and we can all live out extended lives indulging our passions and even our whims, perchance exploring creative ideas that benefit all.
Goya, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 10.14 What: Goya w/In the Company of Serpents and Church Fire When: 7 Where: The Crypt Why: Goya from Phoenix, Arizona is a fusion of doom blues and heavy psychedelia and its 2025 album In the Dawn of November was engineered by legendary grunge scene producer Jack Endino. So the crushing hits land perfectly and so do the warping melodic passages and the songs have both a bite and some swing to them that a lot of heavy bands don’t. Think equal parts TAD and Sleep. In the Company of Serpents these days has evolved well beyond the devastating heaviness of its early records into its own psychedelic, Western doom. Its new album A Crack in Everything is the band’s most personal statement yet on issues of addiction and identity with burnished guitar work and elegant yet weighty rhythms. Church Fire may seem like an odd choice for this show but its own music has a heavy impact in terms of the intensity of the music and its emotional heft. Also the band has been known on at least one occasion to play a show as a cosmic black metal band. But this night it’ll probably “just” be the politically charged, industrial synth pop that has turned the group into a bit of a cult band.
Shiner, photo from Bandcamp
Wednesday | 10.15 What:Shiner w/No Fauna and Brass Tags When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Shiner was a respected band in the post-hardcore lane but the type that really crossed over into realms of experimental, atmospheric rock bordering on shoegaze/space rock before splitting in 2003. It was inspired by noisier shoegaze bands as well as the major noise rock bands of the 90s and space rock/hard rock crossover act Failure. The outfit is currently touring in support of its new record BELIEVEYOUME, which definitely showcases its gift for drawing upon disparate influences to produce something almost orchestral in its use mastery of evocative noise.
I’m With Here, photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Wednesday | 10.15 What: I’m With Her w/Jon Muq When: 7:30 Where: The Paramount Theatre Why: I’m With Her is an Americana and bluegrass supergroup comprised of Sarah Watkins (Nickel Creek), Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still) . Each of the singers and musicians has a renowned solo career as well as their work in their respective bands. All grew up playing music and Jarosz met Watkins when the former was a kid and came to the attention of O’Donovan as a teen. This group came together in 2014 at a workshop during the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and thus a somewhat local connection. The group has thus far only had two albums, other obligations clearly demanding of their time, including its new album Wild and Clear and Blue (2025) for which the trio is touring. The new album has a sense of wonder and seems imbued with an inner light that informs songs about reconciling the lessons of one’s past to help in getting through the tumultuous times and not losing sight of there being goals to reach for that matter even with clear and present dangers and challenges to navigate.
Ches Smith’s Clone Row, photo courtesy the artists
Wednesday | 10.15 What:Ches Smith’s Clone Row When: 7 Where: The Federal Theater Why: Ches Smith is a drummer, percussionist and composer originally from California and now based out of New York. His career as a musician has been varied and acclaimed including playing on albums with and playing with the likes of John Zorn, Mr. Bungle, Xiu Xiu, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros Terry Riley, Marc Ribot (as a member of Ceramic Dog), Secret Chiefs 3, Nels Cline and Dave Holland. Smith’s mastery of technique is not divorced from a creativity in crafting rhythms to whatever musical style and mode or mood he finds himself contributing to or writing himself with his various collaborators. In 2025 Ches Smith offered his latest opus, Clone Row which includes performances from avant-garde guitar legend Mary Halvorson, jazz luminary Liberty Ellman and multidisciplinary sound artist Nick Dunston. It’s an album of music that moves with imaginative flow of layered rhythms and tones like if one of those more gifted 2000s math rock bands like Hella and Battles were more into fusion and free jazz. Although instrumental the songs speak musically with a cinematic quality.
Matt Maltese, photo by V Petersen
Wednesday | 10.15 What: Matt Maltese w/Cornelia Murr When: 7 Where: The Summit Music Hall Why: For his sixth album Hers, UK singer-songwriter Matt Maltese sounds like he immersed himself in the film and music of the late 60s and through the mid-70s. Perhaps especially the albums of Jacques Brel and Scott Walker and the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard. There is a vivid yet hazy tone to his songs that suggest an introspective and reflective spirit and a timeless, classical sensibility that the aforementioned seem to exude as well. A fortunate pairing of an opener in Cornelia Murr is in store for anyone catching the show when it starts at 8. Murr’s 2025 album Run to the Center builds out her lush, experimental dream pop sound into the realms of songwriting sophistication one would expect of a creative visionary like Aldous Harding. Murr’s orchestral arrangements and literary storytelling is instantly captivating and her otherworldly energy and charisma as a live performer are undeniable.
Goon, photo from Bandcamp
Thursday | 10.16 What: Goon w/beaming and The Milk Blossoms When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Goon is a dream pop band from Los Angeles that over the summer released its third album aptly titled Dream 3. The songs on the record have a quality like short films based on the memories of dreams in which the strong emotions and experiences of your waking life haunt the subconscious and filter back through as strong but hazy emotional resonances. Often the songs are gorgeously ethereal and in others noisy and tense and overall the record is like a psychedelic pop affair that fans of Black Moth Super Rainbow and Spirit of the Beehive might like. Indie pop project beaming is a collaboration built around making playful and explorative pop songs with creative production choices lending the songs a unique flavor if the elements might seem familiar. The Milk Blossoms are the experimental indie rock band from Denver whose literary sensibilities and emotionally vibrant songs seem like a vivid sonic experience of stories based in memories and the feelings those memories elicit. Listening to a song by the band is akin to reading a short story so poignant and poetic it sticks with you as a true thing because they elicit such deep responses if you’re open to having them.
Patrick Wolf, photo courtesy the artist
Sunday | 10.19 What:Patrick Wolf When: 7:30 Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Patrick Wolf is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from the UK whose musical style is refreshingly challenging to pigeonhole. He combines electronic pop with more classical sensibilities for a sound that is like an experimental, even conceptual, folk especially on his new album Crying the Neck the lyrics for which seem to tap into the lore of his home region of East Kent. Prior to the album and the 2023 EP The Night Safari, Wolf had taken a decade plus hiatus from music during which he dealt with personal misfortunes and tragedies including the death of his mother. The new album is a meditation on processing losses personal, cultural and collective socially through the use of the imagery and references of his immediate environment rich in its own traditions and unique spirit.
Gina Birch by Dean Chalkley
Monday | 10.20 What: Miki Berenyi Trio and Gina Birch & The Unreasonables When: 7 Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Miki Berenyi is of course the charismatic and ironic co-singer and co-guitarist of pioneering shoegaze band Lush. The latter even in its time was innovative in its incorporation of electronic musical elements into the songwriting and sound, especially on its later records. The trio got off to what might be seen as a fragile start when KJ “Moose” McKillop was unable to do the early touring but this time around he will be able to and the trio’s new album Tripla picks up where Lush’s mid-90s dream pop leanings left off with an even more robust electronic production undergirding the expansive melodies and Berenyi’s soulfully ethereal vocals. But of equal interest is Gina Birch & The Unreasonables. Which is the latest band from Gina Birch, former bassist of legendary and influential post-punk group The Raincoats. The latter opened up what post-punk could sound like and essentially paved the way for left field rock and pop being an inspiration for the likes of Half Japanese, Beat Happening, Nirvana and Hole. In 2023 Birch released her acclaimed debut solo album I Play My Bass Loud and proved herself once again an artist with deep creative vision and a strong experimental streak utilizing dub techniques in the production and wide-ranging sonics. The 2025 album Trouble continues with boundary pushing songwriting and politically-charged lyrics.
Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends
Monday | 10.20 What: Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends w/Plastik Mystik and The Better Selfs When: 7 Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: Conan Neutron and his various bands have been a wonderfully eclectic yet coherent example of doing whatever kind of music an artist might want to do whether that’s weird noise rock post-punk, mutant Americana or whatever it is The Way of the Neutron album (2025) might be dubbed with contributions from members of Melvins, Coliseum, Replicator and Trophy Wives. It sounds like a groove-driven sludge rock band with a knack for the psychedelic in a vein that doesn’t sound like the sort that got popularized in the 2010s. The Better Selfs is what happens when you collage heartfelt, Neil Young-esque Americana with equally emotionally vulnerable emo that isn’t afraid to spill over the edges with its sound and feelings in the performance of the music. Plastik Mystik is technically a garage psych band but only if that band leaned more into Kiwi Rock weirdness and the haunted dead end town desperation and edge of Wipers.
Purity Ring, photo by yuniVERSE
Tuesday | 10.21 What: Purity Ring w/Washed Out (DJ Set) and yuniVERSE When: 8 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Purity Ring’s innovative approach to production and songwriting was evident with its 2012 debut album Shrines paired with an idiosyncratic live show that included unique controllers and multi-media elements. A lot of artists that use side-chaining really waste our time by merely making bad hip-hop and pop. Purity Ring uses that technique to create mind-expanding rhythms and tonal colorings. It’s difficult to know how to sum up the band’s sound because it does sound like it’s coming to us from a realm of human existence that is separate from mundane reality. Fitting for the duo’s 2025 self-titled record which is a concept album intended as a soundtrack to a fictional fantasy video game with a similar emotional and creative resonance and expansive sense of wonder. At times the album is reminiscent of the kind of glitch pop we heard from early 2010s Crystal Castles with the expert pitch shifting and rhythm splicing but pushed to another realm of production expertise.
Wednesday, photo by Graham Tolbert
Thursday | 10.23 What: Wednesday w/Friendship When: 7 Where: The Gothic Theatre Why: Wednesday has been one of the bands of choice among aficionados of boundary pushing and blurring guitar rock. Its early output combined shoegaze atmospherics and tonal bending, emo-inflected math rock and arty post-punk but with a knack for memorable hooks and melodies. With 2023’s Rat Saw God the band was exploring deep into songcraft with some countrified tunes that also didn’t skimp on mood and a bit of an edge in the guitar sounds. The record also continued startlingly vulnerable lyrics and astute observations of social and interpersonal dynamics. The 2025 record Bleeds builds upon the tense but cathartic energy that made its predecessor so arresting and risks even more in the emotional openness of the songwriting. Live the band has been glorious exuberant and charming with a raw quality that invites the audience in for the collective catharsis.
Peel Dream Magazine, photo by Matthew Schmohl
Friday | 10.24 What: Peel Dream Magazine w/Wave Decay and Bellhoss When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Peel Dream Magazine is currently touring in the wake of the release of its 2025 mini album Taurus which dropped October 1. The record continues in the experimental vein of its predecessor with deep, gossamer atmospheres and left field pop songcraft with no allegiance to established styles or tradition making the album refreshingly out of frame with prevailing musical trends. Denver Krautrock-inflected shoegazers Wave Decay are also on the bill with its massive sounds and electrifying tone. Bellhoss will bring its own masterful songwriting and willingness to go off the rails sonically and emotionally in its particular style mashup of indiepop, shoegaze and emo.
Entrancer, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 10.24 What: DJ Earl w/Entrancer and Sinistarr When: 8 Where: Glob Why: DJ Earl is a Chicago based house and footwork producer whose work shows how there’s really no difference between Chicago house and hip-hop production. Eclectic beats and bright electronic melodic and rhythmic layers and a sense of play that one heard in the work of J. Dilla. Entrancer is a Denver-based techno/ambient artist whose compositions for synth have been informed by 90s hip-hop and his time in Chicago experiencing that city’s electronic music firsthand as well as the experimental electronic, pop music and noise he came up with in Denver. His recent work is emotionally stirring and expertly references the sounds, emotions and spirit of his whole career as an artist at once.
Between the Buried and Me, photo by Randy Edwards
Friday | 10.24 What: Between the Buried and Me at w/Hail the Sun and Delta Sleep When: 7 Where: The Summit Music Hall Why: Progressive metal band Between the Buried and Me were trying to figure out its place in the world of music on its 2021 album Colors II. With the 2025 album The Blue Nowhere it appears that some decisions or conclusions were made or an embrace of notions with the music seemed clear. Not that the group hasn’t incorporated elements of pop songwriting and hooks into its sound but the new album other than the masterful musicianship in a clearly progressive rock mode is basically a pop record but one that hits as introspective and expansive, one that sounds like it came out of spending time taking stock and considering what one’s life is really, deeply about and not ignoring the feelings that might crash in on you in middle age, but feeling them and giving them voice in the music.
Hayden Pedigo, photo by Jackie Lee Young
Friday | 10.24 What:Hayden Pedigo w/Jens Kuross When: 7 Where: Swallow Hill Daniel’s Hall Why: Fingerstyle guitarist and left-field songwriter Hayden Pedigo is having quite a year with his new album I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away coming out on June 6. The record is a fascinating set of songs that come across as gently psychedelic and pastoral Americana folk at once and consistently too weird to fit into a narrow box of music. The textures and informal rhythms he employs in creating his melodies stands out as decidedly different but soothing to the mind. He also worked on a collaborative album In the Earth Again with fellow Oklahoma City residents, sludge metal, political doom band Chat Pile with both sets of artists fusing their aesthetics for a heavy record imbued with otherworldly elegance.
Friday – Sunday | 10.24-10.26 What: Denver Noise Fest 2025 When: F 10.24 7pm, S 10.25 12p.m and 8 p.m., Su 10.26 11 am Where: The DMV (10.24, 10.25 8pm and 10.26) and The Aztlan Theatre (10.25 12 p.m. Why: Denver Noise Fest returns in full with three days of boundary pushing noise art. Friday’s showcase includes Now That We’re Alone, Animal / Object, Phil Stearns, Eric Drasin, Carl Ritger, Eliza Miller and Bl_ank. Saturday afternoon’s event at the Aztlan will feature ETAM, Bat Mob, EM.BALM, Dream Cheese, Andrew Weathers and Cantare Montibus. Saturday night’s proceedings will include performances by Her Mortal Form, Many Blessings, EXREMADURA, Sick Tisk, Novasak, Page 27 and PCRV. The Sunday morning/afternoon concluding happenings is what’s called Harsh Toast that is sort of a potluck and improv noise sets. For tickets and more information please visit denvernoisefest.com.
Molly Tuttle, photo by Ebru Yildiz
Saturday | 10.25 What: Molly Tuttle w/Joshua Ray Walker and Cecilia Castleman When: 7 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Molly Tuttle’s 2025 album So Long Little Miss Sunshine has been described by critics as essentially her swing to pop country. But of course the bluegrass leanings in the guitar lines keep the music from losing the essence of Tuttle’s appeal as an artist who writes with an intimate feel and a facility with portraits of everyday experiences with subtly deft turns of phrase. The new record has some exquisite moments of personal insight commenting on one’s inner life and relationships. Also the concluding track “Story of My So-Called Life” is a nice title nod to the classic TV series while embodying the overall mood and story of the show as something that resonates with one’s adult self.
The Wombats, photo by Julia Godfrey
Saturday | 10.25 What: The Wombats w/Only The Poets and Red Rum Club When: 7 Where: The Summit Music Hall Why: The Wombats are a band that hasn’t limited itself to a popular trend in style and sound from early on. Not choosing to be a pop band over being an art band that engages in sometimes dark and self-deprecating humor and eccentric songwriting. Its new album Oh! The Ocean is no exception and you have to appreciate a band that is willing to have a video like the one for “Can’t Say No” in which a man in his morning robes is chased down the street by his own car guiding itself by the rear camera with the parking sight lines in plain view. The record itself is brimming with the exuberance and expertly crafted moods and the kind of commentary on the wild, dystopian and tragically historical times we’re going through in this moment of human history.
Tuesday | 10.28 What: Viagra Boys w/Black Lips When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Viagra Boys have been the post-punk band of choice for nearly a decade with its driving, commanding and raw musical performances and lyrics that are at once smart, poetic, wickedly humorous and vulnerable. The latter one might not expect from the same band that writes pointed songs about authoritarian culture and human folly generally but on the new album Viagr Aboys (2025), with hints on earlier records, the tender side of the band is at this point undeniable. But don’t worry, Viagr Aboys is still imbued with the high concept art punk that has fueled its songwriting and performances up to now. Black Lips pre-dated Viagra Boys with their own spirited garage rock-inflected punk and were critical darlings for years with their own incorporation of experimental art concepts into its songwriting and performance style.
The Legendary Pink Dots in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday and Saturday | 10.31 and 11.01 What: The Legendary Pink Dots w/Orbit Service, Dead Voices On Air and DJ Mudwulf (10.31), on 11.01 also Edward Ka-Spel solo set When: 7 Where: HQ Why: The Legendary Pink Dots is a psychedelic rock/folk/electronic band that formed in 1980 and influenced generations of more left field, experimental bands of various stripes including the likes of Skinny Puppy, MGMT and Dresden Dolls, at least according the band’s Wikipedia article. But you really only have to listen to those bands after taking a sampling of the Dots’ extensive output to recognize that it’s likely true. Singer/keyboard player Edward Ka-Spel’s existential poetry and psychological/social analysis delves deep into our personal narratives and those which touch upon and are touched by others and the collective stories that course through our civilization. But Ka-Spel isn’t a mere, disinterested observer and commentator upon human doings, he comes from a place of someone who is living it and affected by things and processing his own psychological reactions to it all as well as his own place in it. The band’s records blend folk songcraft (and that music’s own spooky and atmospheric possiblities), ambient soundscapes, psychedelic rock and electro-industrial aesthetics with a keen ear for sound design. The latest album So Lonely In Heaven explores the current and future state of the panopticon of late capitalism and how it has infiltrated the most intimate spaces of our lives and consciousness and how we may not be able to disentangle ourselves from the techbro oligarchy without transforming the very nature of our socio-economic-psycho-spiritual existence. Orbit Service is Denver’s premiere ambient industrial duo which includes Randall Frazier whose music is clearly touched by the influence of the Dots but whose sound is also directly tied to noise, the broad spectrum of psychedelic rock and downtempo aesthetics. Also not short on incisive social commentary and a deep evocation of the struggle of existing as a human in a world challenging to the very notion of living a dignified life. Dead Voices On Air is the project of Mark Spybey who some may know for his pioneering work in Zoviet France. DVOA is even more abstract yet possibly even more human in the emotional resonance of the finely crafted sonics and cinematic sound design. For this show and other performances he will be joined by Nathan Jamiel of The Drood.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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