Danny Clinch photographing Low Cut Connie on December 21st 2025 in Asbury Park New Jersey.
Low Cut Connie is a rock and roll band based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The group fronted by singer, pianist and songwriter Adam Weiner began in 2010 as a way to manifest his songs as a dynamic live act. Prior to Low Cut Connie Weiner was mainly a solo artist who played piano and sang in bars of all stripes, restaurants, honky tonks, warehouses, anarchist squats, DIY spaces and all manner of places where the opportunity presented itself. By the time an actual band came into the picture Weiner had honed his stagecraft and command of an audience from thousands of hours of getting in front of not always receptive audiences. The 2010 debut Low Cut Connie album Get Out the Lotion, despite being recorded in original guitarist Neil Duncan’s garage in Florida in just four days, had a captivating immediacy and freshness that garnered critical acclaim from the likes of Robert Christgau (writing for MSN rather than Village Voice at the time), Ken Tucker of NPR and Merrill Garbus (Tune-Yards).
Across subsequent albums Weiner’s songwriting built upon an ability to express stories and situations about the lived experiences of real people as they are, not overly romanticized, and discerning and vividly articulating an essence of the human condition that anyone hearing the song and witnessing it live could immediately identify. A Low Cut Connie video typically has people in it that might look cool but aren’t necessarily fitting a Hollywood archetype and simply the kind of people you run into every day and showcasing their inherent grace and dignity even if a particular song is about an aspect of life that isn’t the most fun. There is an emotional honesty to a Low Cut Connie song that draws you in and perhaps get you to dance. The style draws some inspiration from the likes of Sly & The Family Stone and Aretha Franklin and their gift for insightful social commentary inside an undeniably moving and exuberant bit of music as well as early rock and roll and infused with a touch of punk spirit and charismatic stage presence. The music combines high energy with raw vulnerability and compassion showing how that combination can not just be exciting but cathartic and good for the soul.
Over the years Low Cut Connie has garnered attention from public figures and high profile musicians such as Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Howard Stern and Nick Hornby. Obama included the track “Boozophilia” (from the 2012 album Call Me Sylvia) on his Summer Spotify playlist for 2015. Since then the group has released a handful of critically acclaimed albums, been featured on television, performed at festivals like Newport Folk Festival, Bonnaroo and Pickathon and otherwise built a devoted cult following and expanding collaborative work and recordings. Then on February 13, 2025 Weiner put out a statement about canceling the band’s scheduled March 19, 2025 performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in response to President Trump’s takeover of the institution. The invite to perform had been extended prior but the newly re-elected president’s legacy and policies promoting racism, hate generally and authoritarianism was and is antithetical to even the conceit of human decency much less the diversity of the band’s fanbase. Other artists canceled their own performances and otherwise resigned from the Center’s board of artistic advisors. That may Low Cut Connie released the acoustic version of the single “Livin’ in the USA,” a song that didn’t have explicitly topical references but the music video and the sentiments of the song seemed to be a critique of the Trump administration’s radical immigration policies and the illegal and unconstitutional actions of ICE throughout the country not to mention talk even in the previous administration of stripping legal immigrants of their citizenship status. And by extension that being something that could be done to anyone that dared to oppose the Trump regime. The song got Weiner threats online of violence and death thus vindicating the song’s message completely.
In February 2026 Low Cut Connie released the electric version of “Livin’ in the USA” as a peek into the forthcoming 8th studio album Livin’ in the USA out July 3, 2026. The album itself is a vivid set of snapshots into the American character and psyche. At a time when it feels like things are falling apart and on the verge of collapse, this new set of songs sees past the divisions without ignoring sources of conflict and despair and keys in on the hope inherent to being weary of things being desperate in a climate of ambient chaos, menace and oppression. Throughout the ten songs we hear stories of human connection and the ways in which we can alienate ourselves from others and from our own hearts. It doesn’t necessarily offer solutions but offers resonant emotional truth in a time when we are bombarded by lies and misinformation by not just the president but the oligarch/technocrat-captured media and social media. It’s a record the reminds us that analog human experience is our best hope for liberation from the perils of the current era.
Tuesday | 06.02 What: Lip Critic, Flatwounds, Public Opinion and Bejalvin When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Lip Critic is a digital hardcore/noise rock band from NYC that recently put out its new album Theft World. Its high energy, confrontational performance style and truly genre-bending music has already garnered it a bit of a cult following. Fans of Sleaford Mods, Gilla Band and Model/Actriz will appreciate the inventiveness, unusual and inspired sonic choices and overall energy of Lip Critic.
Ladytron, photo by Anna Levin
Wednesday | 06.03 What: Ladytron “Paradises” When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: UK experimental pop band Ladytron made a big splash early on helping to pioneer what came to be known as electroclash with inventive production incorporating retro sounds and aesthetics but with modern sensibilities and minimalism. As the band has evolved it is sometimes considered a shoegaze band for some of the guitar sounds it employed in the mid-to-late 2000s but all along the band had more in common with downtempo groups and dance music ideas. With its new album Paradises the group is well within more electronic dance territory but with rich, saturated synth tones and clear melodic lines and the usual, transporting, deeply atmospheric sounds. Like a science fiction soundtrack of a near future you’d want to live in rather than the dystopia we’re living with in the moment.
White Rose Motor Oil, photo courtesy the artists
Friday | 06.05 What: Graveyard Choir, The Milk Blossoms, White Rose Motor Oil When: 7 Where: The Skylark Lounge Why: Before retiring In the Whale in 2025, Nate Valdez was already using Graveyard Choir as an outlet for his more Americana songwriting. But as a full-fledged band with In the Whale drummer Eric Riley joining in the new project Graveyard Choir began after their former band folded. The two musicians had taken that project about as far as one can touring regularly and garnering a regional and even national fanbase fairly independently and by word of mouth. The new band isn’t like a garage rock Melvins, more like a bluesy alt-country band with an ear for mood and atmosphere. The Milk Blossoms are an experimental pop band that has recently expanded its own sounds to including more electronic elements and processed sounds but with Harmony Rose’s emotionally rich vocals and poetic storytelling at the center. White Rose Motor Oil is a very underrated band that plays regionally throughout the front range delivering its own vibrant brand of rockabilly-inflected Americana and a touch of punk spirit.
Yot Club, photo by Rachel Biggs
Saturday | 06.06 What:Yot Club w/Renny Conti When: 7 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: John Ryan Kaiser was perfecting his particular style of bedroom pop when he was writing music under the name Amateur Observer and releasing his songs via SoundCloud like many a truly underground songwriter of the 2010s (and even now). By 2019 he had taken on the moniker Yot Club perhaps as a play on the genre of yacht rock. His more recent music has the earnest charm and economic songwriting of the best bedroom pop but with higher end production so that his music has more tonal richness. His new album Simpleton (2026) is filled with song names as spare as the title track but each embodies a core concept of the confessional songwriting that runs through the record. Kaiser’s vocals are processed to the point of bordering on hyper pop but the production always feels just the right amount of mood and atmosphere so that Kaiser’s lyrics have maximum impact to offer catharsis for life’s melancholic moments and struggles. Opening the show is Renny Conti. The latter, according to a 2025 interview with WHUS, came up playing metalcore and punk as a teen but when he changed coasts for school from the Bay Area to New York his transformation as a musician was under way and his 2025 self-titled album sounded like he had spent more than a little time immersed in the likes of Elliott Smith, Nick Drake and maybe even the more folk end of Animal Collective. Fully blending organic folk pop with electronic production there is a pastoral gentleness to his music infused with a sense of wonder and emotional sensitivity and nuance that is sometimes reminiscent of a Phil Elverum project.
I’m A Boy, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 06.06 What:Red Tack, I’m a Band and Chef Andre When: 9/9:30 Where: Lion’s Lair Why: Red Tack is Ted Thacker who has been a prominent musician and songwriter in the Denver underground music scene first making waves perhaps as a member of experimental punk band Baldo Rex in the 90s. Also in the 90s through the 2000s he played as a member of power pop band Veronica. These days it’s more difficult to pin down any kind of style and that’s probably for the best because Thacker’s songwriting voice is unique. I’m a Band is the new incarnation of the band I’m a Boy with Jimmi Nasi as singer/guitarist. He appears to be inspired by the power of solid songwriting to inspire the musician and listener and though steeped in classic and alternative rock there is a fresh energy to Nasi’s performance and songwriting that has kept his projects worth witnessing and hearing. Chef Andre is a duo whose recent album Songs of Mehrhoff was inspired in part by the poetry of Charlie Merhoff but musically it’s more like a baroque pop and calypso fusion.
Carrellee, photo from Bandcamp
Sunday | 06.07 What:CD Ghost w/Carrellee and Hex Cassette When: 7 Where: HQ Why: CD Ghost is a dream pop band from Los Angeles whose forthcoming album When The Rain Stops has some of that chillwave flavor from a decade and a half ago. The title track is reminiscent of “Eyes Without a Face” by Billy Idol but with more delicate vocals yet a similar saturated atmospheric quality that renders both songs instantly relistenable. Hex Cassette from Denver will bring his own ear worm industrial dance music to the show with a live performance that is both confrontational and highly animated as well as wickedly charming. Carrellee is a darkwave artist from Madison, Wisconsin whose moody dream pop has an impressive depth of atmospheric emotional resonance. Her song “Stay” was a standout on the soundtrack to the quasi-found footage film Frogman (2023) and in some ways elevated the movie. Her 2022 album Scale of Dreams, from which the song was borrowed, is front to back a reflection on seeking clarity in one’s own mind adrift in mixed emotions. The 2025 self-titled album seems to have some more forward momentum in its rhythms but still reaching for meaning in a world that seems to be short on that for many if not most people. Fans of Madeline Goldstein need to check out Carrellee.
TsuShiMaMiRe, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 06.09 What:TsuShiMaMiRe, The Tammy Shine and Autumnal When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: TsuShiMaMiRe started up in 1999 in Chiba Prefecture in Japan and have been fairly prolific since with its most recent album Bando wa Mizumono which celebrated its 25 years as a and in 2024. Trying to pigeonhole the band wouldn’t do justice to how it has a real knack for pop songcraft while being very much a punk band without being pop punk. Its core sounds have been eclectic yet distinctive in its exuberant performance style that also weaves in some introspective melodies. Opening is the incomparable The Tammy shine whose debut solo album OK Shine OK released in February 2026. Tammy Ealom was perhaps best previously known and rightfully still so as the frontwoman of indie pop legends Dressy Bessy. The solo album is distinct from the Dressy Bessy material but still with the exuberant charm and thoughtful lyrics for which Ealom is known. The band autumnal from Fort Collins tends to have more pastoral sounds while being well within the realm of a kind of cosmic indie pop.
The Cab, photo by Juan Flores Mena
Tuesday | 06.09 What: The Cab w/Carr When: 6:30 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: The Cab from Las Vegas, Nevada came up during a big upsurge of emo and pop punk in the 2000s and enjoyed a good deal of cache from its first chapter 2004-2015 before going on hiatus for over a decade. The band always leaned more in the pop direction and since it has reunited the band has honed its instincts for crafting songs that are more in the realm of modern R&B and electronic pop but with some instrumental kick behind the music and its signature anthemic songwriting. The Cab finally released its new album Chasing Crowns in April 2026 and is now on its “Back From the Dead Tour” to showcase its new sound and more than likely perform more than a few fan favorites from its earlier years.
Worm, photo by Doomvana
Wednesday | June 10 What: Worm w/Arkwave and Chamber Mage When: 7/7:50 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Worm released its most recent album Necropalace in February 2026. Funeral doom, black metal, death doom, whatever genre tags you want to use the record includes spooky synths that wouldn’t be out of place in either an old Vincent Price movie or a Charles Band production. The spectral and caustic guitar work and sepulchral vocals create a unique sense of death metal theater delivered by the band’s stage presence and visual sense like one of those occult Hammer House films and the later seasons of Dark Shadows. Fantastical but inspired and clearly the product of idiosyncratic creativity.
Claire Rosinkranz, photo courtesy the artist
Wednesday | 06.10 What:Claire Rosinkranz w/Stevie Bill When: 7 Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station Persplexiplex Why: Claire Rosinkranz started writing music from at a young age having helped her composer and mutli-instrumentalist father on songs he was writing for TV and advertisements. She had her breakthrough single of her own material with “Backyard Boy” in 2020 at age 16 which went viral through TikTok. Since then Rosinkranz has honed her songcraft and become a notable artist fusing pop, R&B and rock to give life to a body of work that tackles sometimes sensitive subject matter like chronic illness on her new record My Lover (2026). The songwriter’s melodiously expressive vocals and gift for perfectly blending her singing with vibrant arrangements that lend an orchestral quality to her economical compositions seem to make each song a unique and fresh listening experience without a wasted moment.
Kerosene Ensemble, photo courtesy the artists
Wednesday | 06.10 What:Kerosene Ensemble Plays the Music of John Zorn’s Masada When: 6/7 Where: Dazzle Why: Kerosene Ensemble is a Denver-based jazz quarter that began in 2001 including notable musicians David Thomas Bailey (guitar), Mike Brown (bass), Dean Hirschfield (drums) and Troy Thill (saxophone) who have made a name for themselves in the local avant-garde and experimental music scene. Masada is a band lead by John Zorn from the early 90s assembled to perform compositions by Zorn inspired by the Radical Jewish Culture scene in New York City. Mixing free jazz, punk and exploratory rock the music often sounds like something that could have come from the outer reaches of late 60s jazz with wild flourishes that push the boundaries of established forms of music. And this set of musicians with their collective skills and experiences seem like the only group in Denver capable of attempting to perform any of Zorn’s compositions in the group’s prolific releases.
Metric, photo courtesy the artists
Thursday | 06.11 What: Metric w/Broken Social Scene and Stars When: 5:30/6:30 Where: The Fillmore Auditorium Why: This All The Feelings Tour brings together three of Canada’s finest purveyors of experimental pop music whose projects have shared members over the years with Emily Haines of Metric having been a member of Broken Social Scene and Evan Cranley of Stars currently in that band (Amy Millan of Stars has been a contributor to the Scene as well). Metric released one of its best albums Romanticize the Dive in April with songs that seem to reflect on the early period of its existence. But it doesn’t feel nostalgic so much as tapping into some of the feelings and energy of being a band discovering its identity and striving for creative and professional fulfillment while holding onto personal and artistic integrity, a quality that can be lost or diluted once you’ve experienced any level of commercial success. It contains some of Haines’ most resonant vocal performances of the past several years as well as some of the band’s most focused songwriting. Broken Social Scene dropped its first record in some nine years with Remember the Humans reuniting the band with producer David Newfeld who worked on You Forgot It in People (2002) and Broken Social Scene (2005). The record feels like a deep and affectionate meditation on times past and its impact on one’s current life and the future. It revisits some of the energy of the band’s early records as well and uses that as a vehicle to help reinvent and recontextualize the band’s sound for the current era when things seem to be dissolving on the social and cultural level partly because people have forgotten about the things we took for granted for years and the album is a reminder of those personal and close connections that reverberate beyond.
Broken Social Scene, photo courtesy the artistsCephalic Carnage circa 2009, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday and Sunday | 06.13 and 06.14 What: Flatline Fest When: 5pm start each night Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Flatline Audio is the renowned recording and production studio based in Denver out of which many of the more acclaimed records in the realm of extreme metal have come over the past twenty plus years. This debut festival showcases several of the bands with whom recording engineer and musician Dave Otero who runs Flatline Audio has worked meaning two whole evenings of some of the better metal bands operating today including local skate punk legends Clusterfux, blackened death metal outfit Glacial Tomb, deathgrind giants Cattle Decapitation, technical death metal band Archspire, Fort Collins-based melodic death metal group Allagaeon, doom metal trio In the Company of Serpents, Death-doom outfit Necropanther and jazz-death-metal greats Cephalic Carnage. For full lineup by date please visit the Flatine Fest site.
Quintron and Miss Pussycat in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy
Wednesday | 06.17 What:Quintron and Miss Pussycat w/Pink Lady Monster When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: It would be a disservice to call Quintron and Miss Pussycat merely a kind of psychedelic rockabilly garage rock band. It’s a full multi-media show but with practical effects including puppets and a stage set as well as the high octane live musical performance with costumes. If there is some gimmick to the show the band backs it up with high entertainment value and actually worthwhile songs that are best experienced in person with the concentrated, inspired strangeness of the duo in their element. Opening the show is one of Denver’s best bands who have experimented with camp with aspects of the live show which is also highly energetic without a theatrical and dramatic flourish but also with songs that stand on their own in the realm of No Wave post-punk jazz funk.
Midwife in 2025, photo by Tom Murphy
Thursday | 06.18 What:Midwife, Amulets and Devin Shaffer When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Three of the most important artists operating within the broad realm of ambient and existential folk music on one bill is a rare thing particularly when they’re based in disparate parts of the country. But Amulets has worked with Midwife and both have crossed paths with Devin Shaffer over the past several years. One thing all three have in common is the ability to channel emotional vulnerability and grace into songs of great delicacy and deep emotional resonance although each also has a different musical style. All have released transcendent records in the past year and a half and this is a rare opportunity to see them all together on the same bill.
Air Moons, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 06.20 What: Air Moons, Ripcords album release and Gila Teen When: 7pm doors, 8pm show, $10 Where: East Fax Tap Why: Air Moons is a psychedelic pop/indie rock quartet from Denver. Its membership includes current members of Salads and Sunbeams and A Strange Happening. The band hasn’t played many shows yet but the strong songwriting and performances including exquisite multi-part harmonies were there from the band’s first show last year. Gila Teen has long been one of the better bands from Denver with thoughtful and vulnerable lyrics deeply observant of personal psychology and social dynamics. Sort of a mix of dream pop, emo and post-punk with a charmingly raw quality that means the band avoids tropes ably. Ripcords are releasing their debut album You Should Not Continue In This Fashion in an official capacity with this release show. If you were fortunate enough to see recent shows you could pick up a CD as you’re likely able to for this performance. The trio is steeped in 90s grunge in a way that doesn’t feel like they borrowed some of the vibe. There is an intensity and a weaving in of thrash and heavy blues rock that gives one the impression of the same energy as early Alice in Chains but with more aggression.
Molly Tuttle, photo by Ebru Yildiz
Saturday | 06.20 What:Molly Tuttle w/Pixie & The Partygrass Boys and Mair When: 7:30 Where: Arvada Center Why: In a career that has yielded rightfully acclaimed albums in a bluegrass style, Molly Tuttle’s 2025 album So Long Little Miss Sunshine didn’t completely break with what has made Tuttle a notable artist but thoroughly leapt in new musical directions. Bits of country and pop sensibility were already part of Tuttles previous two records but the new album feels like something that doesn’t fit neatly into a box yet sounds like a natural next step forward as an artist. The title along is clever enough a nod to a shedding of a previous musical identity and the songs are like stories of that journey in short chapters as Tuttle delivers the sort of intimate yet lively songs that have garnered her an increasingly wider audience. There is even a contribution from Charli XCX on the song “I Love It” hinting at Tuttle’s embrace of pop songcraft beyond expected sources.
Sir Richard Bishop in 2013, photo by Tom Murphy
Monday | 06.22 What:Sir Richard Bishop w/Debaser, Eli Wendler and Flaming Tongues Above When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Sir Richard Bishop was a member of experimental rock band Sun City Girls from 1981-2026 and though part of the same punk scene that yielded Meat Puppets and JFA, brought together free improv, poetry, surf rock, tape collage and non-Western musical styles for a unique sound that has had an impact on American avant-garde underground music since. As a solo artist, Bishop has expanded upon that early foundation and threading together non-western folk styles with American primitive guitar aesthetics. He released the album Hillbilly Raga in 2025 and is on the verge of the more Middle Eastern sounding Hillbilly Erotica in 2026.
Squid Pisser, photo by Tom Murphy
Tuesday | 06.23 What:Squid Pisser w/Victim of Fire and Cop Killer When: 7 Where: Hi-Dice Why: Squid Pisser is a mutant synthesis of grindcore, noise rock and No Wave with a gross-out aesthetic fitting considering its members include Tommy Mehan of GWAR and Cancer Christ, Michael Armendariz from Duck Duck Goose and Melted Bodies and Seth Carolina of Starcrawler. Live, it’s definitely something different like a more commited to the costume Slipknot with generally more interesting and confrontational music and performance style. Victim of Fire is a Denver-based hardcore band who don’t bother to not lean into thrash, death metal and grind influences and with superb musicianship and incisive lyrics. Cop Killer has a name bound to get it in trouble but its own version of early-hardcore-inspired punk definitely delivers the goods with a performance style that is fiery and intense the way you’d hope to witness.
Family Worship Center, photo by Sequoia Woods
Wednesday | 06.24 What: Family Worship Center w/Smoker Dad and Jesus Christ Taxi Driver When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Family Worship Center recently released its new album Only Visiting on June 12, 2026. The record is a vibrant psychedelic pop offering with a back story of a claim that the songs were recorded in 1974-1975 and recently unearthed. To be fair the songwriting is vivid with a recording attention to detail worthy of the finest songwriting of that decade like something that might have been recorded at Muscle Shoals sound studio if some kind of cult with a collective coherence had a faith band that was worth listening to steeped in R&B, funk, country, psychedelia and classic pop. This is not like Ya Ho Wha 13, the house commune band of The Source Family. Whatever the exact origins and motivations the new record is one of the best albums of its kind since the 1970s. Live, it’s a 10-member band and seeing that happen will be an event in itself especially at the Hi-Dive that actually hosted Sloppy Jane’s sprawling live band in 2022.
Soy Celesté, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 06.26 What: Tiny Humans EP release w/Battle Pussy, Soy Celesté, Team Nonexistent When: 6pm doors, 7 show Where: Mutiny Information Cafe Why: Tiny Humans is releasing its self-titled debut EP. The band is clearly coming from a place of the kind of punk that took the more punk end of 90s grunge more seriously in terms of its sound and spirit not to mention lyrics that don’t mince words about personal and social struggle. Battle Pussy is a politically-infused punk band that sounds like the next phase of what Riot Grrrl started with fiery vocals. Soy Celesté is similarly inspired by Riot Grrrl punk but weaves in Latin folk and a more expansive social critique with lyrics in Spanish as well as English paired with a spirited performance style from lead singer Celesté Martinez and back by Denver jazz and Latin music heavy hitters Joshua Trinidad (trumpet) and Yuzo Nieto (tenor saxophone, bass). And Team Nonexistent brings a queer punk sensibility to its own 90s-infused punk fury.
Low Cut Connie, photo by Danny Clinch
Friday and Saturday | 06.26 and 06.27 What: Low Cut Connie w/J. Roddy & The Automatic Band and The Patti Fiasco (06.26) and Queen Frog (06.27) When: 7pm both nights Where: The Aggie Theatre (06.26) and The Bluebird Theater (06.27) Why: Low Cut Connie counts among its fans the likes of Barack Obama, Elton John, Springsteen and Nick Hornby. But that distinction means little if the music itself isn’t worth the attention and in this case Low Cut Connie has been making vital, insightful, socially aware rock and roll since the group emerged out of the solo performances of songwriter and lead vocalist Adam Weiner. The band really got off the ground in Philadelphia but Weiner paid his dues playing piano in dive bars, gay bars, karaoke joints, restaurants and honky tonks. He has performed in anarchist collectives often to people who were overtly not into what he was doing. But that taught the artist to really deliver in an engaging way. The band’s debut album Get Out the Lotion (2011) was a surprise hit with critics and audiences and the group’s spirited, soulful garage rock was a standout from the then nascent modern attempt at a classic rock sound because the music stood on its own apart from obvious musical reference points. As the group’s songwriting and live shows evolved you could hear in the music a through line of compassion for regular human existence expressed with a passion, compassion and poetry that felt missing from a lot of the music of bands trying to be a new version of Led Zeppelin or evoking a Laurel Canyon vibe. From then to now the songwriting has captivated a wide audience from all walks of life. On February 13, 2025 Low Cut Connie was the first act to announce it would not perform at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts following President Trump’s takeover of the formerly non-partisan arts institution and, albeit temporarily as it turns out, adding his own name as well as politicizing its board of trustees and programming. In May 2025 Low Cut Connie released the single “Livin’ in the USA” which with a grace and intensity criticized the Trump administration’s immigration policies and the tactics employed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the CBP. The single garnered the band threats of violence and death threats. Coming from American fascists and their ilk the song, admittedly powerful, immediately became one of the most important protest songs of the current era and one of the most musically commanding. In 2026 Low Cut Connie releases the album from which the aforementioned became the title track and is currently touring ahead of that release. Go expecting the usual sense of rock theater and heartfelt performances.
Chroma Lips, photo courtesy the artists
Saturday | 06.27 What: Chroma Lips album release for chromaZone w/Wave Decay, Various Blonde and DJ Kleiman When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: For the past few years Chroma Lips have garnered a following locally for its signature fusion of krautrock, post-punk, shoegaze and garage rock. And for this show the band will release its debut full-length chromaZone which is five new songs and five reworked, remastered older songs for a coherent presentation of its catalog of songs up to now. The album has some trippy edge to its sonics yet undeniable pop hooks and vibrant synth work that mean it doesn’t get stuck in some psych jam or prog groove rut. The album released digitally on June 22 but should be available on vinyl for the show. Bonus, one of the opening bands is the fantastic krautrock shoegaze trio Wave Decay.
Entrancer, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 06.28 What: Blanket: Entrancer and Modern Devotion When: 1pm Where: City Park Why: The new season of the Blanket mini-concert series kicks off with the inspired techno/ambient/analog synth compositions/dance music concoctions of Entrancer and the gabber-infused industrial techno of Modern Devotion. This isn’t just some half-baked presentation of the music and the sound system brought for these shows is impressive in its richness and clarity of sound rare for an outdoors gig in general much less something as low key as these events.
Ak’Chamel: The Giver of Illness, photo by Tom Murphy
Tuesday | 06.30 What: Ak’Chamel: The Giver of Illness w/Munly & The Lupercalians When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Ak’Chamel: The Giver of Illness might perhaps be best described as a ritual folk psychedelic performance art group that puts on a show with maybe costumes isn’t the right word but garb intended to put the audience into a different headspace and something from another time, a mystical frame outside the norms of industrial civilization. The music is created from organic and often self-made instrumentation and the live show is not going to be much like anything else you’re going to see in Denver this year unless you see Quintron and Miss Pussycat except this will be radically different from that and yet resonates in that the presentation is executed with a similarly masterful expression of craft. Munly & The Lupercalians too will bring a ritualistic, occult element to its own performance of dark, avant-garde folk.
Wheelchair Sports Camp began as a solo project for rapper/producer Kalyn Heffernan who started releasing music under that moniker around 2009. The project has always benefited from Heffernan’s creative and energetic wordplay honed from growing up as a vocalist and imitating her favorite artists of that time. Since 2009 Wheelchair Sports Camp has become a fixture in Denver underground music but a project that has a footprint well beyond Denver due to fortunate tour and opening slot opportunities and some national press support. After all Heffernan isn’t just a rapper and producer, she’s an activist for disabled communities and really anyone experiencing persecution and prejudice. Her participating in the occupation of then Colorado Cory Gardener in 2017 garnered her pieces in various publications including a feature on Democracy Now! including an interview with legendary investigative journalist Amy Goodman. Which is part of the point of the art, to draw attention to everyday people’s struggles as a means of addressing injustice.
Listen to any Wheelchair Sports Camp track and you will hear a richness and variety of sonics that set the band apart from many other hip-hop projects. Longtime collaborator Jerod Sarlo aka Qknox brings a deep underground electronic dance sensibility informed by classic hip-hop production to various recordings. Other members of the live and recording band include or have included Gregg Ziemba on drums, Joshua Trinidad on trumpet, Wesley Watkins on synth, Tom Hagerman and Jeanie Schroder of DeVotchKa on accordion/strings and tuba respectively, experimental hip-hop luminaries RAREBYRD$, Abi McGaha Miller on sax and vocals and more recently Jello Biafra, Mark Bliesner aka Radio Pete, Michelle Rocquet and Kimya Dawson. A debut album was released in 2016 called No Big Deal and that era of the band was very avant-garde jazz forward in the sounds but it also showcased Heffernan’s development as a lyrics offering deep personal lyrics and incisive social commentary. Between then and now the COVID-19 pandemic happened and Wheelchair Sports Camp did a soundtrack to a theatre production of Alice in Wonderland in 2021 as well as music for an installation at Meow Wolf (Wheelchair Space Kitchen, 2025) and various singles.
In 2026 the second full length oh imperfecta was released via Alternative Tentacles. The imprint is more known for punk but anyone familiar with the label’s roster knows it’s the home of weird punks in general and other artists outside the mainstream. The new Wheelchair Sports Camp album feels somehow both stripped down and maximal in impact. The songwriting feels incredibly focused and not just for this band. The songs address the instability and peril of the world we’re living through at the moment and understandable emotional reactions to all of that when your own life could use with some maintenance to put in motion to where you want it to be but still having to find the daily strength to get through to those better moments. The song “Dead” is a delightfully pointed song about how aspects of our warped culture deems certain people disposable as a drag on society and how that designation can be applied to anyone when the powerful want it to. It’s a hip-hop album with that sensibility and production guiding its style and sound but its spirit is rebellious and very punk in attitude.
Listen to our interview with Kalyn Heffernan and Gregg Ziemba on Bandcamp and follow Wheelchair Sports Camp at the links below.
The Picture Tour, April 10, 2026, photo by Tom Murphy
The Picture Tour is a shoegaze/post-punk trio from Denver that started as a songwriting vehicle for guitarist/singer Billy Armijo around 2018. The project really got off the ground as a live band in 2023 after the debut album Before the Sound, Before the Light was released in February 2022. Armijo was born in New Mexico but spent core years of his youth in Colorado as he developed as a songwriter in the mid-90s as someone who embraced moody post-punk like The Cure and Joy Division at a time when even mainstream alternative rock popular on radio was more or less the opposite of those sounds. What darkness was present in commercial music was presented in a different way than brooding and more emotionally nuanced post-punk. Armijo was in high school bands but nothing that really recorded until after he went to college and he started recording solo material under the moniker The Bedsit Infamy starting around 2003. The outlets for sharing music at that time was limited but Armijo’s songs caught the attention of the now defunct Banazan Records in Orange, California which released lungs, my heart. blood, my stomach in 2008 (at least according to Discogs) on CD. Armijo’s songcraft and homegrown production was a clear standout at a time when what would now be called bedroom pop was enjoying a bit of a renaissance. As a live act The Bedsit Infamy played shows from 2008-2011 with live members included Brad Turner, who Armijo had met in college, and who himself was a gifted home recorder of experimental pop music as Nuts + Berries and Ian Schofield.
The Bedsit Infamy released a final album in 2014 called Ashes reflecting the the arc of music post-live act. Although Armijo wrote superb pop songs with that band it didn’t represent his ongoing interest in post-punk and shoegaze and he had by 2013 joined Emerald Siam, a rock band that combined gritty garage rock sound, atmospheric melodies and emotional catharsis. The group, fronted by Denver music luminary Kurt Ottaway (Twice Wilted, Tarmints, The Overcasters) was a prominent act in the Denver scene for around a decade before it dissolved in late 2022/early 2023. When The Picture Tour debut live in 2023 it was a trio comprised of Armijo, Mike Genova on bass and Drew Dyer on drums. And the songs from the first record (which had percussion contributions from John McIntire of Tortoise) came to vivid life and the melancholic but emotionally rich vocals alongside strong rhythms and optimal guitar tone immediately established The Picture Tour as one of Denver’s best post-punk bands with some shoegaze soundscaping and garage rock edge. That trio recorded a sophomore album Blood. Machine. Gasoline. released in 2025. The album was like a deep dive into the culture and mythology of night time urban life and recreational driving in the darkness like music for a David Lynch or Nicholas Winding Refn movie never made. I captured the romance of a time in the Mile High City that is long in the past but which can be relived in the mind through art when not everything seemed to be figured out or repurposed into a technbro fauxhemian playground and bland “development” of dubious purpose and longevity. In early 2025 it was announced the Dyer was moving out of Colorado and in his place there was John Zucco from Gothic noise rock band Reposer. His first show with the band distinguished him as a great fit.
Listen to our interview with Billy Armijo on Bandcamp and follow The Picture Tour at the links below.
White Satan is set to release his debut album with Farm Toad, wolf, on May 30, 2026 with the performance at The Black Monarch in Victor Colorado with master Theremin player Victoria Lundy as a guest. Whether or not White Satan is a lampoon of a sinister Gothic Americana figure and/or pure performance art with great craft and execution behind it, he is nevertheless a “Denver Country Doom Rebel” and for the new album he and collaborators Gregory Hill, Maureen Hearty (both of Farm Toad) and Kim 9 chose to re-imagine country and pop classics of yesteryear into subversive and often unsettling forms. The darkly pastoral renditions include vocals that are not merely spoken word but a kind of performance art that uses the voice as a means of projecting a different mood and perhaps emotional intention with the source material. With covers of “Some Velvet Morning” (Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra), “She Thinks I Still Care” (George Jones), “Wichita Lineman” (Glen Campbell), “Hello I’m a Jukebox” (George Kent) “Hello It’s Me” (Todd Rundgren) it’s also a bit of an homage to a tradition in pop music of an interpretation and putting one’s unique stamp on the song and making it one’s own. White Satan has in the works a heavier album on he way but for now you can witness the brilliant weirdness for yourself live and perhaps pick up a CD of the album.
Listen to our interview with White Satan on Bandcamp and follow his exploits at the links below.
George Usher is an acclaimed and veteran singer/songwriter based in New York who finally realized an ambitious creative vision with his latest record Stevensonville. Some 30 years in development the record is a 12 part song cycle with a special illustration for each song (created by Laurie Webber). The 12” LP is limited to 200 copies via Strothard Bulldog Productions and released March 20, 2026 and it includes a 28-page booklet with the lyrics and the illustrations in a gorgeous presentation of a high concept record. The album tells stories of inhabitants of the titular town after the fashion of Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology of Our Town by Thornton Wilder. The song is in a power pop mode but with a sophistication of songcraft that brings with it great nuance of mood and atmosphere even when it comes off as more straight ahead pop and rock. The album is an ambitious work from the music to the presentation the likes of which we rarely see now or ever and the finished product is a work of art in itself that invites delving deep into the album as a complete work.
Listen to our interview with George Usher on Bandcamp and follow him at the links below.
Howard Wuelfing, photo courtesy the Howard Wuelfing
Howard Wuelfing is a writer, musician, zinester and publicist involved in the USA and even international music underground based primarily on the East Coast. He has been involved in bands like The Nurses, The Slickee Boy and Underhaven and recently released a seven inch with legendary recording engineer and musician Don Zientara. During his long career Wuelfing has written for Washington Post, Creem, Spin, Your Flesh, Forced Exposure, Boston Rock, The ob and The Village Voice. As a publicist he was involved with Columbia Records and JEM Records as well as his own Howlin’ Wuelf Media. His work also appeared in the first volume of Where the Wild Gigs Were. Wuelfing has helped to promote numerous bands across decades and his reach is wider than would ever be obvious. In 2025 DiWulf Publishing run by Wuelfing’s wife Amy Yates Wuelfing and Steven DiLodovico (who put out the great No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes: An Oral History of the Legendary City Gardens published in 2014) released Descenes and Discords: An Anthology. The large format book collects the entire run of Howard Wuelfing’s late 1970s and early 1980s zines Descenes and Discords. Descenes shined a light on D.C.’s punk and post-punk community and Discords took up a more national range of coverage. The book is filled with full facsimilies preserving its old school layout and Xeroxed aesthetic. The volume includes new commentary from Wuelfing as well as a conversation between the author and Ian MacKaye whom we all know from his work in Minor Threat, Fugazi and other projects as well as a forward by D.C.-based cultural critic Mark Jenkins to establish the historical context for readers. It is an important document for a time, a milieu and a subculture that has helped shape American culture to this day.
Friday | 05.01 What: TRAITRS w/Occvlts and Redwing Blackbird and KillYouClub DJs When: 7 Where: HQ Why: Toronto’s TRAITRS released their new, fourth, album Possessor on March 13, 2026. The record solidified the duo’s gift for combining icy synth melodies with emotionally-charged vocals to match lyrics that feel like they’re a declaration against a world that currently seems to pile tragedy upon oppression at an increasing pace with no seeming relief in sight. The songs come across like a resistance to a sense of inevitability and an embrace of life and humanity. Strident and melodic bass lines provide an anchoring quality along with the expertly crafted drum machine beats. Fans of Pornography period The Cure will hear plenty of resonance here. Redwing Blackbird from Denver opening also draws plenty of inspiration from The Cure in the guitar work but the electronics are a bit darker and the songwriting more pointed in its social critique.
Tassles, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 05.01 What: Disgustingest, Insipidus, Monkey Man and Tassles When: 7 Where: D3 Why: Disgustingest is a brutal almost to the point of abstraction death metal band from Denver with song titles that seem to aim for the extremes of the music and to the brink of the absurd where humor meets authenticity. Insipidus is more a technical death metal band with passages of melody and feral vocals mixed in with the sonic brutality. More in the vein of Slayer and Possessed than Death but with a similar level of instrumental virtuosity. Monkey Man is also a band tha has plenty of technical ability on display in the performance but its music is more like sludge metal in the vein of a more blues-infused Melvins. Tassles won’t be metal. It’ll just have a similar level of intensity but its own music is rooted in bedroom dream pop but with robust guitar sounds and a rhythm section that elevates the already sophisticated songwriting to something raw and epic. But without sacrificing the introspective and vulnerable quality of the songs.
Abrams, photo from Bandcamp
Friday | 05.01 What: Abrams, Colfax Speed Queen and Rugburn When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Abrams just put out its latest record Loon. The Denver band has often navigated the sonic territory of post-metal/stoner rock and grunge but this new album leans further into its atmospheric instincts almost to the point of the album being a heavy shoegaze album but with plenty of math-rock riffs and experiments in rhythm and creative time signatures. Fans of Cave In and Coalesce will find something to dig into with the new set of songs. Opening are bands on the more psychedelic end of the Denver scene with the great garage psych group Colfax Speed Queen and the more straight ahead psych rock band Rugburn.
NEPTUNE, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 05.02 What: NEPTUNE, Debaser and Nightshark When: 8 Where: Glob Why: NEPTUNE is the “PostPythagorean junk rock” band from Boston. Live it’s like seeing people who built their instruments out of non-musical components or modified pieces of instruments to create unique sounds and a combination of it all along with electronic components so that you will see a band unlike really anyone else out there now unless you get to see something of a vintage Einstürzende Neubauten set. Debaser is a mostly drums and also modified other instruments solo project comprised of Monkey Mania founder Josh Taylor. It comes off as something like lo-fi jazz and noise rock also unlike many other things. Nightshark is a wild free jazz punk trio that has been around for over 20 years but relatively recently got back together to occasionally play a show if it’s something that seems worth the time to bring together the elemental forces of its members.
Trauma Ray, photo by Erasmo Viera
Saturday | 05.02 What:Trauma Ray w/Glixen, Keep and Money When: 6 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Trauma Ray is a shoegaze band from Forth Worth, Texas that put out its latest EP Carnival in February. While there is plenty of melancholic atmosphere across its five songs the EP showcases the heavier side of the band’s sound which seems to have always been a part of its songwriting particularly experienced live like the members of the band came up on Deftones and the more atmospheric emo. But it’s not a metal record and Trauma Ray gives us ample sonic introspection and gentle energies. Glixen from Phoenix is in a similar lane with the heavier shoegaze sound but its guitar style is more winding and warping like they have been inspired in part by both My Bloody Valentine and We Are Gutting a Body of Water. Keep from Virginia is also something of a shoegaze band but its guitar sonics lean post-punk and together with the vocals suggest some influence from The Chameleons and The Church. Money from Oklahoma City may be the least obviously shoegaze since its sound is more in the vein of a post-hardcore band that possibly discovered Failure and Hum in its journey of musical development.
Saturday | 05.02 What: Ritual Noize Fest: Hex Cassette (4), Whorticulture (4:40), Plack Blague (5:20), Julien-K (6:10), Aesthetic Perfection (7:15), Lords of Acid (8:45) and She Wants Revenge (10:25) When: 3 Where: Reelworks Why: This is a solid showcase of a certain vein of newer and classic artists in the realm of music popular in the Goth scene. Hex Cassette is an industrial dance project with a humorously confrontational performance style and genuinely well-crafted and heartfelt pop. Whorticulture is what might be described as an industrial dark pop duo from Denver in an EBM vein. Julien-K includes Ryan Shuck of Orgy fame in a different kind of industrial rock band with a touch of metal in its guitar sound. Aesthetic Perfection is more on the techno end of industrial pop with flourishes of post-punk style bass and guitar in the mix. Lords of Acid is of course the legendary band whose music has most often been, and rightfully so, associated with Goth-industrial music but is also rooted in acid house, Belgian techno and whose live shows are often the spectacle that the name suggests. The group’s influential, 1991 debut album Lust was recently repressed onto double pink vinyl. She Wants Revenge is one of the post-punk revival bands of the 2000s whose song “Tear You Apart” has become a perennial hit among Goth night DJs.
Bush, photo courtesy the artists
Sunday | 05.03 What:Bush w/Mammoth and James and the Cold Gun When: 6 Where: Fillmore Auditorium Why: When grunge and alternative rock was waning in popularity toward the mid-90s Bush released Sixteen Stone in 1994 in the wake of the death of Kurt Cobain and thus the breakup of Nirvana and helped boost alternative music into popular culture for at least a few more years. Comparisons were inevitably made with the melodic distorted guitar and vocal style. But one element that wasn’t seemingly compared was how Gavin Rossdale had songs critiquing what is now called toxic masculinity at a time when that wasn’t popular for rock bands except as made prominent earlier by Nirvana. Rossdale also had an anti-war and terrorism song in “Bomb” and he addressed issues of managing insecurity with honesty on “Little Things.” Shortly into the new century Bush split but reunited in 2010 and has been more prolific than it had been during its initial run including its 2025, and tenth, album I Beat Loneliness. The latter reflects how Bush has all along embraced sounds and styles of music outside of rock without sacrificing crafting a solid hook yet augmenting the emotional resonance of the music with production that enhances the group’s sonic palette rather than stay stuck in another time and trying to regain past glory.
Mock Media, photo by John de Courcy
Sunday | 05.03 What: Mac DeMarco and Mock Media When: 6:30 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Mock Media opens this show with its songs that sound like a fascinating mix of power pop and The Clash. A casual listen to the title track of its forthcoming album Rat Bastard (out July 17, 2026 via Mac’s Record Label) it sounds like something of a tale of life in a small town and its social dynamics but rendered in poetic terms and like a song from a musical about that milieu and its citizens. But listen to the band’s earlier work and its style of post-punk is equal parts No Wave funk and like they were keen listeners of the ways Wire switched up its rhythms in an instant throughout a song. Of course the headliner is Mac DeMarco who is a modern indie rock legend but one whose own body of work is underrated for the sensitivity of his lyrics and the inventiveness of his songwriting and guitar work.
Joyce Manor, photo by Dan Monick
Monday | 05.04 What:Joyce Manor w/Militarie Gun, Teen Mortgage and Combat When: 5:30 Where: Fillmore Auditorium Why: Joyce Manor released its seventh studio album I Used to Go to This Bar in January 2026. As the title suggests the album reflects on changes in life, one’s habits and how that intersects with the world around you. When the group emerged in the late 2000s it was part of an underground that was rediscovering pop punk and emo and creating a new version of music influenced by the essence of both but one that didn’t lose sight of the how that style of songwriting can fully explore everyday life in a deep way and with emotional openness. As the group has progressed it has just refined its songwriting without losing the exuberance of the performances and a willingness to embrace personal growth as part of the process of writing unpretentious songs with integrity and immediacy.
Cut Worms, photo by Caroline GohlkeThe New Pornographers, photo courtesy the artists
Tuesday | 05.05 What: The New Pornographers w/Will Sheff (of Okkervill River) When: 7 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: On March 27, 2026 The New Pornographers released the new album The Former Site Of. Reviews of the album have remarked upon how it’s a much more melancholic and reflective set of songs than much of the band’s previous material. Many of the songs are driven by synths almost as much by vocals so the whole thing comes off like something futuristic tapping into some 70s psychedelic art rock as a frame of reference. The songs seem to be a catalog of examining liminal periods in once’s life either looking back or in that moment when one way of being and living has been replaced by another in a definitive way that often occurs to us after we’ve already made that crossing over but coming to terms with how and why things changed. It still has the band’s signature orchestral sophistication and emotional warmth in the songwriting but it’s also the band stretching its songwriting wings in a way that works.
Wednesday | 05.06 What:Cut Worms w/Angela Autumn When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Max Clarke worked with producer Jeff Tweedy on his latest album Transmitter (Jagjaguwar, March 13, 2026) at Wilco’s Loft studio. Whether either fact, as with the involvement of any prominent musician/producer, improves one’s music can be of dubious virtue (although not here) but Clarke’s songwriting speaks for itself. For this album Clarke examines the liminal psychological states as a working musician and someone trying to make their way in a world that can often feel tentative and where finding secure footing can feel elusive. The warm vocals and introspective power pop guitar jangle suit well this existential navigation of one’s internal world as the lens through which to come to terms with the disjointed, often overwhelming and fraught period of history we’re currently tenuously surviving.
Faetooth, photo from Bandcamp
Thursday | 05.07 What: Faetooth w/Latter and Nightosphere When: 7 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Faetooth is the “fairy doom metal” band from Los Angeles who completely meld modern classical sounds with heavy guitar moods and a touch of the ethereal. Their debut full-length Remnants of the Vessel (2022) revealed a band not stuck in neat genre category and its often delicate melodies transitioning to colossal, fiery passages has more in common with the likes of Kylesa and SubRosa than the average doom band. Its 2025 album Labyrinthine enhanced and more fully integrated the band’s musical instincts into a unified aesthetics that is expansively fiery and transporting. Nightosphere from Kansas City is like-minded but more in the slowcore and heavy shoegaze vein. Chicago’s Latter is pure catharsis as industrial noise rock with strands of cathartic emo and songs that take aim at the social and psychological forces that threaten to undermine our sense of self and our dignity.
MIke Watt and the Missing Men in 2011, photo by Tom Murphy
Thursday and Friday | 05.07 and 05.08 What: Mike Watt and the Missing Men w/Slim and María de Cessna (05.07) and Büddies (Jon Snodgrass, Bill Stevenson and Jeremy Bergo) (05.08) When: 8 Where: HQ Why: Mike Watt and the Missingmen has been going 20 years now formed by of course the legendary Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Stooges, Dos etc), Tom Watson (Slovenly, Red Krayola and others) and Raul Morales (FYP, Killer Dreamer, Leeches et. al.). Given the C.V. of the trio the punk rock cred is there but this band completely fuses that spirit with the sophistication and open-ended structure of free jazz and the live show is always more ferocious and impressive than you might expect walking in expecting something good to begin with. On the first night of this run is Slim and María de Cessna and yes Slim of the most recent Auto Club fame. The second night is a bit of a punk super group called Büddies that includes Jon Snodgrass of Armchair Martian and Drag the River and Bill Stevenson of Descendents and Black Flag.
King Tuff, photo by Wyndham Garnett
Saturday | 05.09 What: King Tuff wGabriel Bernini When: 7 Where: Globe Hall Why: King Tuff released his seventh album MOO on March 27, 2026. In some ways it’s a return to the raw and exuberant garage rock that garnered him a bit of a cult following in his early days. It dispenses with the refinement of songwriting and sound that was perfectly suited to his 2023 album Smalltown Stardust on which he reflected on his past and the experiences that shaped him. The new album comes off more like something from the early 70s with the rough edges left intact and passages where the music sounds like its splintering apart and the meters in the red during the recording process. Think like Free at their wildest and James Gang at their best unhinged moments, mix in some nods to T. Rex and Big Star and you have an idea what you’re in for. Which also means that live King Tuff will be back to music in which he can be completely himself on stage.
Cabaret Voltaire in Birmingham 2025, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 05.10 What: Cabaret Voltaire w/I Speak Machine When: 7 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: Cabaret Voltaire is one of the most influential bands in post-punk and electronic music. From its early days as noise provocateurs and tape collage composers the band progressed into innovating as pioneers of industrial music and synth pop and by the mid-80s its production style and mastery of layering sounds influenced generations of bands, directly with industrial music and electronic pop as well as various strains of electronic dance music. Its songs from the early days have aged well because it was not beholden to styles of the time and the core original trio as aiming to do something that could inspire themselves. Tragically one of the band’s founding members Richard H. Kirk passed away in 2021 as the sole remaining member at that time. In 2025 Stephen Mallinder and Chris Ware announced they would perform again to honor the group’s 50 year legacy in music. The live shows in the UK were a revelation and it was assumed that would be it but a 2026 UK run was announced and perhaps unexpectedly US dates including this one in Denver. Ware won’t be along for the North American shows but the band on hand will not disappoint.
Bandits On the Run, photo courtesy the artists
Sunday | 05.10 What: Alan Doyle w/Bandits On the Run When: 6 Where: Boulder Theater Why: Alan Doyle was a member of well-known Canadian folk rock band Great Big Sea. When the group split in 2013 after a 20-year run Doyle continued on with an acclaimed solo career and is currently touring behind his new album Already Dancing. Along for this tour is NYC-based folk pop trio Bandits On the Run who anticipate the release of their sophomore album Rough Magic due June 12, 2026. The group live and in the studio swaps instruments changing up the dynamic and the energ of the songs. But one of the great appeals of its music is the vibrant vocal harmonies that sync well with its warm string arrangements and delicate yet energetic instrumental arrangements. On the new record the band also seems to create a sense of wonder and space through creative production and imaginative use of field recordings as well.
José González, photo by Ellika Henriksson
Monday | 05.11 What: José González w/Abby Sage When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: José González has gained a global audience for his unique, finger-picking style pastoral folk whether under his own name, with his band Junip or in various collaborations. There is something cosmic about the sound of his songs that have a depth of atmosphere as well as an intimate quality that has meant his music fits in well with the various electronic music producers and DJs with whom he has worked. His new album Against the Dying of the Light, a clear nod to Dylan Thomas’ famous poem, his first in five years is brimming with the delicate and introspective melodies but in employing those elements González has produced a set of songs against the flood of darkness in the current world’s political and too often cultural climate.
Easy Honey, photo by Edwin Keeble
Monday | 05.11 What: Easy Honey w/Galentines and Brink When: 7 Where: Lost Lake Why: Easy Honey is a band from Charleston, South Carolina that has been touring regularly throughout the United States for at least the last few years. Its sound is like a collage of folk, psychedelic surf rock and indie pop in the classic southeastern USA mode. The group’s songs have a vibrant yet gentle quality that sets it apart from many of other bands aiming at a similar fusion of sounds. The latest EP Plaid (out April 30, 2026) was written and recorded over three days in remote Marble, Colorado between the rain forest climate of Grand Mesa and Aspen. Even though the location suggests a touch of rustic luxury the EP sounds focused and exuberant.
Bright Eyes, photo by Autumn De Wilde
Tuesday | 05.12 What:Bright Eyes – 21 Years of Wide Awake & Digital Ash w/Ben Kweller (new date) When: 5:30 Where: Red Rocks Why: In the 2000s who knew that Bright Eyes would become one of those bands that can celebrate 21 years of albums its members wrote in their 20s. But I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005) and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (also 2005) proved that the group could break with expectation and write music in different directions and modes from records like Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002) and Fevers and Mirrors (2000) while not sacrificing the fragile and unvarnished sensitivity the band perfected for those records. Bright Eyes experimented more with what seemed like capturing off the cuff moments in the recording process and leaving in spoken word passages and on into more polished compositions while stiff offering the existential musings that seem to be improvisational free verse structures but have more in common with prose as lyrics which has been a hallmark of lead singer Connor Oberst’s style. Digital Ash in particular expands Bright Eyes’ sound palette by leaning more into the melancholic instincts of the songwriting and incorporating more ambient sounds like maybe the group had absorbed some of what The Microphones were doing. All in all, two underrated albums that will be on display for this show.
Mercury Rev in 2008, photo by Tom Murphy
Tuesday | 05.12 What: Afghan Whigs w/Mercury Rev When: 6:30 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: Before alternative rock was a thing Afghan Whigs formed in 1986 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Combining shambolic garage rock with R&B and soul, Afghan Whigs fit in with the popular musical movements of the 90s and the group released most of its albums from 1990’s Up in It through 2017’s In Spades were released by Sub Pop. Frontman Greg Dulli was and is a charismatic figure with a commanding voice that centers the music with direct emotional connection and literary lyrics. Now the band is celebrating its 40 years as a band with a run with Mercury Rev. The latter formed in 1989 and includes former Flaming Lips member Jonathan Donohue who was in Mercury Rev before that stint and after but his sense of visionary psychedelic music shared with guitarist Grasshopper has evolved from the noisy, beautifully disorienting music of its early days through the cosmic and ambitious, conceptual psychedelic dream pop of its later records and as a live band absolutely hypnotic and otherworldly in a manner that invites the audience into a different psychological space than the one in which they entered the show.
New Candys, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 05.12 What:New Candys w/The Savage Blush and Moonpool When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Venetian psychedelic New Candys started out in fairly familiar territory with fuzzy, psychedelic rock but all along the band’s Krautrock inspirations have been an element that has elevated the outfit outside of the standard psych rock of the past 20 years. Its 2025 album The Uncanny Extravaganza in particular showcased an extensive and fully integrated use of synthesizers as a psychedelic sound.
Dry Cleaning, photo by Max Miechowski
Wednesday | 05.13 What: Dry Cleaning w/Hotline TNT When: 7 Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station Perplexiplex Why: Dry Cleaning from South London is generally described as a post-punk band but ever since the 2021 release of its debut full-length New Long Leg the group has evolved its sound and songwriting with every album. Even singer Florence Shaw’s spoken word poetry/story style delivery has come to include more actual singing most fully present in the band’s new album Secret Love (2026). The unconventional subject matter and the creative social approach to social commentary has been a feature of the band’s output but on the new record those themes seem more direct without seeming didactic. The album was produced by Cate Le Bon and features Chicago music luminaries like Jeff Tweedy and Bruce Lamont and sounds like where No Wave might have gone had it embraced art rock like Roxy Music.
Gelli Haha, Daniela Buvat
Wednesday | 05.13 What: Gelli Haha w/Big Sis at Lost Lake When: 7 Where: Lost Lake Why: Angel Abaya’s creative and visual transformation to Gelli Haha seems to have been complete by the time of the release of her 2025 album Switcheroo (we see what she did there, actually clever). Under her birth name the songwriting was strong though more in the realm of indie rock. As Gelli Haha we get a wonderfully surreal synth pop with the knack for pop hooks intact but rather than beautifully introspective music that gift for finding creative melodies is channeled into synth pop that sounds like something from an 80s dance club that took over from the disco era but as interpreted by a being from another part of the universe with a humorous curiosity about the absurdity of human pop culture. The Gelli Haha material is whimsical yet sincere and artistically playful but not quirky. For the live show expect a great sense of theater with costumes and colorful props fitting the album’s wonderfully unusual cover art.
Chet Faker, photo by Sarah Eiseman
Wednesday | 05.13 What: Chet Faker w/Ideas By Ab When: 7 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: Nicholas James Murphy took up the stage name Chet Faker in homage to jazz great Chet Baker because fans showed up to his gigs expecting a different Nick Murphy. And Murphy tried to retire the moniker in 2016 but returned to using it during the first year or the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe initially it felt inauthentic to use a stage name but in some ways the “faker” part is an ironic contrast because Murphy’s songs feel so vulnerable and genuine. His 2026 album A Love For Strangers in particular seems to come from the perspective of someone who is coming back into themselves and assessing his own limitations and failings that can be swept aside when you’re headlong into a career or another endeavor when your focus is on doing what is immediately before you and you don’t have the time or perspective to really deep dive into who you are and what you’re about much less who you want to be and what you want your life to prioritize. On the new record it sounds like Murphy has grappled with those issues and put some of what he feels he’s learned into resonant pop songs.
Snail Mail, photo by Daria Kobayashi Ritch
Wednesday | 05.13 What:Snail Mail w/Sharp Pins and Armlock When: 7 Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Lindsey Jordan distinguished herself as a noteworthy and creative songwriter with her 2018 debut album Lush which released when she was 18 years old. Jordan’s personal insight on into her next album Valentine (2021) was expressed in dramatic and colorful fashion with her guitar work expanding into the realm of shoegaze without losing a knack for anthemic melodies and combining introspection with a scrappy energy. The new Snail Mail record Ricochet is a further development of Jordan’s songwriting. The nervy energy that informed the first two records is processed differently and you can hear Jordan taking the time to focus on the feelings that course through us and experience them as they are and not build them up as some kind of end all be all of life because you’re sure going to feel strongly and poignantly about something over the course of your life and part of the human experience as part of a greater continuum of existence. With help from Aron Kobayashi Ritch of Momma, Jordan gives the new songs a vibrant focus.
Broncho, photo by Bryon Helm
Thursday | 05.14 What: Broncho: A Decade of Double Vanity When: 7 Where: Fox Theatre Why: Broncho has come some distance since the exuberant, psychedelic garage rock of its debut album Can’t Get Past the Lips. It’s most recent album Natural Pleasure (2025) found the band leaning completely into a more experimental, almost ambient shoegaze pop sound and introspective moods. But for this tour the band revisits its edgy, fuzzed out 2016 album Double Vanity. That record and the more recent material reflect more fully the influence of 1960s girl groups and perhaps how those bands and the grittier garage rock of the 60s influenced Jesus and Mary Chain. But has its own flavor of those inspirations and fans of Jay Reatard will appreciate this era of Broncho.
Kevin Morby, photo by Chantal Anderson
Th | 05.14 What:Kevin Morby w/Liam Kazar When: 7 Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Kevin Morby will release his eighth album Little Wide Open the day after this Denver date so it’s safe to say you’ll hear plenty of material from the new record at this performance and may be able to pick up a copy at the merch booth as well. The advance tracks like “Die Young,” “Javelin” and “Badlands” are in the realm of the pastoral indie folk for which Morby has long established himself as a master practitioner of the craft of songwriting. But the production feels more open, more direct and with more forward momentum. There is plenty of introspection in terms of Morby’s ability to reflect on where he’s been been as a vehicle for the stories he tells that seem to look to a future worth looking forward to rather than be mired by the weight of the past. There is a little lighter feel to the new set of songs without sacrificing Morby’s poignant powers of observation.
Wave Decay, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 05.15 What:Wave Decay, Amlamas and Supreme Joy When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Wave Decay will be playing some new music at this performance. For those not in the know, Wave Decay combines the rhythms of Krautrock, deep atmospherics of a better shoegaze band and some warping psychedelic edges with supreme tone and enough weirdness to keep it interesting. Supreme Joy is always a surprisingly powerful live band and its music somewhere between high concept post-punk, arty garage rock and Beat poetry.
American Football, photo by Alexa Viscius
Friday | 05.15 What: American Football w/Mei Semones When: 7 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: American Football came out of the 90s as one of the most influential of the then crop of emo math rock bands before splitting in 2000. Singer and bassist Mike Kinsella had already left his mark on music with the legendary early emo band Cap’n Jazz and later with Joan of Arc. But American Football’s sound bordered at times on slowcore but with more unconventional and precise rhythms to give the sometimes pastoral, post-rock-esque instrumental side of the music a more solid if informal framing. The music has an impressionistic quality that allows for its often weighty material to have a more emotionally gentle initial impact. The group’s 1999 debut album is a classic of its realm of music and when American Football returned in 2014 it has put out a few albums of a quietly incandescent beauty including the newly released LP4 (all the albums being essentially self-titled) which expands on the sound palette and ambition of soundscaping without losing the intimate quality of the band’s earlier releases.
Joshua Trinidad will perform as part of the Soundtrack Roulette performance
Friday | 05.15 What:Soundtrack Roulette, a live music fundraiser for Creative Music Works When: 6:30 Where: Mighty Fine Productions Why: This is a live music fundraiser for Creative Music Works. Some of Colorado’s stars of improvisational music will score soundtracks to film clips chosen by audience members spinning a wheel and the musicians won’t know what they’re in for. Performers include Sarah Christensen, Greg Harris, Mark Harris, Farrell Lowe, Kent McLagan, Eric Moon, Paul Riola, Matt Smiley, Glenn Nitta, Wade Sander, Joshua Trinidad and Gregory Walker. For more information click the link above. Suggested donation is $75 but any donation level is accepted for entry.
Primitive Man, photo by Vanessa Valadez
Saturday | 05.16 What: Primitive Man and Ukko’s Hammer When: 8 Where: Drop to Pop Sidewalk Why: Get there early before the authorities are called to shut down the sheer sonic assault of the heaviest band in the world Primitive Man unleashes its unique brand of noise doom. Ukko’s Hammer won’t exactly be low on volume but its frenetic hardcore will be in line with the shows Drop to Pop has been hosting on the sidewalk since 2025.
The Darts, photo by Tina Gross
Saturday | 05.16 What:The Darts w/Service, Tuff Bluff and 5150 When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Seattle’s The Darts released its latest album Halloween Love Songs on March 3, 2026. The record was in part inspired b the idea that the world needed more Halloween songs tan just “Monster Mash” and other songs decades old. The garage punk quartet injects some psychedelia into its sound with some appropriate spooky keyboard work but all building to the kind of spirited songs for which the group has established itself as a noteworthy band that fit in well with the Alternative Tentacles (the legendary imprint that released its previous album Boomerang in 2024) roster of bands that are decidedly different from any narrow genre considerations.
Windy & Carl, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday and Sunday | 05.16 and 05.17 What:Windy & Carl w/ Prymek & Sage and New Standards Men (5.16) and w/C. Ritger & Weathers (05.17) (both nights sold out) When: 5/6 and 6/7 Where: The Hayloft in Longmont (5.16) and The Bug Theater (5.17) Why: Since 1993 Windy & Carl have created a unique body of work in the broad spectrum of ambient music, space rock, drone and dream pop. Gently meditative, the guitar, bass, vocals and various other sound-making methods of the duo sounds like they’re tapping into the subconscious and dream states to make the kind of music that is instantly transporting with tones, abstract melodies and textures that facilitate the mind entering states conducive to expansive imagining. Pick up any of their records and you’ll hear music akin to the likes of Seefeel, Flying Saucer Attack and Jessamine and an obvious influence on later psychedelic ambient acts like Growing, The Sight Below and possibly even Yellow Swans.
Telehealth, photo by Eleanor Petry
Monday | 05.18 What: Telehealth w/Chroma Lips and Video Daze When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Seattle-based post-punk/New Wave band Telehealth just released their new album Green World Image and sure it sounds steeped in early 80s New Wave and the sort of synth punk The Epoxies were trading in a couple of dates ago but the ironic, current cultural references come off as both ironic and nihilistic. Can one fight the overwhelming overreach of technocratic oligarchs who have seemingly bought the arms of government or is needing the collapse to happen necessary and will it be in time to avert the complete and utter destruction of democracy and thus a means of reigning in and offering/instituting mitigating measures and solutions to climate disaster? Who can say, really, and Telehealth’s music seems to come out of that spirit with some fairly acerbic satire. Denver’s Chroma Lips will be one of the opening acts and bringing to the show no small measure of its own inspired garage krautrock synth psych. The band’s bombast is genuine but its satire if there is any is more a sendup of the need for narrow genres and its blurring the lines between the aforementioned and shoegaze means it transcends easy classification with its own sound.
Miss Grit, photo by Hoseon Sohn
Tuesday | 05.19 What:Just Mustard w/Miss Grit When: 7 Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Just Mustard is a post-punk/dark shoegaze band from Ireland. From its 2018 debut Wednesday onward one could hear in its haunted and noisy soundscapes the influence of Cranes and electronic music in the breakbeats and the way the band almost writes soundtrack music in its songs. The group’s 2025 album We Were Just Here leans further into the sculpted noise in place of conventional guitar sound at times with the vocals carrying most of the melody. Miss Grit is an electronic/rock artist from New York who caught the ear of Mute Records which released her debut album Follow the Cyborn in 2023. Referencing the 1997 cult film Perfect Blue directed by Satoshi Kon the album is perfectly executed cinematic pop reminiscent of late 2000s St. Vincent and a artful evocation of modern alienation and our dependence on technocratic conveniences. Miss Grit’s new album Under My Umbrella (2026) is like both downtempo and noir in tone fitting a record that sounds like an extended inquiry into one’s own inner processes and coming to terms with sides of one’s personality that are easily avoided for their discomfort level if you have distractions to keep your mind focused on an immediate task at hand. More orchestral than the debut album it also shows how Margaret Sohn aka Miss Grit is masterful in her melding of traditional instruments and electronic composition.
Ike Dweck, photo courtesy the artist
Tuesday | 05.19 What:Ike Dweck w/Anna Hamilton When: 7 Where: Globe Hll Why: Ike Dweck has only really been active in releasing music for a few years but the Brooklyn-born and NYC based artist has garnered a sizable following on Spotify and TikTok, His earnest vocals and vulnerable lyrics imbue his folk and pop inflected songs with an immediacy and intimacy even in their most expansive moments. Dweck’s songs have from early on had orchestral arrangements with strings and piano to expand on songs that may have begun as written on acoustic guitar but which suggested a bigger sonic vision for their possibilities, an energy he brings to the performance of the music.
Ray Bull, photo by Kyle Berger
Thursday | 05.21 What: Ray Bull w/Babehoven When: 7 Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Aaron Graham and Tucker Elkins of Ray Bull met while students at Cooper Union both of visual art, Graham more on still images and Elkins on film. But both began leaning more toward making music though early on the duo made use of their art background as a vehicle for presenting the storytelling of their songs. On May 8, 2026 Ray Bull released its latest album Please Stop Laughing. It’s songs have a sonically rich sophistication like a modern day analog to Harry Nilsson (also born in Brooklyn) had he come up after the advent of The Strokes and MGMT. Graham and Elkins seem to have a similar attention to songwriting details that delicacy of execution that not nearly enough artists do and that lends their songwriting an unexpected depth.
Wheelchair Sports Camp, photo by Erik Ziemba
Saturday | 05.23 What: Wheelchair Sports Camp w/Jello Biafra, Dressy Bessy, BRÜHA and RAYANN! When: 7 Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station Perplexiplex Why: Wheel Chair Sports Camp is celebrating the release of its first full album that isn’t a soundtrack since 2016. The record titled oh imperfecta is being issued by the legendary Alternative Tentacles imprint. The music this time around is vastly different from earlier releases in some key ways. It still has elements of jazz and Joshua Trinidad contributes a bit to the album, it still has fantastic production and of course Kalyn Heffernan’s wordplay and gift for incisive and emotionally electrifying rhetoric has never been stronger. It hits like a punk record while still very hip-hop. It’s both more stripped down and lean and larger in sound than before. It is simply one of the most on point releases out this year thus far in its social commentary and righteous sense of outrage tempered by compassion and a sense of humor. For this show you’ll also get to see A.T. head Jello Biafra himself and who can say what kind of performance that will be except interesting. Dressy Bessy will bring the indie pop fire to the proceedings, BRÜHA will offer a fusion of psychedelic jazz, surf rock and Latin rock amd RAYANN! opens the proceedings with tender, beat-driven bedroom dream pop.
Jaguar Stevens, photo by Hali Webb-Shafer
Saturday | 05.23 What:Jaguar Stevens album release w/Bitchflower and Chroma Lips When: 8 Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room Why: Jaguar Stevens is release its second album Dead Miner’s Daughter, its first since the 2021 album. The group started when two high school English teachers needed an outlet for the kinds of anxieties that come from being an educator in recent years, and ever really, and the resulting band has been a mix of indie rock and something a little darker with a little more bite. Caleb Wolhust’s crooning vocals on the recordings sounds like he grew up listening to Bowie and Nick Cave but live the band is a bit more combustible. The debut album is earnest if lo-fi but the new record sounds more polished and while still earnest it still has a raw edge like a punk band with some more songwriting refinement. Opening the show is psychedelic krautrock band Chroma Lips and the unhinged punk/psychedelic thrash group Bitchflower.
Hemlocke Springs, photo by Dana Tripp
Tuesday | 05.26 What: Hemlocke Springs w/THE GIRL! When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Hemlocke Springs went viral on TikTok with her song “Girlfriend” in 2022. The bedroom pop song and its music video looked and sounded like something anyone could create with some creativity could make but of course a deeper listen reveals that the songwriter had a gift for crafting lo-fi pop songs with an eccentric quality that immediately set it apart from most other bedroom pop of that time and even now. Hemlock Springs aka Isimeme “Naomi” Udu has since released several singles revealing further dimensions of her imaginative and inventive songwriting and production. Then in February 2026 she released her debut full-length The Apple Tree Under the Sea and proved she has much more to offer with songs that are vulnerable but imbued with a scrappy confidence. The music videos showcase Udu’s sense of humor and charming self-deprecation and incredible diversity as a vocalist. Stylistically one can hear traces of the K-pop that influenced part of her sound but also classic synth pop and fans of glitch pop artists of the 2010s will find a great deal to appreciate about the way Hemlocke Springs melds dream-like melodicism with glitchy energy. And the songwriter’s attention to arrangement, pacing and mood is top notch. Plus her lyrics aren’t just surreal and playful, she puts plenty of meaningful and insightful sentiments into the words she puts out there.
Denge Fever, photo by Marc Walker
Friday and Saturday | 05.29 and 05.30 What: Dengue Fever (05.29 w/Bluebook, 05.30 at Global Sounds w/The Wailers, Ritmo Cascabel, Tropical Kaoba, Los Mocochetes and Beasts of No Nation) When: 7 (05.29) and 12-6 (05.30) Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station Perplexiplex (05.29) and Old Town Square in Fort Collins (05.30) Why: Dengue Fever started out as sort of a cover band of artists out of the popular music era of Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s before the advent of the auto-genocidal Khmer Rouge regime during which many of those artists died or simply disappeared. The psychedelic pop and rock of that time and place, though, had and still has a unique appeal because it thoroughly merged western popular music with traditional Cambodian music in exciting ways full of energy and charm. The band formed in 2001 and early on recruited charismatic singer Chhom Nimol who was born in Cambodia and could sing in Khmer (a feature of much of the band’s repertoire). Since then the group has toured extensively throughout the US and internationally including in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and released several albums. The group is playing select shows this spring and summer including a free to the public appearance at Global Sound in Fort Collins and the night before at Meow Wolf.
Bigawatt at Titwrench in 2013, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday – Sunday | 05.29-05.31 What: Denver Noise Fest 2026 When: 6 (05.29-05.30) and 12-5 (05.31) Where: The DMV Why: Denver Noise Fest returns with an impressive lineup as follows. Vasectomy Party (FL), Anime Love Hotel, Bryan Day (CA), Coffin Corner, Instagon, (AZ) Zilmrah (NY), ihavetokeepwashingthisstupidbodytillidie, Dead Hawk, Isaac Linder, Male Model (FL), CUT (CA), Bigawatt (NM). Joltthrower (AZ), Bob Bellerue (NY), Fail (FL), Disturbing Taxidermy, Filidh. Most of this stuff you have to witness in person for the full impact of the artistry, appeal and sheer diversity of these artists as curated for this event. The best thing about a noise festival and most noise shows is that the artists and the style are conducive to short sets and focused concept. Bob Bellerue is a legendary artist in the international noise scene whose range as a sound artist, visual and sound curator, educator, composer and event organizer is vast across decades. Bigawatt is Marisa Demarco from New Mexico and her work bridges the gap between experimental post-punk and noise and she has also been a force for creative works in the American Southwest and beyond as an artist, a broadcaster and educator. Isaac Linder has long been a part of the Denver and Colorado experimental music scene in noise, ambient, experimental electronic dance music and the avant-garde and his show for this event will have him performing his interpretation of Robert Ashley’s 1964 composition “The Wolfman.” This entry will be updated with set times when and if available.
Deth Rali, photo by Chloe Barkley
Saturday | 05.30 What: Deth Rali album release at The Crypt w/babybaby4ever, Sell Farm, Papersack and DJ Lisafrank666 When: 8 Where: The Crypt Why: Denver darkwave synthpop band Deth Rali will celebrate the release of its new album The Fall of Neon at this show. The group, now a trio, is the vehicle for the songwriting of Jay Maike who some may remember for his pre-COVID psych pop group King Eddie. Deth Rali is different. Maike seems to have taken on the challenge of writing conceptual albums with deep storytelling and a strong visual aesthetic around each of the three Deth Rali records. The 2024 album Ruby’s Castle Island was like a commentary on authoritarianism written as a glam synth pop album set in a fantastical setting with intentional or otherwise creative nods to the Gormenghast Trilogy with a science fiction flavor and nostalgic portraits of collective cultural memories that Americans who have been alive since maybe even the 1950s can access with ease. It sounded like something from another era and reminiscent of the better of Montreal records. The new album is still imbued with a sense of play but it is decidedly darker yet with a hopeful melodic sensibility like a dream pop band that came up through the chillwave era. The themes are personal while also sharp observations on the times we’re living through but written as entrancing songs rich in tone and hazy atmospheres as a vehicle for getting through challenging times. Opening the show are some Denver notables including the IDM/industrial punk artist Sell Farm and visionary synth pop performance artist babybaby4ever.
Saturday and Sunday | 05.30 and 05.31 What:Playground Ensemble: Sculpting Sound When: 3 and 6 pm (05.30) and 2pm (05.31) Where: Leon Gallery Why: Playground Ensemble puts on unique musical events throughout the year combining pedagogy, craft and creativity. This one features sonic artworks by local visual and installation artists paired with an orchestra for a series of new musical compositions made in part by homemade and modified instruments.
Animals in Exile, photo by Lauren Rope
Sunday | 05.31 What: Animals in Exile w/Pale Sun, The Picture Tour and Owosso When: 4pm doors, 5pm show Where: Globe Hall Why: Animals in Exile started as a project of Redding Bacon in 2015 writing and recording songs in his basement in a mode somewhere between shoegaze and psychedelic rock with a leg in more experimental rock of past decades. But the current band solidified as a four-piece live band in 2025 ahead of the release of the self-titled full-length in August of that year. The newer songs have a weightiness and grit hinted at on earlier releases. Maybe part of that comes out of how its members weathered some serious struggles to be there. Guitarist Jim McTurnan had been a veteran of the Denver music scene in bands Cat-A-Tac and Soft Skulls where he honed his skills as a creator of atmospheric yet robust guitar sounds but found himself afflicted with multiple sclerosis and a rare neurological condition called Stiff Person Syndrome (and fortunate enough to live near a hospital where one of the country’s premier doctors treating that condition practices), bassist Colby Rogers finds himself able to play after a life-threatening injury left him without feeling in his right hand and drummer Eric Marshall was ready to quit music completely. But the new record is definitely one for fans of the Jonestown Massacre and the more rock end of Catherine Wheel. But then on this same bill you can catch other Denver heavy hitters in the broad realm of shoegaze. Pale Sun includes former members of Bright Channel (arguably Denver’s best ever shoegaze band), Space Team Electra (an argument could be made for that group being the greatest shoegaze group from the Mile High City) and Pinkku (one of the great space rock bands from the city) and few can match them for tone and mood. The Picture Tour creates the perfect fusion of spooky garage rock and shoegaze-adjacent post-punk. Owosso is like a melding of noise rock and shoegaze sonics for a sound that comes off like a DC post-punk band of the 80s mixed with Sonic Youth. Sometimes an all local band bill can be a mixed bag in a negative way but this is the opposite of that.
Daisy the Great, photo by Athen Smith
Sunday | 05.31 What: Daisy the Great When: 7 Where: Lost Lake Why: Daisy the Great is folk-adjacent indie pop band from Brooklyn led by Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker. Their debut single “The Record Player Song” (2017) garnered a wider than expected following for a new band. The vocal harmonies and unconventional percussion with the intro before getting into the song proper set Daisy the Great apart from a lot of the music in the broad indie music world of that time when garage rock and “psych” rock was in vogue. It had more in common with the likes of Tune Yards. The outfit’s latest album is 2025’s The Rubber Teeth Talk and the fantastic vocals harmonies are still in place and somehow both refined and raw. But the music benefits from an expanded lineup allowing for Dugan and Walker to cut loose a little more so that the songs seem to veer off center at the perfect moments without losing momentum and melody.
Keith Carne is perhaps most prominently known as the drummer for indie rock trio We Are Scientists which he joined in 2013. Carne’s background in the studio with the band and in the jazz program at Rutger’s University as well as the tri-state DIY scene seems to have given him plenty of chops, the skill set and the cultivated creativity for his debut solo album Magenta Light which released on April 20, 2026. The record isn’t a giant leap sideways from his music with We Are Scientists yet it is distinctively different. The songs are often cinematic in their close attention to atmospherics, mood and pacing. You can hear the underpinnings of an organic jazz structure but Carne allows the songs to breathe and expand as they will drawing the listener in with the music’s imaginative arrangements and gentle touch. It often sounds like what would have happened had chillwave matured more into a more sophisticated dream pop (as many of those artists have). The whole set of songs feel like the perfect music to soothe the mind on a long plane flight or other journey as it explores themes of connection, mortality and existential introspection.
Listen to our interview with Keith Carne on Bandcamp and follow him at the links below.
Downtown Denver by Night from Comedy Works Before the Phil Hanley Gig April 10, 2026, image by Tom Murphy
The year 2025 was abundant with compelling music from Denver and Colorado and of all the people I, Tom Murphy, talked to about local music the most avid listener was Vail from the band Monkey Man. As an active musician and someone who has hosted shows at a house venue, Vail has also explored well beyond immediate experiences as well as deep in the underground. So I asked Vail to select several and I would too and there was bound to be some overlap but I think what we were able to cover before it got too late to push the list further is a good slice of the current active underground that anyone would be able to track down and give a listen. Included below is a short playlist of what we talk about in a format that might be easiest for most people to access. A few artists either never had or pulled from Spotify, a decision which we respect. Hope you enjoy listening.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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