Overkill – Queen City Sounds and Art

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond March 2026

**mclusky performs at The Marquis Theater on 3/24/26, photo by Damien Sayell**

Monday | 03.02
What: Nuovo Testamento and Dark Chisme
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Nuovo Testamento is a Los Angeles-based band that has made a reputation for itself as crafters of fine synthpop songs with some dark Italodisco flavor. Charismatic singer Chelsey Crowley’s rich vocals are reminiscent of peak 1980s Madonna. Dark Chisme from Seattle is musically adjacent but its sound more in the vein of darkwave with a touch of house in the production.

Wednesday | 03.04
What: Final Gasp w/Victim of Fire, Ukko’s Hammer and writheinfear
When: 7
Where: Bar 404
Why: Boston’s Final Gasp released its new album New Day Symptoms on Relapse on February 27, 2026. The record continues the development of the band’s sound fusing death rock and metallic hardcore. Live the group comes across as something from another era when subgenres didn’t matter so much in navigating the appeal of the music and sounds like the missing link between Christian Death and American Nightmare. Opening are some of Denver’s great hardoce bands in Victim of Fire, Ukko’s Hammer and writheinfear.

Friday | 03.06
What: American Culture w/Candy Apple, Spin Move and Blackberry Crush
When: 7/8
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: American Culture kicks off its latest tour with this show of its own current fusion of shoegaze indie pop with punk attitude. The group’s most recent album, and arguably its best, Hey Brother, It’s Been a While, bears the hallmarks of the influence/impact of 90s Britpop psychedelia and its 2020’s echo in the modern underground/indie scene and electronic production. Opening are local shoegaze acts Spin Move and Blackberry Crush and atmospheric hardcore group Candy Apple.

Blackwater Holylight, photo by Magalena Wosinska

Friday and Saturday | 03.06 and 03.07
What: Blackwater Holylight w/Som and Dreadnought (03.06) and Cronos Compulsion (03.07)
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Blackwater Holylight released its new a.lbum Not Here Not Gone in January and its blend of doom and ethereal shoegaze this time out seems to chart the group’s relocation from Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles and embracing uncertainty and establishing new connections, roots and creative and personal evolution. Though heavy in a vein that fans of Slow Crush will appreciate there is a sensitive energy to the music that gives it an intimate feel throughout the album even as many of its songs soar into epic, exhilarating passages. Opening the tour is shoegaze-adjacent post-metal band Som and on the Friday show is Denver psychedelic doom group Dreadnought, on Saturday it’s experimental death metal band Cronos Compulsion.

Polly Urethane in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 03.07
What: The Liberation Series Presents: Polly Urethane, Melodies Never Lie, Entrancer and Luke Leavitt & Eden Figueroa
When: 7/8
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: This is a show series where the proceeds go toward benefiting an organization or person currently being persecuted by corrupt American institutions and imperialism. This night you can see performance artist, songwriter and composer Polly Urethane whose shows are all different from one another but always impressive. Also ambient indie pop shoegaze solo act Melodies Never Lie, techno/ambient artist Entrancer and post-jazz/classical duo Luke Leavitt and Eden Figueroa.

Tuesday | 03.10
What: Peaches w/Cortisa Star
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Peaches has been releasing provocative music that challenges norms of a sexually repressive and misogynistic societies and cultures since the turn of the century. Her production has been an influence on various artists over that time as well and sure overtly her songs trade in immediate terms that challenge the bases of norms of subject matter and creative use of language. She hadn’t released a record since 2015’s Rub until this year’s issuing of No Lube So Rude. Peaches’ production may have been updated to reflect the evolving nature of electronic music and methods of composition but her wonderfully vibrant and colorful use of words to challenge vested authority and power structures is still just as vital as ever.

Friday | 03.13
What: Lala Lala w/Lots of Hands
When: 7/8
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Lala Lala aka Lillie West was one of the leading lights of the Chicago indie rock scene in the late 2010s and with her 2021 album I Want the Door to Open she deconstructed her own sound palette and songwriting style to include more electronic aesthetics. Subsequently the musician/songwriter underwent a kind of personal journey to Taos, New Mexico where she more or less lived off the grid and drew inspiration from the pastoral beauty and unique energy of that town. Then she found her way to Iceland and a residency at LunGa school as well as some time in the capital city of Reykjavik. Out of that leg of her journey West crafted what is essentially an ambient/instrumental album including beautifully arranged field recordings called if i were a real man i would be able to break the neck of a suffering bird (as Lillie West). Lala Lala ultimately landed back in the USA in Los Angeles and on February 27, 2026 she released her new record Heaven 2 via Sub Pop. You can hear traces of West’s creative journey and development informing the record’s evocative soundscapes and existential sentiments. The almost sound design approach to the composition of the songs with West like a figure in her own cinematic creation draws the listener directly into the moments she builds as she catalogs life in the current era of being swarmed with distractions that inspire only overstimulation and yearning for nuggets of the authentic.

Friday | 03.13
What: Witch Cat Records Anniversary: Tassles, babybaby4ever, Watch Yourself Die, The Tammy Shine and Hotel WiFi
When: 7
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: Witch Cat Records is celebrating its five year anniversary with this show including artists both on the label and adjacent to its aesthetic embracing the uniquely creative and finely honed experimental music whether pop or otherwise. Tassles is a band that shows how lo-fi shoegaze can have a maximalist emotional resonance, babybaby4ever is like a rebirth of tonally rich synthpop in an inspired idiosyncratic vein, Watch Yourself Die is a confrontational performance art band, The Tammy Shine is the iconic lead singer of Dressy Bessy doing her own version of spirited punk-edged pop and Hotel WiFi somehow reconciles country, emo and lo-fi indie rock.

Friday | 03.13
What: Moon Pussy, Cleaner and Team Nonexistent
When: 7
Where: The Crypt
Why: Moon Pussy makes the kind of noise rock that makes you wonder why other bands don’t adopt a fully eccentric approach to lyrics and performance because they’re so compelling and unique that it’s difficult to really compare them to anyone else except to clumsily slap a genre term on them. Team Nonexistent started out as more of a Riot Grrrl-esque grunge band but now is more a raw punk thing with stirring hooks and pointed lyrics. Cleaner is a punk band with some threads of fuzzy, psychedelic 2010s garage rock.

Jeff Tweedy and band, photo by Rachel Bartz

Friday | 03.13
What: Jeff Tweedy w/Liam Kazar
When: 6:30
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Jeff Tweedy released a thirty song opus of an album called Twilight Override in September 2025. The record showcases the songwriter’s typically thoughtful and personally insightful lyrics as well as his knack for writing paradoxically spare songs with orchestral arrangements. The gentle energy of the song reflects the guiding principle, as it were, of the release and that is how creativity is the antithesis of the pervasive destruction and darkness that is part of everyday life in America and so much of the world in this moment and if one is honest for years. The record is an attempt to stay above being overcoming by this tidal wave and show at least a little common human solidarity in songs that sound like an attempt to being drowned by personal anxieties and the ambient terribleness around us daily as they intermingle to reinforce each other in sinking every single one of us. Tweedy addresses all of this with warmth and humor and live he’ll likely have more than a handful of stories to enhance the intention of the album.

Saturday | 03.14
What: Bison Bone and Chella Negro
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Courtney Whitehead will be moving out of Denver soon and this is a farewell show for his long-running project Bison Bone. Whitehead’s style of Americana is deeply personal with vivid portraits of life that illuminate universal human experiences of working class life and its often undersung and undercelebrated joys that aren’t often the subject of the myths of the wealth-obsessed end of our culture. Joining Bison Bone for the bill is another of Denver’s Americana greats with folk-inflected, alternative country acts Chella Negro whose own lyrics aren’t short on deeply insightful and affectionate depictions of a life we all known and relate to directly but maybe don’t examine with as much clarity as Chella reveals in her lyrics.

Saturday | 03.14
What: Glueman, Rugburn and Fossil Blood
When: 8
Where: Hi=Dive
Why: Glueman is going on tour and taking its potent brand of classic hardcore-infused garage rock to various corners of the blighted American landscape. It’s most recent album III is a bit like an amalgam of 90s and 2000s Memphis garage rock and Black Flag. Rugburn is a psychedelic fuzzy punk band from Denver, not to be confused with with the funk band from elsewhere. Fossil Blood sounds like they grew up on all Black Sabbath all the time and then embraced what Ronnie James Dio did before joining that band including his time in Rainbow and his early solo career with the epic riffs and the fantastical imagery.

Saturday | 03.14
What: Max Styler w/Discip B2B Roddy Lima, Dan Molinari and GS
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Max Styler got a boost up in his career when, at 18 years old, he was signed to Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak Records. Since then he’s had his music out via Mad Decent, Ultra Music and other prestigious imprints in the EDM universe. His blend of tech house, bass music, trap and dubstep often seems to land in a place of almost pop accessibility in the composition. Currently he is touring ahead of his headlining spot at Coachella on April 10, 2026 and this is a chance to catch him at a mid-sized venue with the best sound in Denver especially for this style of music.

Sunday | 03.15
What: Fire in the Mountains Pop-Up: George Cessna, SHADOWROUGHT, PROGMISTRESS and Corpsewhale
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Fire in the Mountains is a festival happening in East Glacier, MT from July 23-26 that includes some of the best bands in the broader heavy music world (an exclusive reunion of the great, cosmic, tribal doom band SubRosa is part of the proceedings) but this edition includes representation of artists out of the spectrum of Gothic Americana including the reunited Sixteen Horsepower, Tarantella, Midwife and El Welk. For this show you can see George Cessna of El Welk perform a solo set as well as PROGMISTRESS of Dreadnought who will perform at the event as well.

Advance Base in 2018, photo by Tom Murphy

Sunday | 03.15
What: Advance Base w/Moontype and Pyramyd
When: 7
Where: Glob
Why: Owen Ashworth has for decades given us tender, heartfelt, emotionally unvarnished and honest pop songs in the lo-fi indie vein and his now long-running project Advance Base occasionally tours including this performance in Denver where he played in 2025. The authenticity and openness of Ashworth’s songs gives them an immediacy and relatability that is rare in a world that puts a premium on the flashy and overproduced.

Testament, photo from testamentlegions.com

Wednesday | 03.18
What: Testament w/Overkill and Destruction
When: 6
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Testament is one of the most influential and enduring of the Bay Area thrash bands from that second wave of the music. From early on the group’s storytelling and often socially aware lyrics set it apart from a lot of heavy metal of the day. While it didn’t become as famous as the likes of Metallica and Megadeth it has reliably put out worthwhile records including 2025’s Para Bellum which is the band’s first in five years. But apparently the members of Testament took it upon themselves to push their own songwriting boundaries as a band as well as that of thrash and metal generally with songs that fuse black metal, death metal, thrash and progressive chops. It’s one of their best records in a career not short on fine material. Also on the bill are thrash legends Overkill from New Jersey and German thrash luminaries Destruction.

Bill Frisell, photo from billfrisell.com

Thursday | 03.19
What: An Evening with Bill Frisell
When: 7
Where: The Federal Theatre
Why: Bill Frisell is an influential guitarist mostly known for his contributions to jazz and new music. A graduate of Denver’s East High School, Frisell made a name for himself in the NYC Downtown Scene and has worked with the likes of John Zorn. Across his career his has contributed to albums by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Earth while living in Seattle. In his long career Frisell has collaborated with artists too numerous to cite here as a band leader, a curator and a creative co-conspirator and his work has been nominated for a Grammy. But his creative approach to technical music is what has set him apart from many of his peers and there is an accessibility to even his headiest music that has garnered him a cult following.

Jesus Christ Taxi Driver, photo by Hailey Jane

Thursday | 03.19
What: Jesus Christ Taxi Driver album release w/The Thing and Honey Blazer
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Jesus Christ Taxi Driver has been establishing itself as a kinetic live act from the Front Range of Colorado since founding in 2022. Plenty of acts have done the blues rock with power pop flair and punk energy but JCTD seems to be on a mission with ambitious songwriting to match its outsized stage presence. This year the group releases its new album, a follow up to 2023’s Like My Soul, titled Taxi the Rich. The record will see a vinyl release for this show a month ahead of its release on streaming platforms. If the previous album was an audacious and raucous affair the new record has a more focused clarity without losing the raw energy that has made the band so appealing like they’re channeling a bit of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Ty Segall simultaneously.

Thursday | 03.19
What: 2charm w/Abrii and Vyblossom
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Australian electronic duo 2charm has been on its debut headlining tour of the USA including stops at SXSW in support of its new album star scum city. The record is like a fusion of club style EDM, hyperpop and more mellow glitchcore. In many ways the mood of the music is reminiscent of a more dance music manifestation of chillwave that fans of Charli XCX and Sextile may appreciate for the tonal richness and playfulness of the music.

Friday | 03.20
What: hlao, SixFM, Sun Swept and Polly Urethane
When: 7
Where: Pablo’s East Colfax
Why: A stacked lineup of local underground ambient and avant-garde electronic music including a more beat-based approach with hlao, progressive folk psychedelia ambient with Sun Swept and performance art/classical art pop/noise collage with Polly Urethane’s often confrontational performances.

The Playground Ensemble in 2019 performing Eight Songs For a Mad King, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 03.21
What: The Playground Ensemble at 20
When: 7am – 3am
Where: Various (see program below)
Why: The Playground Ensemble is celebrating its 20 years of existence with a series of events this day as outlined below. For more information click here to read our recent piece on the event and our interview with founder Conrad Kehn.

Spontaneous Team Composition Workshop (all ages and levels welcome)
Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Kalamath Building
800 Kalamath St, Denver, CO 80204

Join Denver’s The Playground Ensemble as we celebrate our 20th season with a 20-hour MARATHON of new music.

The day opens at 7:00 AM with a yoga session and gong bath, followed by the Sound Bites breakfast meet-and-greet.

After breakfast, participants will be divided into small groups and given 90 minutes to collaboratively create a new work to be shared at the end of the session. Each group will be facilitated by Playground Ensemble teaching artists who will guide participants through the music creation process using hand gesture composition, graphic notation, structured improvisation, digital audio workstations, and musical story-telling to name a few.

Bring your own instrument and we will also provide a variety of electronic and found sound instruments to help ‘orchestrate’ and inspire creativity. The teaching artists will demonstrate how these approaches are adaptable to a wide range of educational contexts and are accessible to learners of all ability levels and musical backgrounds. The session will conclude with a performance of each group’s composition.

Afternoon at The Stanley Marketplace
2501 N. Dallas St. Aurora, Colorado 80010

Join Denver’s The Playground Ensemble as we partner with Friends of Chamber Music to celebrate our 20th season with an afternoon of music creation and community at The Stanley Marketplace. Each session highlights a different part of what makes Playground Ensemble the innovative organization that it is.

Family/Community Music-Making 1-2:30 PM: We invite families (grown-ups too!) to create their own instruments and compositions. Create your own compositions using colors and shapes and hear them played on the spot! Record your own beats at our electronic music station. Make tongue depressor kazoos, and play our collection of strange found sound instruments.

At 2 PM, Sing With Us! Meet us in the Stanley commons for a community singing of Pauline Oliveros’ Tuning Meditation. Using any vowel sound, sing a tone that you hear in your imagination. Listen for someone else’s tone and tune to its pitch as exactly as possible. Introduce new tones at will and tune to as many different voices as are present. Sing warmly.

String Quartet Concert 2:30 PM: In keeping with the spirit of Stanley Marketplace, the Playground String Quartet provides an eclectic sample of works by Latino, Indigenous, and women composers. Including works by Gabriela Ortiz, Raven Chacon, and Caroline Shaw, this program contains the breadth of both Playground’s style and their mission.

Playground at 20!
MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater
2644 W 32nd Ave, Denver, CO 80211

Hosted by MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater, this series of concerts is the heart of MARATHON.

The evening starts with Shane Courville (trumpet, electronics, composer) and Nathan Hall (piano, electronics, composer) presenting solo, duo, and improvised works on themes of freedom: freedom of nations and sovereignty, freedom to express our own identities, and the freedom of creative collaboration.

Up next join Leah and Josh for a 30-minute program of (mostly) contemporary art songs that recall childhood and gently remind us never to stop playing, even amidst the gloom and doom of life today. When you look through the kaleidoscope of your childhood, what do you see? Do the bright spots of hope, nature, and laughter stand out, or does darkness prevail?

After these two duo sets we gather for a celebratory toast to all that has been accomplished in the previous two decades while looking forward to the future.

At 8PM is the main event, The Playground @ 20!

This chamber concert features the first work we ever played, a new commission by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez for bass flute and ‘ghost’ string quartet, and a new work by Playground Director Conrad Kehn for the entire ensemble.

The evening will also feature the Colorado premiere of Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Ithánali, about a Chickasaw woman astronaut who is designated to be the first human to set foot on Mars, aware of the irony of her own action – colonizing Mars – and how it compares/contrasts to the historic colonization of her own tribe.

We will also highlight one of our favorite works commissioned with I’m Waiting for Your Crip Cadence, a collaborative composition by Nathan Hall and performance artist MG Bernard that creates an auditory and visual experience of what it is like to exist in a chronically sick bodymind exploring ideas of the disabled experience of non-linear time, and the doctor-patient relationship through a visceral display of how she is bound to the medical industrial complex, dependent on uncomfortable relationships of care, and indentured to pain.

Late Night GLOB

Close out MARATHON at Denver’s DIY citadel, GLOB.

This underground atmosphere set will intersperse avant DJ sets by former Playground board member DJ i.lind before our Music of The Shining, a show based on music from the Stanley Kubrick (and Stephen King) classic.

At midnight Playground composer and board member Silen Wellington will lead us in Haunting, a ritual performance. This is followed by Loretta Notareschi performing How All’s to One Thing Wrought! an improvisational work for a custom-designed virtual instrument that uses the electronic transformation of a single cello low C to express the spiritual idea of an interdependent web of all existence. Luke Wachter will perform …and we are a collection of memory for solo vibraphone and still photography which juxtaposes the impermanence of improvisation with the immutability of static images, examining how identity is constructed in the mind by collecting and reinterpreting memories and shared experiences. Ryan Fiegl winds us down with an electronic music set with reactive video as his musical alter ego Severed Shadow.

The evening closes with an open invite community-improvised drone session carrying us into the early morning.

For more information visit http://www.playgroundensemble.org.

This program is supported by Denver Arts & Venues through the DENVER CREATES Fund.

Monday | 03.23
What: Quarters w/Porch Light and Telescreens
When: 6
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Telescreens from New York occupies a musical territory balanced between early 2000s post-punk and power pop live energy and modern electronic production. You can hear roots in the music in 90s alternative rock and maybe a touch of Walkmen and The Strokes but Telescreens aren’t going for the image of either. Its new singles “Nothing” and “Preacher” are pure expressions of breaking out of self-imposed repression and the ambient despair that is the normal reaction to modern life. Headlining the show are fellow New York City alternative rock band Quarters whose own sound on its more recent music incorporates an R&B aesthetic into its rhythm and vocals.

Tuesday | 03.24
What: mclusky w/Cherry Spit
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: mclusky established itself as one of the more unhinged post-hardcore acts out of the UK in the 90s and early 2000s with records that were partly surreal humor and partly oblique social commentary often taking the piss out of more obvious sanctimonious approaches to having something to say. The band has album titles like The Difference Between Me and You is That I’m Not on Fire and Mclusky Do Dallas. The group split originally in 2005 and reunited in 2014 for a benefit show. But then did a 20-year anniversary tour for the underrated Mclusky Do Dallas delayed to 2024. Then the band released an EP in 2023 called Unpopular Parts of a Pig followed by a full length in 2025 titled The World Is Still Here and So Are We with a subsequent 2026 EP called I Sure Am Getting Sick of This Bowling Alley. With the dire absurdity of world events mclusky is a welcome presence in modern music. Opening the show is top tier Denver post-hardcore/noise rock quarter Cherry Spit who are a pure fusion of technical death metal, noise rock, post-hardcore and shoegaze.

Friday | 03.27
What: Gov’t Mule at Mission Ballroom
When: 6:30
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Warren Haynes paid his dues as a musician throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s with stints in David Allen Coe’s band, The Nighthawks and on and off with The Allman Brothers Band which he joined in 1989. But in 1994 he formed Gov’t Mule in 1994 with Allman Brothers bandmate Allen Woody which became their focus when their more well-known project went on hiatus. With the then new band Haynes was able to channel his honed guitar work and insight into songwriting into original material with a masterful command of live improvisation so that the band has never been limited to expectations and sure there is the blues and country foundation but also the psychedelic flourishes that informed Haynes’ early influences with Hendrix and Clapton. The most recent Gov’t Mule record Peace…Like a River continues the band’s fusion of styles and influences into a sound that blurs the line between genres and seems orchestrated like a jazz record with contributions from the likes of Billy Gibbons, Ivan Neville, Ruthie Foster and Billy Bob Thornton.

Banshee Tree, photo by Christian O’Rourke

Friday | 03.27
What: Banshee Tree album release for Bad Luck w/Riley J Band
When: 7:30/8
Where: Fox Theatre
Why: Boulder-based Banshee Tree will release its sophomore album Bad Luck on April 17, 2026 but playing a hometown show ahead of the release likely featuring live versions of the songs from the forthcoming record. Banshee Tree’s eclectic mix of jazz inflected chamber pop and psychedelic folk pop is an apt vehicle for the eight songs on the record that have a gentle and contemplative quality like songs crafted late nights and honed in sessions around a campfire meant to be shared with friends. Despite this intimate aspect of the music each of the songs has an almost orchestral and expansive arrangement that flow into one another as though thematically Bad Luck is a concept album capturing a mood and state of mind wherein one examines wht to let go and what to hold onto going into a new chapter of life.

Saturday | 03.28
What: Pearly Drops
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Finish dream pop band Pearly Drops released its latest album The Voices Are Coming Back to great acclaim in 2025. The record showcases the group’s gift for freely blending elements of hyperpop, glitch and what might be described as electronic dance shoegaze. Its gauzy and luminous atmospheres and entrancing, processed vocals sound like music from an as yet unrealized, existential indie science fiction film. It is an album that is its own world and one worth getting lost within and one you’ll get to experience a bit of live.

To Be Continued…

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond November 2024

**Washed Out performs at Ogden Theatre 11.04, photo by Landon Spears**

Saturday | 11.02
What: Blood Cult Weekend Night 1: Carrellee, Fainting Dreams, Baby Baby, Tepid
When: 8
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: Blood Cult is a local production company promoting small shows often featuring touring underground bands and some of the best local acts. Carrallee is a darkwave synthpop artist from Madison. Wisconsin. Fainting Dreams is a Denver-based band with a sound like the cathartic manifestation of a folk horror film made into dark shoegaze and emotionally charged black metal. Baby Baby is an arty synth pop project. Tepid is the solo effort of Nick Salmon of industrial shoegaze band Voight.

Sunday | 11.03
What: Blood Cult Weekend Night 2: Ronnie Stone, Hex Cassette, Supreme Joy and I Luv Nandi
When: 8
Where: The Crypt
Why: Ronnie Stone is a synth pop artist from NYC whose songwriting and production bears a strong resemblance to a 1980s coming of teen drama that never happened. Hex Cassette is a humorously confrontational industrial darkwave one-man band and performance art cult. Supreme Joy is a noisy post-punk band from Denver with some sonic lineage to Jay Reatard’s early 2000s bands.

Sunday | 11.03
What: Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin
When: 7
Where: The Gothic Theatre
Why: Keyboardist Claudio Simonetti was one of the founders of progressive rock band Goblin. Before the band adopted the moniker it had already begun composing the score to Dario Argento’s 1975 horror film landmark Profondo rosso and its evocatively psychedelic prog creepiness. That quality the band developed even further for its soundtrack to Argento’s 1977 masterpiece Suspiria and on the director’s cut of George Romero’s Zombi aka Dawn of the Dead before the group split in 1978. Though the band’s members worked together in various configurations over the next two decades the band Goblin reconvened in 2000 and toured in a variety of manifestations including that for this tour as Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin which will bring to life some of the iconic music of the band’s respectable catalog.

Monday | 11.04
What: Washed Out w/After
When: 7
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Ernest Greene as Washed Out may not have set out to be one of the most enduring and successful artists out of what came to be called chillwave in the late 2000s of which he is one of the pioneers. Before bedroom pop became a common quantity identified with a loose movement, Greene and other artists of early chillwave helped to establish the aesthetic characterized hazy, saturated, melancholic synthpop. But Greene has always infused his production with hip hop style arrangements and beatmaking paired with immersive melodies and a knack for tapping into that part of the brain triggering warm feelings of nostalgia. When combined with his reflective lyrics those sounds make bittersweet memories hit with a gentle catharsis. Greene’s song “Feel It All Around” from his 2009 EP Life of Leisure became the opening music for comedy series Portlandia and forever cemented the songwriter’s status as an architect of the sound of a time and place that is easy to look back on fondly even when those memories have a mixed if unforgettable place in your heart. The latest Washed Out record Notes From a Quiet Life seems to catalog an attempt to reconnect with a period in recent years when some people had the time to think about their lives as having more meaning and significance than the usual expectations and demands as they fit into cogs of capitalism. Greene zeros in on and mines that headspace for the kind of ideas and thinking that can hopefully sustain you into a regular life that grinds you down by creating a psychological space in your mind where there is time for sustained tranquility.

Tuesday | 11.05
What: The March Violets, Die So Fluid, Wingtips and Void + Veil DJs
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: The March Violets were one of the early Goth bands of the first half of the 80s. Its 1983 single “Snake Dance” established the group as an influential and popular band in the realm of post-punk. As the decade went on the band shifted into a more pop sound but without losing the moody melodrama and atmospheric sound that initially caught the attention of fans. The group never released an official album during its initial 1981-1987 run, simply EPs and singles. But since reconvening in 2010 The March Violets have released three full length albums including 2024’s Crocodile Promises. Also on this tour are UK Goth hard rock band Die So Fluid and Chicago’s excellent darkwave/shoegaze duo Wingtips.

Space in Time circa 2016, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 11.08
What: Hi-Dive 21st Birthday Party: Space in Time, Moon Pussy, Church Fire, Quits and Debaser
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: For 21 years Denver’s Hi-Dive has been one of the go-to clubs to see up and coming bands and those that never attain a higher degree of fame and popularity but whose music shines brighter than a lot of what’s offered in the mainstream. For the occasion psychedelic doom band Space in Time performs a rare show. But also on the bill are heavy hitters like noise rock giants Moon Pussy and Quits, percussion punk auteur Debaser and Church Fire and their much needed industrial dance rock to immolate the authoritarian currents of our time.

Saturday | 11.09
What: Hi-Dive 21st Birthday Party: Pissed Jeans, Muscle Beach, Candy Apple, Cheap Perfume and Cherry Spit
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Pissed Jeans has been offering up its noisy, angular post-punk in the vein of DC post-hardcore blended with Killing Joke stripped of its haunted atmospheres. Its latest record Half Divorced is like a high speed journey through the American cultural landscape circa 2024. It’s nearly prophetic in its depiction of truncated hopes and dreams, the seeming inability of any of the powers that be to recognize that a flourishing society includes all and not just the people in America and other wealthy countries Its music’s invective is very choice and pairs well with Chat Pile’s Cool World. Fitting headliner for the second night of Hi-Dive’s birthday celebration and local stars of post-hardcore, political punk and noise rock.

Saturday | 11.09
What: Bear Hands w/Worry Club and Broken Record
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Bear Hands emerged from the indie rock and post-punk milieu of mid-2000s Brookyn and rather than being fully lumped in with other bands of that time Bear Hands took a different kind of path and its dream pop guitar style and left field rhythmic structure garnered it a bit of a cult following over the years. It’s 2024 album The Key To What sounds like a record out of time. In its ebullient melodies and textures one hears echoes of a time when Animal Collective and MGMT would have been heard in public places regularly and its experiments in electronic composition more in the realm of modern indie pop dance flavor. Yet underpinning it all is Bear Hands’ knack for deconstruction rhythmic structure and rebuilding it with an ear for accessibility.

Saturday | 11.09
What: Dehd w/Gustaf
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Chicago’s Dehd has never fit neatly in a subgenre of rock but its foundation of lo-fi slacker rock and post-punk has resulted in a good deal of exuberant, cathartic, emotionally-charged pop. All of the band’s records focus on a different aspect of its creative leanings and its new record Poetry seems to embrace both the strands of pop punk influence and disaffected singer-songwriter balladry and all imbued with the band’s usual gift for creative rhythms.

Sunday | 11.10
What: Front 242 (final Denver show) w/Kontravoid
When: 7
Where: Reelworks
Why: Front 242 is one of the foundational bands of the EBM and electronic industrial sound hailing from Belgium circa 1981. Throughout the 80s the group developed a rhythm-driven songwriting in both electronic percussion and the layering of electronic melodies and textures that proved highly influential on later bands and were distinctive from peers like Skinny Puppy, DAF, Front Line Assembly, Ministry and Nitzer Ebb. This is purported to be part of the last shows the group will perform live and not only do you get to catch these tones in their rich glory for perhaps the final time but also an opening slot from Kontravoid whose own dense electronic industrial dance music is in a clear lineage from the Belgian legends.

Modest Mouse, photo courtesy the artists

Monday | 11.11
What: Modest Mouse w/The Black Heart Procession
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Modest Mouse was already a beloved alternative rock band in more underground circles by the turn of the twenty-first century and its 2000 major label debut The Moon & Antarctica and its arresting mix of harrowing and heartfelt emotions and engrossing soundscapes. The 2004 follow up Good News for People Who Love Bad News seemed to tap into a zeitgeist of the period that seemed challenging and hopeless for a lot of people in the midst of the George W. Bush era and an embrace of tenderness, vulnerability and imagination seemed like an antidote to despair and mere cope. It’s the kind of aesthetic that seems perhaps more relevant now with the album’s evocative pairing of melancholia and joy. This tour the band celebrates the 20 year anniversary of the album with the great baroque pop flavored indie rock band The Black Heart Procession.

Monday | 11.11
What: Duster w/Dirty Art Club
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theater
Why: Space rock/slowcore band Duster was only around for a handful of years from the mid-90s to the 2000s to relatively little fanfare but its glittery indie rock sound started to enjoy a sizable cult following after it reunited in 2018. In the 2020s the band’s songs started being featured on TikTok posts when shoegaze generally was enjoying a new level of cachet among younger music fans. Since its reunion Duster has released more albums than during its initial run including its 2024 album In Dreams and its refinement of the textural atmospheric flow and granular, tranquil melodies that has been a hallmark of the group’s sound since the beginning.

Monday | 11.11
What: Aimee Mann w/Jonathan Coulton
When: 7
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: Aimee Mann is one of the most celebrated of songwriters of the 90s and beyond with prominent placing of her music in cinema and radio airplay, perhaps most prominently in the 1999 film Magnolia. Mann’s sharp wit and nuanced takes of personal struggles in her lyrics and the emotional sweep of her music has resulted in a long career of rewarding listening that has aged remarkably well.

Tuesday | 11.12
What: TR/ST
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: TR/ST pre-dated the current darkwave movement when it began as Trust in 2010 and the project’s 2012 debut album TRST was lumped in with the more synth-driven end of indie rock in the beginning. But the aesthetics were much more in line with electronic post-punk and Robert Alfons’ unique vocals too versatile and at times too deep to be confused with even a the then popular chillwave movement. TR/ST began to be embraced by Goth night DJs around that time. As Alfons’ songwriting developed in the more than decade hence he has honed his creative tone sculpting and soundcapes so that it transcends even the limitations of being associated with darkwave and more like a dark electronic dance music perhaps best experienced in a venue with a robust sound system capable of replicating the rich tones and low end of his compositions in particular as embodied on the 2024 album Performance, the first for experimental/darkwave label Dais.

Tuesday | 11.12
What: The Milk Blossoms w/North By North and C!trus
When: 7
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: North By North is an indie rock band from Chicago whose blend of indie/power pop and garage rock hearkens back to a time two decades ago before all of that became too codified in the 2010s. Citrus from Denver is a fuzzy psychedelic pop band with a touch of gritty shoegaze edge. The Milk Blossoms are of course the avant-pop indie group form Denver whose heartfelt and poetic lyrics and imaginative arrangements and impassioned performance style makes it a memorable live band.

Tuesday | 11.12
What: Kris Baha, Void Palace, Combat Sport and Kill You Club DJs
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Kris Baha is an Australian producer now based in Berlin whose fusion of 90s trance and electronic industrial music has made him a bit of a crossover artist in the realms of darkwave and the rave scene. Along with the expertly crafted, distorted beats and streams and saturated tones, though, Baha injects a sensibility like he’s not a stranger to pop songcraft and even his most out there songs have an undeniable accessibility even for those who aren’t just heads for the aforementioned.

Thursday | 11.l4
What: System Exclusive w/Hex Cassette, Baby Baby and Candy Chic https://hi-dive.com/listing/system-exclusive-hex-cassette-baby-baby-candy-chic/
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Ari Blaisdel of System Exclusive sounds a bit like a fusion of Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons and Karen O. The band’s music though is like a retro-futurist synth pop New Wave band with textural guitar sounds and gorgeously icy synths. Hex Cassette is the one person industrial dance death cult, all in good fun, though, whose cajoling the audience is part of the enjoyment of the performance because let’s face it, audiences too often need to be pumped up for maximum enjoyment for all involved. Baby Baby is an experimental electronic pop act from Denver and Candy Chic a mix of prog pop and indie rock.

King Diamond, photo from kingdiamondcoven.com

Thursday | 11.14
What: King Diamond (guest vocals from Myrkur) w/Overkill and Night Demon
When: 6
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: King Diamond is the influential black metal artist who first made his mark outside his home country of Denmark with the legendary band Mercyful Fate where his wide-ranging vocals including his signature falsetto featured prominently. The singer’s theatrical stage presence with face make-up that would prove an enduring visual cue for many bands including the early Slayer and generations of black metal artists from the 1980s onward. There’s a lot of gimmickry with the visual presentation and the live show but the music itself has aged better than a lot of 1980s metal because other than the obvious influence of Judas Priest it was idiosyncratic and the whole Anton LeVey style Satanism wasn’t a pose though these days King Diamond doesn’t follow any religious persuasion. This tour includes vocal contributions from another Danish musician of note, Myrkur whose folk-inflected black metal and enchanting vocals has garnered her an international following in her own right. And of course thrash legends Overkill are included on the bill.

The Crooked Rugs in 2024, photo by Tom Murphy

Thursday | 11.14
What: The Crooked Rugs album release w/Honey Blazer and Tarantula Bill
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Fort Collins-based psychedelic prog indie band The Crooked Rugs are releasing their new album Hear & Now. The album’s countrified flavor gives it a different style than yet another cookie cutter psych band as were rampant in the 2010s and The Crooked Rugs as a live band have a spontaneous and contagious energy that elevates the music further than expected if you listen to the recordings alone. Honey Blazer’s own style of indie psych Americana sounds like something from another era when country rock bands were letting their freak flag fly a little after hanging out in Laurel Canyon for a summer.

Friday | 11.15
What: Caribou w/Joy Orbison and Yune Pinku
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: In writing his new album Honey, Dan Snaith aka Caribou the composer, mathematician and multi-instrumentalist wanted to make music accessible to a wide audience. So the record is much more directly dance oriented than most of his previous records which were dance-adjacent anyway but the beats are more explicit and the techno infrastructure of the songwriting impressive. Snaith engages in some sample massaging into the beat and the record feels like a DJ set more so than certainly his previous album, 2020’s melancholic Suddenly. But of course the live show with include live musicians and have a spontaneous energy that isn’t often as possible when one is operating from in the box.

Saturday | 01.16
What: Mumiy Troll
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Mumiy Troll has been described as the “U2 of Russia” because in its home country it is as popular as U2 has been internationally and playing to crowds of tens of thousands in Russia and Asia. Singer and songwriter Ilya Lagutenko has been the constant presence in the band from its founding in 1983 and he has appeared in the 2004 horror film Night Watch which garnered a bit of a cult following in the West. The band, though, didn’t make many forays into the Western music market until 2009 with the release of its excellent Comrade Ambassador album for which it toured small clubs and theaters in North America, a far cry from its usual reception back home. The music of the band since the 1990s has born the influence of Britpop from Lagutenko’s having spent time in the UK during that decade but of course it has a unique Russian flavor with arrangements that reflect a fusion of sensibilities. And yet Mumiy Troll is undeniably accessible even if you don’t speak Russian. And hey, the band risked its livelihood in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 resulting in the cancellation of its concerts by Russian authorities.

Saturday | 11.16
What: Pink Fuzz, Forty Feet Tall and Headlight Rivals
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Pink Fuzz kind of came out of that classic rock sound revival of the 2010s and its embrace of the hard rock of 2000s stoner rock bands. But Pink Fuzz just sounds like it has a lot more life and bite to its music than a lot of that wave of music. Portland, Oregon’s Forty Feet Tall is a fascinating and visceral fusion of psychedelic garage rock and post-punk intensity and menace.

Sunday | 11.17
What: Gila Teen album release w/Horse Girl and Rabbit Fighter
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Gila Teen is releasing its new album at this show and if its Subtle Wizard EP is any indication the emotionally charged and arresting dream pop/post-punk band is leaning into the desperation underlying the times. It’s also incorporating the kinds of keyboards one more often hears on some 2000s DIY home recording indiepop group enhancing its already commanding immediacy. Horse Girl will do some weird performance art thing with music probably made just for the show and you’ll be better off having witnessed the strangeness. Rabbit Fighter might be a twee indie pop band but its earnest energy and vulnerably delivery can’t be dismissed or narrowed to such designations.

Janet Feder of cowhause, photo from Bandcamp

Sunday | 11.17
What: cowhause album release w/Hamster Theater
When: 7-10
Where: The Bug Theatre
Why: Two legends of local avant-garde music for this show. The first is a project between noted guitarist and academic Janet Feder whose imaginative and brilliantly virtuosic guitar playing has found its way into multiple records and in collaboration with multiple artists and Colin Bricker who has played with various bands over the years but is perhaps best known for his production company and studio Mighty Fine Audio. Their band cowhause is a brilliant blend of folk songcraft and ambient soundscaping. Hamster Theater is a long-running art rock band from Boulder whose membership has included members of Thinking Plague and Big Foot Torso. Though these days fairly obscure in the Denver and Boulder area the band has an international following for its wild sonic experimentation into realms of avant-garde jazz and 20th century classical deconstruction.

Wednesday | 11.20
What: Actors w/Occults and DJ Niq V
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Actors from Vancouver, BC has set itself apart from a lot of the modern darkwave and post-punk bands by having great pop songcraft instincts and rich synth composition alongside a lively stage show. Sure they look like Goths but there is a joyful energy to an Actors show like a New Wave synthpop band of old and a guitar sound that is more full than the spindly, guitar flavor favored by too many bands among the current swath of trendy post-punk.

Wednesday | 11.20
What: AJ Suede w/Ceschi & Factor Chandelier and Esh & The Isolations
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: AJ Suede may not identify as an alternative hip-hop artist as that’s a somewhat archaic term these days. But the experimental rhythms and left field sound choices in his beats point to roots in the kind of underground hip-hop that was becoming popular in the late 90s and 2000s and more recent collectives like Odd Future and A$AP Mob. His creative and imaginative lyrics also veer from the sensibilities of mainstream hip-hop. His latest record Voiceless (2024) is all instrumentals and should be available on tour. Ceschi has been a star of underground hip-hop for around 20 years with his brilliant fusion of folk punk, psychedelia and hip-hop. His two most recent albums Bring Us the Head of Francisco False Parts 1 and 2 (2024) are an epic journey through the creative legacy that produced Ceschi and the culture in which he’s been operating as well as commentary on the wider society which its had to navigate. The albums also represent the end of Ceschi’s career as a solo artist.

Friday | 11.22
What: Ms. Boan w/Jeff In Leather, Moon 17 and As In Heaven As In Hell
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Ms. Boan is Mariana Saldaña of the darkwave band BOAN who were a significant project of that great 2010s group of industrial and synthpop influenced bands that came to prominence in the underground. Ms. Boan has in recent years collaborated with Houses of Heaven and Boy Harsher and live is a commanding figure whose mystique adds to the sensual impact of the music. Jeff In Leather is a hard techno solo project from Omaha whose most recent release JiL includes production and mastering by industrial darkwave legend Street Fever, Moon 17 is an electro-industrial band from Kansas City whose sound appears to be a fusion of Front 242-esque EBM and melodic darkwave, As In Heaven As In Hell is the solo coldwave post-punk project of John Bueno who has been in punk bands in the past and a noteworthy comic artist but discovered a love of being able to produce music with few creative compromises.

Saturday | 11.23
What: Snakes final show w/Jenny Don’t and The Spurs and DBUK
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Snakes is playing its final show. The band fronted by George Cessna is like an unlikely fusion of psychedelic surf honky tonk band. Like the sort of group you’d hope to serendipitously run into on a road trip to an isolated town with a secret underbelly of Bohemian weirdos creating music for their own enjoyment and that of others with tastes in music that run astray of mainstream radio fare. Cessna can still be seen playing with Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and likely as a solo act with a catalog of his own that is worth exploring on its own. But Snakes’ gritty self-awareness is a rarity in the realm of Americana with an aesthetic that sounds like it came out of a place where the band hung out with The Velvet Underground and The Creation both and vibed off each before opening for Graham Parsons period The Byrds. Oh yes, Cessna’s dad Slim will be performing in the weirdo, folk infused post-punk opening band DBUK that includes members of the Auto Club. Jenny Don’t and the Spurs will be making a stop in from their base in Portland, Oregon with a glittery and melancholic take on modern outlaw country that fans of Green on Red and Dolly Parton will appreciate.

Saturday | November 30
What: Lyra Muse, Deth Rali and BLDDDLTTR
When: 7:30
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Lyra Muse is a pianist/violinist/vocalist from Santa Fe, New Mexico whose dream pop has an elemental quality reminiscent of The Knife and Jenny Hval. The orchestral sounds and ethereal expansiveness of the music conjures images of dream exploration of deeper personal issues and trauma. BLDDDLTTR is also from Santa Fe but its sound is like a great blend of darkwave post-punk and shoegaze with emotionally charged vocals. Deth Rali is hard to quantify but its recent album release show revealed the band to have fused the ideas and aesthetics of 70s glam rock, hypnogogic pop and prog art rock in both sound and visual presentation of the music.