Worry Club
Worry Club is the moniker of Chicago-based indie musician Chase Walsh. Walsh integrates dreamy synth-pop guitar and muted percussion into gritty and unflinching lyricism. He looks depression and heartbreak dead in the face with his poetry, packaging these difficult subjects into truly gorgeous songs.
The Criticals

The Criticals are a Nashville based rock band formed by Parker Forbes and Cole Shugart. The Criticals have proven themselves a powerful and fierce duo — one with both a diverse musical appetite in songwriting and a whiplash live show that’s drawn sellout crowds in major US markets including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The band recently released their highly regarded EP Front Door Confrontations and continued a steady diet of raucous live shows across the country. The band are now set to release a handful of singles leading up to their debut album release on Fantasy Records in 2025.
Kevin McClure
BabyJake
Florida-born Jake Herring, known professionally as BabyJake, may have appeared to be an overnight success, but his journey to the spotlight was anything but instantaneous. His hit single Cigarettes on Patios took off in 2019, garnering 200M+ streams and earning him a certified gold record and a major label deal. He would release two albums from the same vine, until the upheaval of the pandemic saw him splitting with his label and at a pivotal turning point. But giving up was never an option for Jake, and his resilience set him on a new path: an ascetic journey to rediscover himself, shedding his shag haircut in favor of a buzzcut, naked skin marked by the tattoos he collected along his journey. He found the answer on his latest album Beautiful Blue Collar Boy, a bouquet of songs rooted in the beauties and hardships of day to day life. Drawing influence from the likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Tweedy, BabyJake stays true to his north star of confident storytelling and songwriting. On Beautiful Blue Collar Boy, Jake trades in the late night parties for the simplicity of authenticity, hard work, and a meaningful life to come home to. This chapter of BabyJake reveals a man stripped down to his American roots, with each song painting a small vignette of BabyJake’s blue collar dreams. Now planted in Nashville, TN, Jake returns to us as a Beautiful Blue Collar Boy.
Marlon Funkai

Bay Faction
Borne out of an online message board, Bay Faction emerged in the Boston DIY scene in 2015 with the debut of their self-titled record. It was the first release on Counter Intuitive Records with the band’s album pressed on highly coveted vinyl. Following its release, Bay Faction spent 2 years rigorously touring nationwide, developing a cult-like following. After graduation, the band relocated to New York, and camped out in a suburban New Jersey basement to write and record their sophomore record Florida Guilt. The record marked a departure from their earlier style, trading in a conventional rock setup for sampled drums, synths, and vocal processing, embodying the ethos they had long sought to define. Highsnobiety named Bay Faction as “your favorite band you haven’t heard of yet” and nationwide touring ensued to promote their album. On the heels of the pandemic, Bay Faction bid farewell with the release of Swan Dive, their final song before entering hiatus. Now, in 2024, the band relaunched with a sold out tour and release of new singles Drive Home, Eye Sore, and Sunshine, from their highly anticipated forthcoming EP.
buffchick
The Farewell Season
The Farewell Season plays music made for a long drive down a back highway. The band slides effortlessly from Americana, to folk, to indie and back again. What started as friends passing time across the internet during the pandemic turned into a band that splits time between Omaha and the Twin Cities these days. Formed by frontman Nate Gasaway (The Big Deep) and drummer Taylor Stein (Ten O’Clock Scholars), the lineup is rounded out by Paul Gedbaw on guitar and Justin Crow on bass; both veterans of the Nebraska music scene.
Cryogeyser
Sam Blasucci & Julia Zivic

Sam Blasucci is best known as one half of Mapache, a Southern California roots-rock duo just as instantly recognizable for their elegant, intertwined guitar parts as they are for their devoted, Nudie-Suit wearing fanbase. But when Blasucci was writing the songs that would become his debut solo record, Off My Stars, he found himself less focused on the guitar and more gravitated toward a different instrument: piano. The mother of Clay Finch, his Mapache bandmate, was getting rid of one, and so Blasucci took the piano, carefully transporting it to his home in Ojai, California, with the help of a few strong friends, including Farmer Dave Scher of Beachwood Sparks (and a Mapache collaborator). “Farmer Dave wasn’t even wearing shoes,” Blasucci remembers, laughing. Once the piano was safely in there, he became deeply attached, playing on it multiple hours a day: “It’s changed the way I think about music, having all the keys laid out in front of me,” he explains. “Having that sort of changed everything.” Also inspired by his recent time riding out the pandemic in New Orleans, where the clubs may have closed but the music never stopped, Blasucci used that piano to start writing one of the most inspired batches of songs of his career thus far. New gems like “Turn Yourself Around” and “Sha La La” were developing with a Southern swing and classic songbook sparkle, and when assessing the growing stack of music he was working on, Blasucci realized that there was something about these tunes that wasn’t quite suited for a Mapache record. Infused with an honest, personal perspective about settling into adult life—about developing as a person and a partner and a family member—these songs were straight from the heart, a clear window, recently Windexed, into the life of one of the most talented members of the L.A.-area underground rock scene. __ Julia Zivic’s music walks a tightrope between tenderness, and power, effortlessly captivating audiences with her ability to navigate intricate emotional landscapes with ease. Julia Zivic’s latest album Good Cry (2022) is sonic storytelling, touching on subjects that journey through the spectrum of death, love and gratitude.Julia lends her songwriting and live performance to esteemed projects like Carrtoons, Rae Kahlil, Joey Dosik, Joanna Teters, Pale Jay, Yoh, Marigold, Ghost Funk Orchestra and more. Recently, Julia garnered further recognition on NPR Tiny Desk, lending her vocals, songwriting and performance to collaborator Ben Carr’s performance under the project Carrtoons. When she’s not on tour with one of her many collaborators, Julia is home in the Hudson Valley as the Director of Music and team member for Beacon Open Studios, a yearly cultural event showcasing the power and importance of the local art scene in The Hudson Valley. She’s also a music and events curator at The Yard in Beacon, NY. Julia, a self-proclaimed homebody, enjoys immersing herself in community when she’s not performing elsewhere.