Pascale Cheron is a singer-songwriter and producer based in Monterey and the Bay Area. Her music draws on legacies of jazz, folk, and experimental music. She has recorded and released three albums since 2018 all while touring nationally and internationally as a solo artist and as accompanist for others. Sophia Eliana is a Denver-based folk musician, florist, and dancer from Monterey, California. She fosters the craft of storytelling through songs that resemble overgrown meadows blossoming with wildflowers and artwork reminiscent of a warm hug from a loved one. She has opened for The Ballroom Thieves, Emma Klein, Marielle Kraft, and Spectre Jones. Anticipate her studio sophomore album, recorded at Wonderhaus Studios with Jacob Williams and Noah Dearbon, summer of 2025. Avery Friedman is a Brooklyn-based artist (via Cleveland, Ohio) who will release her debut album, ‘New Thing,’ via Audio Antihero on April 18, 2025. Playing her first show in July 2024, she soon shared stages with h. pruz, Dead Gowns, and Sister., and she impressed the latter’s James Chrisman enough that he offered to record her debut album. The result is a sonically deep and layered record that sees Friedman explore her trauma and queerness with a raw open-heartedness inspired by artists like Adrianne Lenker, Squirrel Flower, and Babehoven.

Usually when folks describe JJ Slater’s music, words relate back to nature, the outdoors, the warm sun and the cool breeze. His UMASS Amherst psych-rock band Humble Digs was a mainstay at Stockbridge School of Agriculture events, and ten years later tours are often routed with ulterior, National Park-related motives. Based in New England, he has toured much of the US, playing festivals, basements, and club gigs, at times opening for artists like Kat Wright, NRBQ, Johnny A, and David Wax Museum. In 2022, he completed a residency at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, where he wrote his new record “The Silver Key”. It was recorded with a Mass Cultural Council grant in 2023, released at the end of 2024, and you’ll find him touring and playing the full record in 2025. He’ll also be touring with his Americana-Blues road-dog project Signature Dish, co-fronting the band with partner Lexi Weege and lending his songs to a dynamic, soul-journey set. In between rock bands, funk jams, and jazz brunches, JJ’s guitar playing is always centered and relentlessly rhythmic, with lead work that quotes both gutsy blues and celestial jazz. His songwriting is playful, with an ability to write a catchy hook and chorus, but take you down a minute-long rabbit hole with a wink and a grin- all with a soft, smoky approach to singing that recalls a burn ride with an old friend.

Elsewhere Shakespeare is a small collective of actor-managers that began in 2019 in an attempt to apply the DIY ethos of the punk scene to producing Shakespeare. They stage their free 90min shows in unconventional spaces like bars, art galleries, basements, and occasionally folks' living rooms. They believe that most things that make Shakespeare plays cheaper, faster, and easier to produce also make them more enjoyable both for actors and audiences.

Soul, Rock & Roll, a dash of Americana storytelling, all bundled into a Venezuelan American workhorse of an artist who hates pants and loves good champagne. Austin artist Sisi has gained tremendous momentum since releasing her debut record in 2023 with songs "Who's Gonna Worry About Me" and "Lyin’ Cheat." After playing the Tito's stage at ACL, singing the national anthem at the Austin FC stadium, landing some of SXSW's favorite showcases like South by San Jose and Soco Stomp, and a showcase featured in Rolling Stone magazine’s "Rancho Pillow Presents: All Together Now", Sisi is lining up 2025 to release her debut full-length album "High Tides". The single "Sugar", released in 2024, was placed in BMI's Texas Top Ten in the Spring. This eagerly awaited record was produced by Chris Boosahda (Shakey Graves, Wild Child, and others).

Peter More is a Texas-based songwriter and musician known for his genre-blending style that fuses rock, folk, and Latin influences. More’s sound — full of heartfelt lyrics and rich, intricate melodies — carries an authentic Texan spirit, inspired by his travels and collaborations with artists worldwide. His most recent recordings include collaborations with Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, T Bone Burnett, and Fugees collaborator John Forté. More has recently been in the studio exploring different creative landscapes, including new original music and songs for film slated to release in 2025.

Will Dailey’s seventh album BOYS TALKING is the one he’s not releasing. Oh, you’ll get to hear it, if you buy a vinyl copy, CD, or download it directly from him. But it won’t be a matter of opening up a streaming platform and pressing play on a chosen date with thousands of other releases. With a record he considers his best work, Will wanted to find another way to celebrate and enjoy the process of sharing the album for more than a day or week. “Music is supposed to be a joyful expression of self that connects us to other people,” Will says. “I want to instill a more personal, joyful process of sharing my work.” Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Dailey has spent the last decade-and-a-half mastering a twisted, Americana psychedelia that evokes underground legends like Cass McCombs, Kevin Morby, and Jeff Tweedy. Like these beloved, offbeat icons, there’s no bending to the music industry machine in his catalog. Rather than try to slot himself into a single genre, era, or sound, Will has always let the songs do what they want—marketing plans and genre programming be damned. Independent but not really indie, the strains of the blues, rock, funk and folk continue to permeate his sound across the years. Rather than a brand of sound, Dailey is a student of the American roots songbook, and a champion of masterful pop hooks. In fact, the most consistent through line of his career is recognition from artists of a certain caliber. He’s repeatedly performed with Eddie Vedder, played alongside Peter Buck of R.E.M., spent 2023 opening for Jakob Dylan and The Wallflowers, and was tapped to pay tribute to Richie Havens at the 2024 Folk, Americana, Roots Hall of Fame induction. In that sense, BOYS TALKING is a culmination of sorts. Not just concerning the idiosyncratic methods of an artist who’s routinely gone the long way around, but as a mountaintop release from a musician, writer, and performer who is a visionary artist in every sense of the word.

There is a ferocious Southern engine inside of Billy Allen + The Pollies’ debut album Black Noise. It thrums to life atop a classic rock chassis and expertly weaves in and out of gospel, grunge, funk, and soul along its eleven-song journey. From the explosive top of the album (a liberating anthem of self-worth called “All of Me”) to the spiritually haunting final track (the wurlitzer fueled “Go on Without Them”) Black Noise is a genre-defiant haymaker that lands. The band is a hybrid of four-piece rock outfit The Pollies and fellow Alabamian, and frontman, Billy Allen. The story of what fused Allen and The Pollies is one that begins in a bar eight years ago. This particular bar was on Allen’s gig circuit and it just so happens to be where Jay Burgess (founder of The Pollies) was having a drink that evening. While there was intrigue and potential in that first chance meeting, the two would remain ships in the night, each building their own careers, until years later when the stars would align at FAME studios in Muscle Shoals. As the story goes, both Allen and The Pollies, who were all occasional session musicians at Fame, were finally in the room together and the track on deck was Little Richard’s “Greenwood, MS”. To hear Allen retell this part of the story is to hear a man talk about the beginnings of a priceless friendship. “There was an immediate romantic musical connection,” Allen said. “This is my band.” To hear Burgess tell it, the feeling was mutual. Over the subsequent year, the two groups rehearsed, toured, wrote, and gelled together under the moniker Billy Allen + The Pollies. The joining of Billy and Jay (along with the other charter members of The Pollies: Spencer Duncan, Jon Davis & Clint Chandler) was like the clicking of a dislocated bone back into true. Named after a theoretical sound bomb with the power to destroy whole cities, Black Noise was written almost entirely during the pandemic, beginning as voice memos between Burgess and Allen. With the lockdown in full swing, the musicians became each other’s micro-community, and voice memos progressed to writing sessions in Jay’s garage, and continued to full band rehearsals at Jay’s Greenhill, Alabama, sanctuary Studio 144. When the time to cut the record arrived, they tapped long-time friend and Grammy winning musician Ben Tanner to produce and engineer. Tanner (co-owner of SingleLock Records and former Alabama Shakes keys player) brought the band to Sun Drop Sound in Florence where the bulk of the recording was done. The band was so deeply meshed that the album they captured between April and November of 2021, other than a small overdub section, was recorded fully live, without a click, and 3 takes or less per song. Listening to Black Noise feels like walking on the alien terrain of a new genre. It sounds like garage grunge by way of Jackie Wilson. The very same kerchief Billy Allen uses to wipe sweat from his brow on stage could be carrying DNA from Wilson Pickett, Joe Cocker, D’Angelo, Ziggy Stardust, or any of the Spiders from Mars. Theirs is a gritty and trailblazing sound. They are a band full of smiling time travelers, able to visit and draw from a multitude of eras and styles. Black Noise is an album that devastates you to the point of remembering why you love music. This is the type of band you root for. You can’t help it. They're that damn good.

Led by kindred spirit songwriters Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez, BLUE CACTUS got their start among the active honky-tonk circuit of North Carolina, developing an electrified twang that now branches out effortlessly into folk, alt-country, and psychedelic-tinged rock. Blue Cactus has supported a diverse set of artists over its eight-year history (The War & Treaty, Town Mountain, and Steve Gunn, among others), Stewart’s introspective lyricism and Arnez’s skill for lush arrangements making the band potent in the studio and on stage. Praised by No Depression for their ability to paint “beautiful pictures of limitless possibility” in roots music, Blue Cactus has drawn comparisons to Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris. Aided by gusts of thoughtful calm issuing from his pedal steel, the ever-present veil which has historically separated the abstract from the expressed finds itself gently parted at the storied hands of LUKE SCHNEIDER. Releasing his debut solo work with Third Man Records in May of 2020, Altar of Harmony was constructed inside the mind of a man who was always changing places. Whether it was touring with raucous-joyous Natural Child, contributing his signature tone to artists like Caitlin Rose and William Tyler or, later, supplying Grammy-nominated Margo Price with pedal steel across the United States and the wider world with appearances on SNL, Late Night, and more, Luke was subconsciously incubating what would, with time, deliver him to his future. Whereas devotional music has often been reserved for some lofted, untouched ideal, Schneider creates a unique type of music dedicated to the quiet power of the present moment. Glowing in cupped hands, like a secret, Schneider offers listeners a moment of calm to combat the frenzied atmospheres that attempt to thwart peace-of-mind. Schneider continues to create, adding his longing, familiar tone and psychedelic edge to projects from Orville Peck, S.G. Goodman, Kyle Hamlett, and longtime friend and collaborator William Tyler.

CARDUME is a brand-new percussion trio founded by Rogério Boccato, Keita Ogawa, and Cleber Almeida, three highly accomplished musicians with decades of collective experience in the world of improvised music. The name CARDUME comes from Portuguese translating to "school of fish”. Their music reflects that fluid, spontaneous connection found when fish move as one through the water, with movements that are similarly leaderless and, apparently based on an endless series of reactions to reactions. Together, they bring their deep experience to the stage, creating spontaneous, listening-based performances that explore the rich textures and rhythms of the percussion world. The trio draws on the diverse expertise of its members, each of whom has collaborated with top-tier artists (Snarky Puppy, John Patitucci, Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, Brian Blade, Hermeto Pascoal, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Toninho Horta to name a few), and have performed at prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, Village Vanguard, Blue Note Clubs, Kennedy Center, Symphony Hall and many more.

The music of Little Mazarn is a cool float a few feet from the ground through a dimly lit, almost familiar forest. It is quieter than silence, big as everything, still but always moving. If you’ve ever had flying dreams, or an amazing nighttime bike ride on LSD, this might be a world for you. Chords are made up of notes; Little Mazarn gives them all their own moment. There are NO superfluous notes played here. Lindsey’s kind and twisting voice ambles along over the spare sounds of Jeff Johnston’s saw bowing, Ralph White’s electric mbira wanderings, and her own slow banjo. Like DJ Screw, Bohren & Der Club of Gore, and anyone who chooses to walk instead of ride, Lindsey realizes the amazing power of slow… slow… slow music. Lindsey is at once a baby and a wise old man. Get in this canoe at dawn on some Texas river that remembers when Comanche slept under the stars.

Rich Hinman vs. Adam Levy is an instrumental trio featuring Rich Hinman on pedal steel and lap steel and Adam Levy on guitar. They have played together on and off for almost 30 years and share a common improvisational language as well as a wide repertoire of jazz, blues, country and soul tunes, standard to obscure to original. The vibe is both funky and atmospheric, festive and sombre. Collectively, these musicians have worked with kd lang, Norah Jones, Mark Guiliana, Tracy Chapman, Rosanne Cash, Hiss Golden Messenger, Sara Bareilles and many others.