Loveblaster

“There are a lot of bands these days making the Duster version of slowcore–electric guitar-based, mumbling, and fuzzy. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy plenty of it, but it’s reassuring to hear bands still making my personal favorite kind of slowcore, the kind with clear vocals, a debt to folk music, and, above all, a love of vast empty space. That’s the kind of territory in which we find Madison, Wisconsin’s Loveblaster–think early Low, Ida, and Idaho–on their first album, The Way Things Work. The trio… deliver[s] eight songs at the pace of molasses–the percussion is spaced widely (when it’s even there at all) but steady, the pianos are quite pretty but not attention-grabbing. The band members’ voices intertwine over top of the sparse instrumentals, making them (to me) the clear star of the record–what’s there is more than enough to carry us through the moments of (near) silence where no one is singing.” -Rosy Overdrive

Maximiano

Maximiano’s music is almost never about just one emotion, moment, or person. It is about the way that experience flows and how music can express this growth and change. Riding waves of indie folk orchestration, Maximiano’s passionate voice conveys heartbreak, love, and vulnerability. Their lyrical style, heavily informed by their training as a writer and poet, combines evocative images and confessional lines to fit the balance of each song. The result is a flowing, expressive sound that guides you on an emotional journey through changing dynamics, the weaving of melody and countermelody, and a devotion to the truth of emotion: that it is ever-changing.

Forktail

Formed in 2024, the members of Forktail came together after bonding over their mutual love of 90s and 2000s indie rock and emo. With members spread out between Milwaukee, Ohio and Utah, their debut album Olive was released in November of 2024. This will be their debut live appearance.