Artist Bio
Near the end of fifth grade, Eli Edwards’ mom gave him $20 and told him to go find a friend. His team had won its soccer game that day, so they were out celebrating at a local pizza parlor with games. But, more importantly, there had been one other Black kid that day on the pitch in Spanaway, WA, a Tacoma suburb and military-base town at the rainy northwest corner of the United States. That kid just happened to be Xayvien Young. An instant deep connection was formed between Edwards and Young—Eli and Xay, as they prefer to be called were inseparable— and now twelve years later they are the electrifying, boundary-skipping duo Casi.
Along the way, Eli had relocated to Los Angeles with the indie rock band Enumclaw he had helped found, but he found himself flying home maybe a little too much. He was ostensibly visiting his girlfriend, but he spent most of his time with Xay. They cut tracks in every bit of free time they found until they had an epiphany: Maybe this music they’d made together for a dozen years was actually something special. Casi’s 10-track, self-titled debut out on Carpark Records is the electrifying proof they needed.
On the record, they enthusiastically explore every musical interest they have ever had—explosive hip-hop and unbridled hardcore, high-gloss nü metal and a little bit of emo—as a pair. These songs don’t ignore genre lines; they delight in destroying them, in finding ways to slam hip-hop and hardcore, emo and nü metal together until it seems illogical that they were ever apart. Take “Jumper,” where heavy metal guitars and face-kicking drums stir the moshpit for rabid verses about crushing ICE and the lessons you learn riding the poverty line. And take closer “Bridges,” where the melodic imprint of Deftones meets the relentless confessions of Death Grips. Here are the hard, funny, and loud stories of two 23-year-olds, screaming about the world over a breathless composite of all the music they’ve ever loved.
When Eli was in Los Angeles, Xay missed his friend. But in his absence, he also felt the spark of inspiration. Music was something that had just been their childhood hobby, but now Eli was in a rock band that had press accolades and tours. He got serious about the craft. Eli would write about the dislocation and isolation he felt in California, while Xay would document the hardships of being a young Black man with a complicated family while working menial jobs in Spanaway. “21, still rapping, got me feeling like an old man/Multimillion-dollar, Grammy-winning, that’s the whole plan,” goes the brilliantly named and high-speed headrush “I’m Hungover and Went to Church.” Casi is a vessel of shared ambition.
This isn’t a coming-of-age album for Casi; it is, instead, a raw and riveting snapshot of that process, painful as it can be. “Eleven87” is a breakup song, a soul beat springing beneath arching emo vocals. And “Intrusive Thoughts” treats that topic like a punching bag, Eli and Xav fighting against the mental habits that keep them down. “I just wanna feel like I’m enough,” runs the chorus. “I just wanna feel like I’m on top.” These 10 songs instantly close that gap.
There’s an alternate reality where everyone makes a living wage and the cleanest buses you’ve ever seen arrive every other minute. Where the most intense songs are about confessing your love to a crush at the apple orchard, and where gentle feelings and chaotic energy are inseparable best friends. This is the timeline where Cootie Catcher is right at home. This Toronto based four-piece exudes both vulnerability and unbridled excitement, creating a sound that hypercharges the open-hearted tenderness of twee pop with spiraling synths and giddy electronics.
Good Flying Birds is a jangling, noisy guitar-pop group based in the Midwest, USA. It began in December 2023 with a collection of 4-track cassette recordings and stop-motion videos uploaded to YouTube under the name “Talulah God,” along with a chaotic and colorful, GIF-infested website. Over the following months, songs were uploaded fairly frequently, eventually catching the attention of influential punk and DIY label operator Martin Meyer. Sharing both dirty basements and well-lit stages with like-minded punk janglers (Sharp Pins, Answering Machines, Wishy, Pardoner, Horsegirl, Graham Hunt, Golomb, Chronophage, Playland, to name a few), they’ve been key players in stoking a flame for scrappy guitar music that seems to grow by the day. The influence of jangly lo-fi/DIY heavyweights who came before like Guided By Voices (their namesake), Beat Happening, DLIMC, Talulah Gosh (partly their namesake), and The Vaselines, is prevalent, but they carry a unique charm all their own. It’s the sound of looking at a crumbling world with rosy cheeks and wide eyes, a tambourine by your side. Good Flying Birds have signed with Carpark Records, and are co-releasing their new single “Eric’s Eyes” with Carpark & Smoking Room.
Dean Wareham was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He moved to New York City as a teenager in 1977, and attended the high school where he met his future Galaxie 500 bandmates. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Social Studies. In 1987 he founded Galaxie 500, who released three albums, all produced by Kramer and released on Rough Trade. 2024 saw the release of new compilation of B-sides and previously unreleased tracks: Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90. Wareham’s next band Luna recorded seven albums for Elektra and Beggar’s Banquet (including Penthouse, on Rolling Stone’s list of best albums of the 90s), followed by three albums as Dean & Britta (with his wife Britta Phillips), and two solo albums. His most recent release, also on Carpark Records, was a holiday album in collaboration with Britta and Sonic Boom.
His memoir Black Postcards is a chronicle of his years in indie rock and was published by Penguin. He has also co-composed soundtracks and acted in several films for Noah Baumbach, most recently White Noise.
That’s the Price of Loving Me is Dean’s first album with Kramer since Galaxie 500’s This Is Our Music in 1990.
Dean Wareham founded Galaxie 500 who made three classic albums for Rough Trade in 1988-90. His next band Luna recorded seven albums for Elektra and Beggar’s Banquet.
Britta Phillips’ first musical foray was as the singing voice of Jem (Jem & the Holograms), before she moved to the UK in 1989 with the shoegaze band Belltower. She played bass for the Ben Lee band and then joined Luna on bass in the year 2000.
Dean & Britta have recorded several albums as a duo and have scored two films for Noah Baumbach: The Squid & the Whale and Mistress America.
Sonic Boom was co-founder of the legendary English band Spacemen 3, he went on to form Spectrum and the experimental E.A.R. and has produced records by MGMT, Beach House and Panda Bear. His most recent release was a collaboration with Panda Bear, the groundbreaking Reset album (2022).
The friendship between Dean Wareham and Sonic Boom began in August of 1989 when they met backstage after the penultimate Spaceman 3 gig, at London’s Subterania club. They kept in touch, played occasional shows together, and in 2002 made their first recorded collaboration when Sonic re-mixed six Dean & Britta songs for the Sonic Souvenirs EP. They have toured together and collaborated on a number of songs since then, but A Peace of Us is their first full album as a trio.
Their combined and individual efforts have built a musical world we now associate with the classic indie greats; the comforting realm of lush guitar tones, adventurous synths, and layered vocals, holding the listener in a realm as unmistakable as their own.
Phoebe Rings shimmers into orbit with their debut LP, Aseurai, pulling from lead singer/synthesist Crystal Choi’s Korean mother tongue to encapsulate the themes. “Aseurai means around you in the atmosphere, hard to reach, fading away,” Choi says. “It’s a poetic expression. You wouldn’t say it in normal conversation, but I like that.”
Following the four-piece band’s 2024 self-titled EP, Aseurai adds disco and city-pop influences while staying true to dream-pop roots. While Phoebe Rings was originally a solo project of Choi’s, Aseurai marks a shift with contributing songwriting credits from the whole band. The four musicians cut their teeth working on other notable NZ projects such as Princess Chelsea, Fazerdaze, Tiny Ruins, AC Freazy, Sea Views and Lucky Boy.
With a more ambitious collection of instruments, Choi says this album heralds the start of true collaboration: “I feel more precious about this LP because it includes everyone’s gems.” Guitar/synthesist Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent spearheads unexpected arrangements, with bold fuzzy guitar textures, to spice up the mix. Benjamin Locke adds maturity to the lyrics, paired with perfectionist bass lines. And drummer Alex Freer’s slick production soars Aseurai to diverse and synergetic heights. The broth is richer with more cooks in the kitchen, and the brewing of textures creates a distinct ‘Phoebe Rings’ sound.
If the EP was spacey, then Aseurai settles on earth, rooted in tangible moments. “Without getting too gloomy, it’s a weird world out there. A lot has changed in the world since the EP came out,” says Kavanagh-Vincent on this transformation. The album delves into hope and longing across all possibilities, and this exploration of holding on and letting go is organically threaded throughout. Across ten songs, Phoebe Ring’s storytelling ranges from tongue-in-cheek musings on gentrification to tender autobiographical memories.
아스라이 흩어지는 하늘의 별이 (May the falling light of faraway stars) / 그대의 손 끝에 닿아 숨이 돼주길 (Reach your fingertips and let you breathe),” Choi sings in the title track “Aseurai.” Imagined as a breezy track inspired by a 90’s Korean pop band, Choi discovered, when fleshing out the lyrics, that it was about yearning for people she couldn’t see anymore. In the old-school disco track, “Get Up,” Locke addresses struggles with mental health in a Matrix-inspired driven mantra: ‘Just get up / Just get up.’ The groove persists with ‘Fading Star,” a quirky ballad filled with steely jazz/rock guitar solos dedicated to a suburban aging musician. Kavanagh-Vincent’s lead single ‘Drifting’ is an unrequited celestial love song with bouncing bass and playful synths.
The band wrote, produced, and engineered the album across studios and band members’ homes in 2023/2024 in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). It features mixing/mix production by local legend Jeremy Toy (Bic Runga, Aaradnha, Princess Chelsea) and mastering by Kelly Hibbert. With Aseurai, Phoebe Rings mark out a brilliant new constellation in their sky, bringing their individual compositions to the fore whilst seamlessly threading them into one celestial body – launching skyward on Carpark Records in June 2025.
Fake Fruit’s visceral indie rock operates so firmly in the present that it’s transportive and unmooring. The Oakland trio’s songs careen with volatile energy and lead singer Ham D’Amato’s lyrics are enveloped with acerbic humor and resonant perceptiveness. Though their new LP Mucho Mistrust is a sly reference to a beloved Blondie lyric, the title encapsulates both the anxieties of daily life, a bloodless music industry, and global capitalism as well as the clear-eyed skepticism needed to rebel against it. Across 12 propulsively unpredictable tracks, the album is both their most collaborative and most immediate yet.
Following the 2021 release of Fake Fruit’s self-titled debut LP, the band’s personal lives hit a turbulent and transformational period. “There were big life changes and I was so close to boiling over,” says D’Amato. “I left a bad relationship, entered a more stable and loving one, got diagnosed with alopecia, and I’m turning 30 soon too.” This personal upheaval was channeled into the explosive lead single “Mucho Mistrust.” The track is simultaneously disorienting and direct, with clanging guitars from Alex Post, off-kilter drums from Miles MacDiarmid, and D’Amato snarling, “How you gonna blame me / when you could’ve done something about it / it’s not right / How you gonna marinate me / in shitty things overnight.” She explains, “This song was a snapshot of how I got through a difficult year.”
Recorded live at the Bay Area’s Atomic Garden studio with producer Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Home Is Where), the band’s palpable ferocity shines throughout the record. Single “Más o Menos” is searing punk, with buzzsaw guitars and surging bass. It’s a clenched-fist song, one where D’Amato sings, “I decided to assert myself / After I lost all my sense of self.” Later in the track, D’Amato, who is Chicana, sings in Spanish, “¡No me hables! / ¡No escuchare!” While some of these songs deal in heartbreak, they are charged with way bigger themes. “There’s also wanting to break up with capitalism and feeling upset about things politically,” says D’Amato.
For the band, these themes are personal. “I’m managing us while I’m in between changing diapers in my day job as a nanny,” says D’Amato. “Everyone in the band still believes in it and is motivated to keep wading through the bullshit.” On this album, they had no choice but to bet on themselves and each other. No track broadcasts their evolution better than the single “Cause of Death,” which morphs from a gorgeous sax-laden banger to something cathartic and anthemic.
As adventurous and righteous as Mucho Mistrust gets, there’s still an inviting core that never takes itself too seriously. From the ripping “Cause of Death,” which self-deprecatingly takes aim at anxiety and indecision, to the searing title track, Fake Fruit imbue their songs with humor and heart. “Our band is fun,” says D’Amato. “My number one coping mechanism for all of life is to joke about it. Even when the album talks about serious things, I am proud of how funny it can be.”
Rui Gabriel’s journey to become one of indie rock’s most vibrant and perceptive voices is certainly unconventional. Born in Venezuela and raised in Nicaragua, the now-Indiana-based songwriter spent his 20s in New Orleans and playing in beloved bands like Lawn, where he’s a co-songwriter and co-lead singer with Mac Folger. While that band finds the sweet spot between sing-a-long power pop and bracing post-punk, Gabriel’s solo debut Compassion uses a lighter palate that combines ethereal pop with ‘80s synth textures, and slacker-rock charm. The LP is a testament to growing up and Gabriel’s disarming lyrical sensibility.
Growing up in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, Gabriel had always wanted to be in a band. After attending high school in Nicaragua, he ended up in New Orleans for college. “When I got there, I realized the school was full of kids who were all in bands,” says Gabriel. “Just being around these other artists gave me the confidence to try and do music.” After writing songs with his band Yuppie Teeth, he formed Lawn with Folger and Nicholas Corson in 2016. Their three albums, 2018’s Blood on the Tracks, 2020’s Johnny, and 2022’s Bigger Sprout received raves from Stereogum, VICE, and Bandcamp Daily.
Major life changes like settling down and becoming a father gave Gabriel newfound dedication as a songwriter. “I had been working on the different iterations of these songs for so long but when I found out I was going to be a dad, I finally got the urgency to finish it,” says Gabriel. “It was very profound to have that moment where you’re like, ‘you’re going to record these songs and finally finish them and then this other new and exciting chapter in your life is going to begin.’” He enlisted Corson to co-produce the material and help flesh out the songs. “This record would not sound the way it does without Nick,” says Gabriel. “He was my rock during this period. He is a masterful arranger and has such a good ear for pop music and noise.”
Compassion is a reflection of Gabriel’s playful and inviting songwriting but it’s also a collaborative masterclass. Alongside Corson, Gabriel is joined by The Convenience and Video Age’s Duncan Troast, Stef Chura, Kate Teague, and Lawn’s Mac Folger. To Gabriel, the LP is an undeniable document of personal growth. “Compassion is me saying goodbye to the mentality that I had before and hello to becoming an adult,” he says.
Ducks Ltd. are a Toronto band featuring Australian lead guitarist Evan Lewis and U.K-born, U.S.-raised singer, bassist, and rhythm guitarist Tom McGreevy. As Ducks Ltd., the two thrive on skirting the edges of buoyant jangle pop and driving power pop. Their latest album, Harm’s Way, contains anxious songs that McGreevy explains are “about struggling. About watching people I care for suffer, and trying to figure out how to be there for them. And about the strain of living in the world when it feels like it’s ready to collapse.”
Harm’s Way is an undeniable evolution of Ducks Ltd.’s songwriting process. Where their critically acclaimed 2021 debut Modern Fiction and 2019 EP Get Bleak were self-recorded and self-produced in a Toronto basement, here, they made an LP in Chicago with producer Dave Vettraino and some of their favorite musicians. These collaborators include Finom’s Macie Stewart, Ratboys’ Julia Steiner and Marcus Nuccio, Dehd’s Jason Balla, Moontype’s Margaret McCarthy, Lawn’s Rui De Magalhaes, Dummy’s Nathan O’Dell, and Patio’s Lindsey-Paige McCloy. Ducks Ltd.’s touring drummer Jonathan Pappo also appears on the LP.
The band first showed this collaborative streak on a 2023 covers EP, which featured guests like Mo Troper, Ratboys, Illuminati Hotties, and Jane Inc. that boasted renditions of songs by The Cure, The Feelies, and The Jesus and Mary Chain. Where those songs started as ideas on days off from tour, Harm’s Way is also a product of writing on the road while supporting acts like Nation of Language and Archers of Loaf. “When we got signed, we had played maybe five or six shows ever,” says McGreevy. “After last year, it’s well in the hundreds. Those things change your perception of your own music and songwriting.”
This well-earned and road-tested confidence made the making of this LP their most intuitive and organic yet. “Our relationship is built on trust and we don’t let our egos come into the creative process in any way,” says Lewis. “We have this really great thing where every decision with the band is filtered through both of us. Here especially, we really figured out how to make something that truly sounds like us.”
