Katy Kirby is a New York-based singer-songwriter originally from Spicewood, Texas. She came up in Nashville, where she recorded her acclaimed 2021 debut Cool Dry Place, and has spent the years since becoming one of the more thoughtful songwriters working today. Her second album Blue Raspberry marks a real leap: lush arrangements, ornate melodies, and lyrics that zero in on the specific textures of falling in love for the first time as a queer woman. Synthetic rose scent. Cubic zirconia. The choices someone makes about how to look after she wakes up in the morning. It's a record about artifice and intimacy and how those two things are less opposed than you'd think, and it sounds exactly as gorgeous as that idea deserves.

Heaven Schmitt, the front person of Grumpy, keeps their friends close and their exes closer. The keyboardist and bassist are Heaven’s ex girlfriends, the drummer is their ex-husband (the guitar player and Heaven never dated but when they first moved to New York Heaven had a crush on Diego and there was one night when they thought they might kiss but they didn’t). The deep intimacy shared between the band’s members might explain the tantalizing sense of desire that echoes from song to song on Grumpy’s forthcoming EP Wolfed, the first release from the New York via Nashville singer on their new label home Bayonet. Heaven’s live band of exes also speaks to the way the Grumpy project is built on balancing beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain, and recognizing that you can find truth and healing even in life’s most brutal moments. Their willingness to share the stage with people they have loved is coupled with a willingness to share moments that others might try to hide, and their sense of ease and humor provides the reassurance that you can find joy and inspiration in the painful side of love. 

Nate Head is a songwriter and recording artist originally from Wooster, Ohio, now based in Nashville. In 2025 he released his debut solo album NATHAN, a restrained and reflective record rooted in honesty, space, and emotional clarity. Blending Americana, indie folk, and alternative country, it's music shaped by years on the road and a Midwestern sensibility that rewards close listening.

Based in Brooklyn, Kid Lake delves into a sound she describes as "Hyper Folk," where the boundaries of form and spirit are blurred. Her lyrics are universal but personal and her melodies sweet. Jagged edges and shameless beauty are balanced delicately in her songs.

Playful and sweet grounded in dark guitar-driven grit, Anya Van Rose gives you a taste of Bubblegrunge with dynamic juxtaposition. Her new record Lucky Stars is the afterglow of a starry-eyed daydream where perspective shifts from head-in-the-clouds reverie to the fiercely feminine.  It’s clear that she’s walked through the fire to get where she is today but even still, Anya describes her upcoming full-length record as “a license to have fun”…and you better buckle up. The first song on her upcoming record begins in the back seat of a limousine that Anya revs as she opens with the line ‘get in the car.’ She takes you on a joy ride in the limousine she dreams of taking on tour with her band. You can almost smell the pine tree air freshener and bubblegum from the backseat of her car. With two ‘affirmative thumbs,’ she has her foot on the gas and she’ll take you where you want to go if you keep listening.  The history of Anya’s band spans the MySpace era where her and classmate Austin Wolfe would upload original music to the platform and exchange feedback over dial-up internet. Austin was as cool as being an upperclassman could afford him and was writing his own songs under the influence of Connor Oberst and Bob Dylan at the time. Anya sets the scene in her new song “So Much 4 That” where she remembers one of the first times she met Austin at battle of the bands as the new kid at school. Up until that point, she had only dreamed of playing music in a band and spent summers playing guitar and learning to sing harmony around the campfire with her cousins. She recalls the first time she publicly shared a song in the school cafeteria to an audience sipping on punch and cookies. She sang a song about a boy she met at “Choral Camp” (aka summer-camp for kids who love choir) to a room full of parents and teachers at an after school poetry event. She was feeling scholastic as they handed her an “Outstanding Participation Certificate” signed by the principal but it wasn’t exactly what she was expecting after baring her soul. It wasn’t until she found herself starry-eyed in the high school gymnasium at Battle of the Bands that she realized she would have rather been on a stage under bright lights among her peers. There were kids in high school playing loud guitars in a room where only a couple of chaperones were on guard– she dreamed of being on that stage.  In 2010, Anya began attending an informal songwriting gathering in a historic home on a brick road in Canton, OH. The ever-evolving group that became known as “Bring Your Song” captured some of Anya’s earliest recordings (if you don’t count the lost MySpace tracks) as Ron and Connie Flack would set out chairs and a microphone in their living room. Their home became a sacred space where creatives gathered and listened intently. After several years, a recording studio known today as Realgrey Records was built on the property by Flack himself and the songwriters whose songs echoed through the halls. Inspired by the buzzing community of creatives that surrounded the studio, Anya would bring the same guitar that once buzzed beneath her fingers as she learned to play her first songs at the age of 12. She recalls the first time her dad set a guitar in her lap and taught her to play Beatles songs one chord at a time. In retrospect, Anya realizes how formative her time at “Bring Your Song” was as she wrote about loss. Her songwriting raised questions over her father’s passing and helped her contextualize his death and legacy. She wrestled with the reality that he would never hear the songs he inspired her to write. For Anya, peace was a stubborn reckoning but songwriting helped her feel the pulse of her experience verse after verse.  In 2018, Anya started her band after bass player/high school classmate Austin Wolfe and original guitarist John King unbeknownst to each other said “If you ever start another band, I want to be in it.” The three of them were songwriters that had spent the past decade taking turns playing stages and attending each other’s shows. Austin and John both had their own full length records and Anya had always dreamed of making a record of her own. Consequently, they began working together on arranging a set of Anya’s new songs. Later that year, Anya was nominated by Realgrey Records to track a song at a full-weekend workshop with Weathervane Music spearheaded by Brian McTear. Anya and the staff at Realgrey knew McTear through the “Shaking Through” docu-series that takes you through the recording process with artists like Waxahatchee, Hop Along, Sharon Van Etten and Sufjan Stevens in his Philadelphia based recording studio. McTear, Ron Flack, and a room full of producers and engineers spent the weekend at Realgrey implementing Weathervane’s recording and mixing process featuring Anya and her band. After the two-day workshop, her song “Flies” was born and appeared as the first track on her debut EP “Golden Age.”  In the summer of 2022, Anya teamed up with Claymore Pictures and set designer Magan McLaughlin to film a music video for her single and title track Lucky Stars. Anya had her Whitney Houston moment as it becomes apparent that she is “every woman” in each scene of her parade themed music video. (Spoiler alert!) After filming that summer, the parade float she designed for the music video took to the streets in the same parade she used to march and play clarinet in her high school marching band. With 200,000 people in attendance, Anya channeled her inner-Ferris Bueller on her award winning float in the nationally televised Pro-Football Hall of Fame Parade. Her float won first place in the DIY Parade Float category and she made history as the first musical act to play on a float in the parade that first stepped-off in 1963. Massillon, OH based drummer Austin Popovich joined the band that day on Anya’s parade float and has been making history with the band ever since.  Today, Justin Wolfe and Austin Popovich have both been promoted to Anya’s Myspace top 8. They are excited to bring you Lucky Stars that they proudly recorded at Realgrey Records among the surrounding community of creatives in sunny Canton, Ohio.  Follow Anya and her band’s upcoming releases and shows on her website at www.anyavanrose.com. Stay up to date by following her Facebook and Instagram accounts @anyavanrose.