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As NKLA, Nicolas Lajeunesse blends chilled Hip-Hop beats, lush pads, ambient leads and gritty field recordings to create atmospheric and textured pieces. Heavily influenced by Hip-hop production legends such as J-Dilla, DJ Premier & Dr. Dre, as well as the Lo-fi sound of Bristol's Trip-hop scene in the 90s, he adds his own unique flare using modern production techniques. Lajeunesse started his career producing strictly rap beats for friends, but quickly began experimenting with various genres of electronic music and incorporating them into his style, which continues to flourish as his taste matures. Occasionally he adds his own voice to his productions as well as other vocal samples for added impact.

Singer and songwriter Jett Pace of Old Man Canyon has always been deeply invested in music and the artistic world. When he is not playing music his time is spent exploring photography, painting and film. Born and raised in Vancouver BC in the beautiful mountains of Lynn Valley, Jett has had a colourful history of musical endeavours including his beginnings in hip-hop and classical training on the cello.

"I've dabbled in many different genres and sounds over the years, but I really feel like exploring so many different avenues of sound has given me a very clear direction on what I am now writing for Old Man Canyon. It's basically a collaboration between all the different sounds I've loved from my past merged into one."

After High school Jett travelled for a year before coming back to Vancouver to begin playing in bands once again, but it wasn't until a previous project ended that Jett began writing songs for what would become the Phantoms & Friends EP. "This record is really about me trying to find myself and the world and my place within it, it was born from a desire find my potential and help others find theirs, I think thats really what these songs are about."

Since the release of the EP, Jett has been very busy touring and building a buzz for Old Man Canyon.

"When I haven't been touring and playing shows, I spend most of my time in my basement writing and recording demo's for what will be my next instalment of music, I am extremely excited about it, as I think it embodies more of the sound that I really want to perform and create, its a lot different then the EP, but I think it hits home for me, and you can dance to it."

The next set of recordings can be expected in 2014 along with many tours and other exciting things in the works. It is sure to be a great year for Old Man Canyon.

"Im really looking forward to this next year, with the new album and the live shows, I have a deep interest in how to bring live music in new ways that involve everyone more, I am constantly thinking how I can create a space that feels less divided between performer and audience. I think thats really the key to art is learning and then facilitating how to share it in the purest way possible to create an impact on who's there sharing that space with you"

In the grandest tradition of pop, Paper Pilots' sound is intently familiar. Sitting somewhere between the worlds of contemporary indie pop and 60's British rock music, Los Angeles arrival Justin David Bocchieri sets forth to revive classic songwriting by way of lush, grandiose arrangements and illustrated by lyrical waxing worthy of dialogue banter between Ringo & Marc Bolan during Born To Boogie. Aiming for the pristine melodic heights of The Zombies' Odyssey & Oracle, or Bacharach with a sense of psychedalia ala Revolver, with the lead off track Lacksadaisical, their EP quickly moves into noisier territory through the kind of orchestrated rock inspired by early Scott Walker or Bowie and honed by The Last Shadow Puppets. The short journey touches down gently in the modern folk territory of Sondre Lerche, The Shins or even Belle & Sebastian, with the frail, but joyous crescendo of My Home. Paper Pilots debut EP features contributions from drummer Stephen Edelstein (Caught A Ghost), bassist Ryan Hailey (Orlando Napier Band), lead guitar Evan Winsor (Bluegrass band, The Get Down Boys), and a first time behind the producer's desk for John Girgus (Ex-Sarah Records Aberdeen). It was recorded and mixed with Ülysses Nöriega who has worked recently with The Wedding Present, The Mars Volta amongst many others. Musicianship shines with a production aesthetic somewhere between the golden age of the 1970s and all mod cons. '...their first single "Lacksadaiscal" (that's on purpose, that title) and the B-side "Catch the Lamplight Low" give you an idea of where they're are headed. It's someplace good.' -Buzzbands.la

Peach Kelli Pop originated when Allie Hanlon, originally a drummer, decided to try writing and recording songs in Ottawa, Canada in 2009. Hanlon started out writing not for an audience but for herself. The intimate quality of her bedroom recordings have been maintained to this day. On first listen one will hear high-pitched harmonies and thick layers of trebly guitars but just below the surface lays an evocative darker side to the music that often goes unnoticed.

Peach Kelli Pop is known for her catchy and tongue-in-cheek songs inspired by video games, Chinese food and conspiracy theorists, illustrating not only her playfulness but also her wit and her angst. Hanlon also grapples with more serious topics like the pressures and challenges women face and the weight of love. Some songs feature the sounds and words of frustrated heartache and recognizable sorrows. Those that spend enough time with Hanlon’s music will grasp its depth –both musically and emotionally.

Peach Kelli Pop plays with the type of urgency and immediacy that appeals to an audience with short attention spans. Hanlon fronts Peach Kelli Pop’s energetic live shows on guitar and vocals and is backed by an assembly of female musicians. The live band consists of an additional guitarist, a bassist, a keyboardist and percussionist and a drummer. Hanlon has been playing with all female musicians in recent years because she recalls being inspired by seeing other women play shows as a teen. In the male-dominated music world, it affirmed her own potential for writing and playing music.

Peach Kelli Pop has their third full length record being released this April on Fullerton, CA label Burger Records. They are doing month long tour of the United States and Canada and a tour in Japan in support of the new album.

While they now live in Los Angeles, Pepper Rabbit was practically born in New Orleans. In fact, the NOLA sessions for their debut LP (Beauregard) left such a lasting impression on the young duo that it continues to haunt this summer's Red Velvet Snow Ball album, from the surreal art on its sleeve to the cake-flavored snow cone that gave the mind-expanding record its name.

Red Velvet Snow Ball was recorded in a much different setting than the festive full-length that came before it, however. Starting a few months prior to the fall 2010 release of Beauregard, Pepper Rabbit toured North America several times over-including legs with the likes of Passion Pit, Freelance Whales, Ra Ra Riot and Givers-and tracked new songs in two-week spurts at Ryan Hadlock's secluded barnyard studio.

The calming breaks in Pepper Rabbit's hectic schedule helped keep frontman Xander Singh and drummer Luc Laurent focused. But more importantly, it resulted in their most collaborative work yet (Beauregard started out as Xander's solo record); incorporating influences from several generations, from Portishead to David Bowie and Supertramp to Jamie Lidell. "At the root of each song is something simple," explains Xander, "whether it be the chord progression, the instrumentation, or the lyrics. But the most important aspect of this record is the freedom we gave ourselves to experiment and construct something that's easy to get lost in."

Stepping outside a standard guitar, bass, drums setup certainly didn't hurt. While Luc's main focus is the rhythm section, Xander's interest in varying instruments came from working at a vintage music store...on credit. Taking different instruments home every week, he would then watch clips on YouTube and teach himself to play. "I don't like to be limited to only a handful of tools," he says. "Having a lot of options lying around makes it hard to get stuck." Incorporating around 11 instruments-including ukuleles, clarinet, horns and a striking array of dusty analog synths-the Pepper Rabbit sound can be described as a loose brand of psychedelic pop music, rounded out by Xander's deftly-layered loops and a third touring member on bass and synths (currently NOLA native Jonathan Allen). "Unlike the last album," Xander says, "we didn't try and pull from any generation in particular. We'd just sit down and take the songs in whatever direction felt natural without deviating too far from a core pop song structure. And in the end I think it comes across exactly as we hoped."

Pink Frost (formerly called Apteka) is Adam Lukas, Dino Balocchi, Jesse Hozeny, and Dave Narey. We are from Chicago. We play rock music. We like large kick drums, tube amplification, and face melting. Thanks.

Said the Gramophone - "If The Clientele were a punk band: people prone to fistfights with their brothers, with flicking light-switches til they break. If snowstorms shed sparks or cicadas caught fire. If you longed so much for something that you could never sleep again. Or if all your friends started playing electric guitars at once."

Chicago Reader- "With its chiming guitar, churning rhythms, expansive atmospherics, and keening, melodic vocals, the song presses the same buttons as classic Ride. I expect good things from this band, and soon."

Devil Has the Best Tuna Blog- "Their Smashing Pumpkins like twist on the late 80s Oxford based shoegazers Swervedriver and Ride takes me back to those halcyon days when staring at your shoes through a matted mop of hair whilst furiously bashing your guitars to create a Tsunami of sound was the sound of the future. Sign them now or regret at your leisure."

FutureSounds/Tankfarm label- "Apteka are building their reputation in the Midwest through a wall of sound and Jane's Addiction type fury."

Pasta Primavera- "This four piece band from Chicago has captured the 1990s sound of Smashing Pumpkins in a bottle and is using it will. Watch out."

Prawn formed in Ridgewood, NJ in the summer of 2007. The band has extensively toured the U.S., self released two EP’s and one tour demo. The band self-released their first full length "You Can Just Leave It All " in June 2011 and Topshelf Records released it on vinyl that winter. Prawn followed up their first full length with an EP/LP entitled "Ships." In the summer of 2012, Prawn made their first trip to Europe and the UK in the form of a five week tour. The band has continued touring throughout 2012 and 2013. A split release with Joie De Vivre is in the works for late 2013 and a new LP in early 2014.

RBTS WIN's music is many-faceted, both dark and ephemeral, tough and tender, scary and comforting. It's a fantastic study of electronica, pop, rock, chillwave and trip hop that transcends all of those elements and surfaces in a new place. Lush, rhythmic, star-lit, cool and expansive it manages to both suck the air from the room and breathe into space.

Seeing the Minneapolis duo, Red Pens, is like witnessing a demonstration, a demonstration in raw sonic bliss. Howard Hamilton III is a string-bending master who knows how to make feedback work to his advantage. His confident vocal stylings, coupled with drummer Laura Bennett's all or nothing kit pounding, are about as uniquely refreshing as it gets these days. The stage is littered with junk shop amps and guitars Hamilton seems to almost get tangled up in while he and Bennett exchange doses of laser beam eye contact revealing a seemingly deeper connection between the two of them than your average indie rock outfit.

Hamilton and Bennett met in the arena of visual arts and started Red Pens as a way to express their deep love for rock and roll. Howard's old project, The Busy Signals, toured with The Shins and its beat and loop based jams proved to be an underdog favorite in the early 2000's. Laura is well known as a painter, but is best known for her painting on guitar effects boxes. She even has her own signature fuzz pedal, not bad for a drummer.

Their debut album Reasons on Grain Belt Records is a mid-fi bonanza of fuzzy reverb drenched art rock. The wiggly winding guitars, slap back vocals and killer backbeats are sure to give you that silly grin you've been starving for.

There was a point in time before everything fit into neat subgenres, a period when rock music and the nascent punk scene were still discovering their sound and anything seemed possible. Looking back it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when these two genres converged but if you had to sum it up sonically it would probably sound a lot like the Riverboat Gamblers’ latest album The Wolf You Feed.

The Riverboat Gamblers did all the pre-production for The Wolf You Feed with Ted Hutt (Flogging Molly, The Gaslight Anthem) in Los Angeles and then headed down to Dallas put these ten songs to tape with Grammy-Award winning engineer Stuart Sikes (The White Stripes, Cat Power). “There’s four writers in this band and we all instantly got on the same page as far as wanting this to be a darker record that still had lots of hooks,” frontman Mike Wiebe explains. “We really wanted to go for a grittier, less polished sound to get across the true spirit of these songs because that’s what we do live anyway.”

Wiebe adds that recording the record in Dallas meant that the band could step outside of their comfort zone and create an album without worrying about external distractions. “My other bands all have different writing processes and I think it’s cool to shake it up and have completely new musical experiences whether it’s with the Gamblers or anyone else,” he explains. “Doing [the album] in Dallas really forced us to creatively get outside of our box and when you do that the results aren’t always favorable but this time around things really seemed to come together in a way that was natural.”

Listeners just need to listen to the first fifteen seconds of the Hives-worthy opener “Good Veins” to see that the band—which also includes guitarists Fadi el-Assad and Ian MacDougall, bassist Rob Marchant and drummer Sam Keir—achieved their goal largely because they weren’t trying to make a record that fits into today’s musical landscape. “I got really interested in the time when punk rock and old rock n’ roll were all converging and there wasn’t really a term for it yet, like with the Dictators bleeding over into the weirder Iggy Pop stuff,” Wiebe explains. “It’s edgy and intense but it’s still catchy and people could dance to it if they wanted to.”

Despite the fact that The Wolf You Feed perfectly captures this often-forgotten era, there’s a remarkable amount of variance inherent in these songs. From the sweetly scathing anthem “Bite Your Tongue” to the piano-driven, Murder City Devils-esque death march of “Gallows Bird” and classic Alice Cooper-esque feel of “Loser Neck,” the album juxtaposes all of these influences into something that’s got its roots in the past yet still sounds remarkably relevant. Additionally the album features contributions from Mark Ryan (Marked Men, Mind Spiders) and Sean Kirkpatrick (The Paper Chase) each of whom help the band expand their sound even further.

Wiebe not only proves how versatile of a frontman he’s become on The Wolf You Feed—whether he’s belting out the soaring chorus to “Bite My Tongue” or singing like a ‘70s glam icon on “Heart Conditions”—but he also proves what an accomplished lyricist he is on songs like the heartbreaking “Comedians.” “I think there’s a really strong connection between comedians and musicians; they’re ripping their hearts out onstage for people who might not care at all so that was my love letter to how enamored I am with comics and what they do,” he explains. Trust us, when Wiebe croons, “At the end of the day it was really only you who wanted to laugh at me,” it’s impossible not to be moved by the sentiment.

Ultimately all of this relates back to the album’s title, The Wolf You Feed. “It’s kind of referring to an old Navajo saying that you’ve always got two wolves inside you and one is good and one is evil; you have to feed one and starve one and it’s up to you,” Wiebe explains, noting that the cover art represents the constant struggle between good and evil that each of us are forced to undertake each and every day. “Where do you want to go and do you want to deliver your energy to this black horrible thing or channel it into this process of trying something new that could change everything?”

The Riverboat Gamblers can’t make that decision for you, but with The Wolf You Feed they’ve created the perfect soundtrack for it.