In February, teenage Chicago indie rockers Dwaal Troupe contributed a tender, dusty tune called “Everyone Forgot but You” to Porcelain Songs, a 30-track compilation made by fans of enigmatic Swedish indie-rock project Weatherday. The musicians involved in the comp put it together via Discord, a messaging app and social-media platform that allows young fans to […]
Tag: Dwaal Troupe
Posted inMusic
Horsegirl and the dream of a teen rock scene
In July 2019, Chicago indie-rock trio Horsegirl played the eighth annual Square Roots Festival. At the time, live shows were the only way to hear the group’s taut but disarming dream pop, with its windswept-lakefront sound—and they’d only performed a few of them. They hadn’t released any music, not even to stream, and unsurprisingly they’d […]
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Eli Schmitt, jack-of-all-trades in Chicago’s young DIY arts and music scene
Eli Schmitt, 20, moved to Chicago a couple years ago to attend DePaul, where he studies journalism and art history. In that time he’s become a crucial connector in an emerging youth arts movement best known for its bands, which include Lifeguard, Post Office Winter, Friko, Dwaal Troupe, and Horsegirl. Schmitt wears a lot of […]
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Forty-two Reader-recommended releases for your Bandcamp Friday
Friday, May 6, is the 22nd Bandcamp Friday—a 24-hour period where the retailer passes its usual cut of sales revenue along to the independent labels and artists who sell their music and merchandise through the site. Bandcamp typically announces forthcoming Bandcamp Fridays in three-month chunks, and this Friday is the last one that’s been made […]
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Half-Ukrainian musical jack-of-all-trades Pasha Pear drops a hallucinatory new dance single
Born to a Ukrainian mother and a Russian-Armenian father, Chicago-based musician Pasha Petrosyan grew up living in Moscow during the school year and Kyiv every summer, till his family moved to the suburbs of Chicago when he was 11. Since moving into the city in 2013, Petrosyan has become a jack-of-all-trades in its independent rock […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best zine documenting a teen indie-rock scene
“Hallogallo” isn’t just the name of a song by 70s Krautrock band Neu!—it’s also a term that a group of Chicago teenagers have adopted to apply to almost anything associated with their DIY music and art community. That includes the zine Hallogallo, launched in early 2021, which has done terrific work documenting this scene. It’s […]
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The year’s last Bandcamp Friday arrives
Since the start of the pandemic, Bandcamp has passed along its usual share of sales revenue to artists and labels 17 times, usually on the first Friday of the month. You probably already knew that, since you clicked on a story about the 18th such Bandcamp Friday—but you might not be aware that the site […]
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Elenna Sindler teams up with Hasco Duo for an EP of haunting art songs
Late last month, local contemporary classical composer and pop musician Elenna Sindler dropped a new collaborative digital EP, Lullaby Baby, with Hasco Duo (aka soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett and guitarist Jesse Langen, both of Ensemble dal Niente). Sindler, who sings the lead vocal parts on the EP, describes it as reflecting “different fears and anxieties […]