Julianna Zachariou (zak-uh/ree-yoo) is an independant singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist currently living in San Diego, CA (by way of hometown Sacramento, CA and a five year stretch in Nashville, TN). Julianna’s “sharp, witty and personal” writing, as praised by San Diego Magazine, has earned her over 8 million streams online and thousands of monthly listeners. Her latest full length album, “Hero Of Your Heart” garnered a nomination from the San Diego Music Awards as well as multiple nods from San Diego’s KPBS on radio and in print. If you catch Julianna, you are sure to enjoy a set that “masters a blend of pop, folk, rock, indie and Americana and turns it into something that feels fresh, like it’s just hers.” (J. Evans / KPBS).”
Artist Category: Indie Folk
Emil Droga
Emil Droga is an Australian born singer-songwriter. He has been producing and performing music from an early age. His first EP, Take a Breath, was released in 2019, aged 15. The title song for the album was performed as a duo with the American singer-songwriter, Jon McLaughlin. His most recent EP Just Talkin’ is due for release in 2021.
There is a mysterious quality to Emil and his music. He’s a storyteller with richly composed tales to tell. His original and highly lyrical musings reach deep into the soul, revealing a musical sensibility and maturity of thought and feeling which belies his age.
Emil’s debut song, Free, was composed for a school music challenge in 2012 when he was 9 years old. Selected as a standout, the song was orchestrated, recorded, and performed publicly by Emil. The experience changed his life, notably introducing Emil to his now long-time mentor and friend, Bobbie Lee Stamper.
Jenny Owen Youngs
In the decade since Jenny Owen Youngs last released a full-length album, she’s toured the world, co-written a #1 hit single, launched a wildly popular podcast, landed a book deal, placed songs in a slew of films and television series, moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles to coastal Maine, and gotten married, divorced, and married again. She’s done everything, it seems, except release another album.
Yet now with her exceptional new Yep Roc debut, Avalanche, Youngs delivers a main course worthy of the wait. Written with a series of friends including S. Carey, Madi Diaz, The Antlers’ Peter Silberman, and Christian Lee Hutson and recorded with producer Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, The Hold Steady, Cassandra Jenkins, Josh Ritter), the collection is an achingly beautiful exploration of loss, resilience, and growth from an artist who’s experienced more than her fair share of each in recent years. The songs are deceptively serene here, layering Youngs’ infectious pop sensibilities atop lush, dreamy arrangements that often belie the swift emotional currents lurking underneath. The performances, meanwhile, are riveting and nuanced to match, gentle yet insistent as they reckon with the pain of regret and the joy of redemption, sometimes in the very same breath. The result is the most raw and arresting release of Youngs’ remarkable career, a brutally honest, deeply vulnerable work of self-reflection that learns to make peace with the past as it transforms doubt and grief into hope and transcendence.
That kind of range has been Youngs’ calling card from the very start. Born and raised in rural New Jersey, she fell in love with The Beatles at an early age before eventually finding her way to The Cranberries and Elliott Smith in high school. Her self-recorded debut, Batten Down The Hatches, landed a high-profile sync in the Showtime series Weeds and led to a deal with Nettwerk Records, which re-released the album along with her 2009 follow-up, Transmitter Failure. Widespread acclaim and dates with the likes of Regina Spektor, Ingrid Michaelson, Frank Turner, and Aimee Mann followed, but by the time Youngs released her third album, 2012’s An Unwavering Band Of Light, she was ready for a change of pace, moving to LA to focus on writing for other artists and for film and TV. In 2016, Youngs co-wrote Pitbull’s “Bad Man,” which debuted at the 58th annual Grammy Awards; in 2017, she co-wrote Shungudzo’s “Come On Back,” which was featured in the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack; and in 2018, she co-wrote Panic! At The Disco’s smash hit “High Hopes,” which went five-times platinum and broke the record for most weeks atop Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart. Along the way, Youngs also launched Buffering The Vampire Slayer, an episode-by-episode podcast devoted to Buffy The Vampire Slayer that attracted more than 160,000 monthly listeners and led to a book deal with St. Martin’s Press. Youngs recently launched a new series with her podcasting partner/ex-wife called The eX-Files and has a narrative fiction podcast due out next year, as well.
Joanne The Band
Boston based indie-folk duo, Joanne the Band is comprised of Anna VanValkenburgh and Jocelyn Bailey. The pair started off as coworkers and never truly left that title. They spent 2 years writing with each other leading to their debut project, Neither All or In Between. The EP deals with themes of rejection, grief, and the acceptance of inevitable change while serving as an introduction to the band’s sound. Joanne’s hope is to serve as a new england artist collective; acting as a landing pad for their community’s creative humans, always expanding and evolving.
Axel & Lolo
Axel & Lolo are a best friend and folk-pop duo. They craft melodies that are as heartwarming as they are infectious. Through imaginative storytelling, Axel & Lolo write about themes of friendship and feelings. Their unique sonic world transports listeners to a place where every note is a vibrant expression of their profound connection. Axel & Lolo’s music invites you to dance, dream, and celebrate the beauty of humanity — making them a beloved fixture in the indie music scene.
Nemarca
Nemarca is the musical project of artist Anna Reidister.
Anna Reidister is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and musician located in Boston, MA. Her work explores the intersection of storytelling, character building, and late-stage capitalism through performance, event production, post-digital objects, folk art, and poetry. She aims to expose the absurdity of neoliberalism, imagine new worlds and envision alternate realities. She has performed at Massachusetts College of Art’s Alumni & Founders Day, Club Passim’s campfire. festival, Boston Neighborhood Network’s Community Media Day, and the Winthrop Pride Festival hosted by Senator Lydia Edwards. She holds a BFA from Massachusett College of Art and Design in Interrelated Media and a minor in Creative Writing.
Geordie Gordon
You’ve likely seen Geordie Gordon on stage. The Toronto singer/songwriter is currently a member of two internationally acclaimed indie acts: U.S. Girls and Islands. He also served as a sideman for Andy Shauf just prior to that songwriter’s 2016 breakthrough. When not on the road, he works in a queer bookstore stocked with coming-of-age stories. His second solo album, Tambourine, is Geordie’s own coming-of-age story, in more ways than one. It’s the album that will introduce the world to Geordie Gordon’s depth of talent as a singer, arranger, lyricist and melodicist.
Geordie Gordon was 16 when gay marriage was made legal in his home province of Ontario. He was raised in an accepting community of hippies and leftist punks. He’s a son of James Gordon, a successful Canadian folk singer covered by the Cowboy Junkies on The Trinity Session. Geordie formed his first band as a teenager, the misnomered Barmitzvah Brothers (featuring Bird City’s Jenny Mitchell). They toured Canada and were on the cover of Toronto’s Now Magazine. They sounded like nothing else on the thriving Canadian indie scene at the time: junkstore instruments, unusual lyrics, and a childlike sense of play—because they were still actual children.
Everything about Tambourine is a huge leap forward for Geordie. The layered vocal harmonies explore both his falsetto heights and the lower end of his register. The electronics of The Tower are still present, as are the soft pop vibes of U.S. Girls and Islands.
From teenage awakenings to the wisdom of elders, Tambourine is the record Geordie Gordon was born to make. And he’s just getting started.
Kass Richards
Kassie Richardson, who performs solo as Kass Richards, grew up in rural Virginia, just east of Patsy Cline’s hometown. A common weary break of the voice, a tug of the lonesome, can be detected in her singing. Richards has been a central member of the U.S. Girls band and most recently was one of many musicians chosen by Meg Remy to help record her acclaimed album Heavy Light (4AD), at Hotel2Tango.
She released her debut record, The Language Shadow in 2020. In February of 2024 Richards released a record with Aidan Coughlan called When We Were Wolves, and has now just released her newest record, New Love Meditation.
Maddie Lam
There are truly gifted people in this world, with a talent not only for art or music, but also for making people feel seen. Maddie Lam is the pinnacle of this gift.
As a child, Lam developed an interest in music, singing and taking piano lessons. After teaching herself guitar, she later began writing songs at age 14 as a way to cope with the world around her. The daughter of immigrant parents, she wants to pursue her music to the fullest extent, appreciative of the sacrifices it took to get her there.
When discussing her songwriting process, Lam states, “Some songs are like friends that you connect with immediately… other songs take months and years.” Her art is worth the time and effort it takes, including the creation of her music video for the song, “Violet Sky.” A process that she describes as laborious, but in an environment full of incredible artists, visionaries, and directors. As difficult as creating visual art, and songs can be, she says, “the role of the artist, for me, is about looking at the pain and not turning away… choosing to alchemize it.” Lam has experimented with visual art, focusing on self portraits. “I try to find the beauty in myself… to find a beauty that’s useful” she explains about her work with painting and photography.
Along with recorded music and accompanying visuals, Lam has stepped into the world of live performance. “It’s one of the most intimate things we can do with other people, to be in ceremony with other people… it’s quite ancient” she states. Live music is like capturing a firefly, Lam believes, and we get to show it to the people we hold close. Recently, she put together a band, taking on performances together. Their recent endeavor, a performance for the WGBH radio station, felt like an out of reach dream only a year ago for Lam. Her hard work and dedication amounts to deep connections and incredible music. Lam wants people to see “what happens when you dream out loud, when you dream with your feet and your hands and your heart.”
Aleksi Campagne
Named Penguin Eggs & Roots Music Canada’s New Discovery of the Year, Aleksi Campagne offers a contemporary, indie-folk take on the time-honoured fiddle-singing tradition. Born and raised in Montreal, Aleksi’s music blends folk songwriting with an edgy, multi-layered sound resulting from his unique combination of voice, violin and looping-effect pedals. His debut album For The Giving / Sans rien donner was just nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award (April 2024), and is a fully bilingual album offering 10 songs in French and the same 10 songs in English.
Aleksi’s debut has been a whirlwind! Aleksi was selected as a Mariposa Folk Festival Emerging Artist to perform at the festival. His first single Another Day was picked by Paul Corby as a Top Single of 2022. He was then celebrated by Tom Coxworth as one of the Top 5 Favourite acts at the Folk Alliance International Conference, alongside acts like The Fretless and Mary Gautier. His second single Won’t be Scared was selected as the only Canadian finalist in the Kerrville Folk Festival’s Grassy Hill New Folk Competition for Emerging Songwriters. In a review in Le Devoir by Sylvain Cormier, Aleksi’s debut was compared to that of Patrick Watson and Half Moon Run. According to Roots Music Canada, “Aleksi Campagne finessed one of the most musically ambitious accomplishments of the year, an impeccable double album, one set of songs in two conjoined bilingual packages.” He is now touring his album with over 50 shows in Canada and the United States!