Sima Cunningham is a Chicago-based musician, songwriter, producer, presenter, and a founding member of Chicago’s art-rock band, Finom. Over the past 15 years she has worked as a recording and touring musician with Jeff Tweedy, Richard Thompson, Iron & Wine, Edith Frost, Chance the Rapper, Twin Peaks, and been featured on multitudes of records. She co-owns a recording studio in Chicago, Fox Hall, where she produces records for her own projects and other artists. In 2015 she formed Finom (fka OHMME) which has been her primary project for the past decade. They have released three records: Parts (2018), Fantasize Your Ghost (2020), and Not God (2024) with Joyful Noise Recordings. The band was recently commissioned to write and perform a piece with the Pacific Northwest Ballet and Orchestra in Seattle. An Armenian-American artist and descendent of genocide survivors she has focused much of her work on building connections and healing divides through music. Over the last ten years, she has traveled to Armenia and the Caucasus to perform, participate in workshops, and foster creative cross-cultural opportunities between artists in Armenia and the United States. Her work as an artist-presenter includes founding a small music festival, Postock, that will celebrate its 16th year in 2024; curating and hosting the I Hear Voices series in Chicago at Constellation; and working as a lead organizer for the Pitchfork Music Festival. Her debut solo record, High Roller, was released on August 30th on Ruination Records.

Eamon Fogarty is a composer, songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist and audio archivist who was born in the state of New Hampshire. He has written for, recorded, and performed in a broad range of capacities and contexts, including numerous folk and rock bands, (Alex Dupree, Psychic Temple, Matt Kivel) choral groups, free improvisatory ensembles, puppet theater productions, and even a surf video or two. His first solo record, Progressive Bedroom, was out on Joyful Noise in 2017, while Blue Values, out in 2019, was released on Jealous Butcher Records. His new LP titled I’m An Animal Now came out in June. It’s a gem of a collection of songs features percussion by Ryan Jewell and bass clarinet by Jeff Tobias of Sunwatchers and Modern Nature. It was mixed by Chris Schlarb of Psychic Temple. It also features vocal haromies by Will Stratton and Hannah Frances and additonal bass contributions by Nora Predey. “For the last decade or so, Eamon Fogarty has been quietly rearranging the singer-songwriter idiom to suit his singular vision” (Andy Cush). The instrumentation on the record has nearly as much to do with chamber music as folk or rock and Fogarty’s voice is full and resonant.

 Little Mystery is the project of soulful NYC singer-songwriter Ivy Meissner. She sublimates elements of folk, ‘60s pop, early R&B, ’70s rock, grunge, and more into a timeless-sounding, commanding musical vision. Her resonant, blues-inflected singing is always at the center of the action, deriving its power from alluring contrasts—smoky and crystalline, inviting and defiant, wry and vulnerable. It is invested with the same warmth and grit as her songwriting, which combines the erudition of Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell and the unrepentant attitude of Bonnie Raitt and Chrissie Hynde. She has been recording and performing original music for most of her life. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Meissner began her cultural education at an early age, absorbing classic rock and Motown before she was a teenager and eventually performing her own songs as part of a duo with her sister. At the turn of her twenties, she began carving out a niche in the NYC indie scene, playing under her own name and broadening her musical horizons through collaboration. Upon meeting Julian Cubillos in the mid-2010s, Meissner found clear kinship in terms of taste and approach—a confidant who encouraged her to follow musical instincts that were outside of the norm. Her debut album, Little Mystery, was out on June 26 on Ruination Records Co.. Little Mystery was tracked at Meissner’s apartment, with a backing band featuring Brooklyn ringers Adam Brisbin (Buck Meek, Cassandra Jenkins, Indigo Sparke) on guitar, Connor Parks (Cafuné) on drums, Ian Davis (Relatives) on bass, and co-producer Julian Cubillos (Julian Cubillos, Alena Spanger) as multi-instrumentalist and arranger.  

Leicester, UK based Neil Hill and his Shopfires project emerged in December 2023 with the single Summer Bruises which drew the attention of Subjangle boss Darrin Lee, the doyen of all things jangly, who offered the outlier Hill the opportunity to release an album. Buoyed by the success of his eponymous debut album, which was released on Subjangle in March 2024, and maybe even beginning to wonder whether the gloriously self-effacing Bandcamp tagline of ‘DIY pop recorded directly into a cheap laptop’ is entirely appropriate, Shopfires returned in July with Holding On To Let Go, again on Subjangle. As Lee himself says, in essence the second album is essentially more of the same, a fact worthy of celebration in the case of this emerging artist. Shopfires truly excel when it moves within the various ambits of beautiful jangly guitar pop in the vein of Brighter, Field Mice, Heavenly or Television Personalities. Often described as cascading, shimmering, rippling, chiming, fluttering, etc., Neil has somehow managed to achieve an accessible sound of harmonious complexity from a single acoustic guitar with the most basic of set ups. Embellished by warm keys and introspective lyrics, Neil has been able to capture an intelligent 80s pop aesthetic in a new and yet familiar way. As if this wasn’t enough, a few days ago Hill released Where We Belong, the first single taken from a forthcoming EP of songs which didn’t make it onto the last album.
It will be fascinating to see where Neil takes Shopfires next. 

With his 2021 self-titled debut, Andy Pastalaniec’s Chime School became one of the defining acts of the seemingly never-ending, prolific and multifaceted Bay Area pop scene. His sophomore LP, The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel, is set for release on August 23 on Slumberland Records. Recorded by Pastalaniec himself, in his home studio on the foggy southern edge of San Francisco, Paisley Hotel sets a moodier tone; slowed and patiently unfolding in moments that highlight an evolution in songcraft, production and arrangement–while still bouncing along with the jangling drive Chime School fans have come to adore. As its title implies, 30-plus years of UK indie pop’s deeper cuts are voraciously mined and refined on the 11-song release that fans of East Village, later Teenage Fanclub, and maybe even Northern Picture Library’s Alaska will devour. The songs on the album are also very much rooted in the Bay Area of 2024, boasting both lyrical gestures to gentrification’s destruction, beloved shuttered bars and theaters, as well as a songwriting collaboration with SF native Mike Ramos, of Tony Jay/Flowertown fame, on the album’s penultimate song.