Alan Syliboy was born and raised in Truro and lives at Millbrook First Nation. He looks to the Indigenous Mi’kmaq petroglyph (stone etchings) tradition for inspiration, and developed his own artistic vocabulary out of those forms.

Alan Syliboy and The Thundermakers is Alan Syliboy – Group Leader, Spoken Word and Percussionist; Evan Syliboy – Lead Guitar; Lukas Pearse – Bassist, Sound Designer, and Video Mapping; Hubert Francis – Vocals and Guitar; Joanne Hatfield – Vocals, Guitar, Flute, Piano and Percussionist; Aaron Prosper – Vocals and Percussionist; Matt Gallant – drums.

Alan frequently calls upon other musicians and dancers to enhance his live performances.

Bandcamp: alansyliboyandthethundermakers.bandcamp.com

Alana Morouney (she/they) is a sculptor, textile artist and single mother who calls Mi’kma’ki/Sackville, New Brunswick home. Using simple mechanics and materials that draw the hand, their interactive sculptures deliver unexpectedly pleasant outcomes. Alana has given recent artist talks and workshops with the Owens Gallery Maker Maker series, Union House Arts, Studio Magazine, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is the founder of 6 Minute Eggs and the owner of Slow Pony; small batch and one of a kind clothing worn by some of the loveliest people you’d ever wish to meet.

Alana Morouney is an official Sappyfest 20 Artist-in-Residence. We would like to acknowledge the support of the New Brunswick Arts Board.

Website: alanamorouney.com

Instagram: instagram.com/alana.morouney

Photo by Magali Charron

Alexis O’Hara is an undisciplined artist who has toured internationally with her spoken-noise performances and installations. She has released four albums, a few chapbooks and zines and enough helium balloons to get her dress caught in a Belgrade chandelier. She is a recipient of the Powerhouse Prize, awarded by La Centrale, Canada's longest-running feminist art gallery. Alexis and her drag king alterego, Guizo LaNuit, are mainstays of the Montreal cabaret scene. Her blood type is O+ which means she is a giver.

Presented as part of L’Ambiance, our partnership with Struts Gallery.

We need your speakers: www.strutsgallery.ca

Allumette is the solo project of Mylène Michaud-Surette. It’s a dusty entity that floats in the basements of Moncton and calls you in with its lamp like a lighthouse in the night. Allumette is a blend of weirdo goth pop and performance art, a forgotten mixtape that serenades your subconscious with haunting melodies.

Bandcamp: mostghost.bandcamp.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/allu.mette

Photo by @__terminal___ on instagram

Andrew Maize makes art that is often playful, collaborative and improvised, its form is contingent on the relationships of environmental, technological, social, and material situations.  As an educator and organizer, he has been involved in collaborative projects that engage communities with art, both in traditional and non-traditional spaces. He has been meaning to make a list of all the different jobs he had over the years, but it would be a lot of work. He has taught and hopes to teach again in Expanded Media and Fine Arts at NSCAD University.

Presented as part of L’Ambiance, our partnership with Struts Gallery.

Bomi Yook is a media artist based in Calgary, working with immersive media, experimental animation, and video performance. Yook holds an MFA from UCLA and a BFA from Alberta University of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited internationally—including Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, Seoul, and Calgary. She is the winner of the 2023 Emerging Digital Artist Award in Toronto, Elaine Klown Klein Fellowship in Los Angeles, Vagner Mendonça-Whitehead New Media Caucus Award, and a Beyond Future Art Award Finalist. Her projects have been supported by Canada Council for the Arts and Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Commissioned by the City of West Hollywood, her video art was showcased at MIMA (Moving Image Media Art) Netflix owned public art screen on Los Angeles's iconic Sunset Boulevard.

In her ongoing research on colonial trauma and intergenerational memory, Yook has collaborated with prominent museums, archives, and activist groups, including the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum, the Justice Memory Solidarity Foundation, the Museum of Forced Mobilization History, the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization, and the People’s Archive of Japanese Colonial History.

Presented as part of L’Ambiance, our partnership with Struts Gallery

Book Buddies, alternative rock from Dartmouth NS.

Instagram: instagram.com/bookbuddiesband

Music: found.ee/bookbuddies

Bandcamp: bookbuddies.bandcamp.com

Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist

Bry Webb is a 47-year-old singer/songwriter from Southwestern Ontario. He was in a band called The Constantines, and he has released three studio albums and one live album under his own name on Ideé Fixe Records. His mom was an emergency department nurse and his dad was an elementary school teacher. He currently lives in Guelph, Ontario, where he works in community radio, fixing equipment and teaching people to record and share their voices. His most recent album, Run With Me, is a dynamic garage-folk thing featuring friends from over 25 years of music making, including Jennifer Castle, Julie Doiron, Daniel Romano, Michael Feuerstack, Ben Grossman, Rich Burnett and members of The Constantines. He is often accompanied live by his wonderful partner Steph Yates (Cots) on drums, percussion and vocals. They live in a red house with two cats named Max and Louise and two goldfish named Grizelda and Pope Jones the Second.

“…he looks at things from a perspective that sheds a deeper light… It’s more poetry than play-by-play, but at the same time, he’s telling us really evident stories. And it all culminates into something you feel more than think about, which is a feat… His voice has an authority to it and I’ve always believed that he believes in what he’s singing.” – Feist

Music: brywebb.bandcamp.com

Video: youtube.com/watch

Website: brywebb.com

Instagram: instagram.com/mrbrywebb

The year is 2072. Four researchers/musicians load their gear into a well-travelled time machine, set for Aug 1st, 2025. At Sappyfest, Ariel Sharratt, Mathias Kom, Jimmie Kilpatrick and their robot comrade Pepper Schlagzeuger will present their inquiry into the labour culture of the 21st century in musical form. Never work, never suffer!

Bandcamp: theburninghell.bandcamp.com

Caged Animals is the music of Jersey-born songwriter Vin Cacchione and Sackville-raised artist Magali Charron. Together they craft soulful songs that draw from folk, indie, and hip-hop—defying easy categorization and maybe even borders.

Vin and Magali met in the late-night frenzy of NYC’s mid-2000s anti-folk scene—Vin, a budding songwriter; Magali, a photographer with violin chops. Vin had been fronting the noir-tinged folk-rockers Soft Black, whose lineup included DIIV’s Zachary Cole Smith.

In 2009, the couple formed Caged Animals, recording spontaneous lo-fi anthems in their Brooklyn apartment that echoed across the altered zones of the early blogosphere. The pair have toured internationally, emerging from the DIY haze of weird-era Brooklyn and coming of age in the folksy marshes of Sackville. Their music has been described as “tuneful and heartfelt” by BrooklynVegan and “the perfect band to re-soundtrack Blue Velvet” by The Guardian. Outside of Caged Animals, Vin is an acclaimed collaborator in the fiction podcasting world, working with artists as varied as John Cameron Mitchell, Jessica Chastain, Michael Shannon, Welcome to Night Vale, and The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle.

Their forthcoming album, Make Strange Friends—recorded to tape with Jon Mckiel—is their most ambitious to date, pairing nine character-driven songs with a surrealist radio play starring Magali’s grandfather Bertholet and Vin’s mentor, the countercultural writer Larry “Ratso” Sloman. For this, their fourth Sappyfest performance, Vin and Mags will be joined by a stellar lineup of Sackville songwriters and musicians including Steven Lambke, Gaelen Olinski, and Luke Patterson.

Website: cagedanimals.net

Bandcamp: cagedanimals.bandcamp.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/CagedAnimals

Photo by Magali Charron

After a musical hiatus to focus on other ventures, Clint0n could not stay away from the music. He returns with a refined perspective and fresh sound but true-to-self sound. Known for blending the lyrical and complex intensity of 90s/2000s rap with modern hip-hop, trap, and afrobeats, Clint0n’s sound is deeply rooted in powerful storytelling and meaningful themes like resilience, love, the hustle, and social justice.

A sound engineer and producer, Clint0n not only commands the mic but brings high production value to every track, shaping his sound with precision and passion. 

In late 2024, Clint0n released his single "Like You Know Me" on October 24th, followed by a planned EP for late 2024/early 2025. With a tour and key collaborations in the works, Clint0n is poised to redefine his place in the modern music scene, bringing artistry and lyrical vision to new heights. Clint0n’s return marks a new chapter in an evolving musical journey.

Website: www.shodocta.ca

colleen coco collins [she/they] is an interdisciplinary artist of irish, french, and odawa descent, working in songwriting, performance, poetry and visual arts. her work oscillates temporality, presumptions of sentience, subversion, rhythm, gesture, geographies, biophonies, frequencies, the ouroboric, the peripatetic, love, and the polyglottic. she lives littorally in rural port greville, mi’kma’ki/nova scotia amidst crows, coyotes, grackles, bees, humpback, lichen and fox.

Music: open.spotify.com

Instagram: instagram.com/colleencococollins

Bandcamp: colleencococollins.bandcamp.com

Photo by Magali Charron

Cousins (Apsamkuk/Petite Riviere NS, rock/folk) return in rare four-piece fashion, on a twisted path, bringing heavy duty tunes via Jay Crocker, Shawn Dicey, Leigh Dotey and Aaron Mangle. End occupation songs, end apartheid songs, love songs. Free Palestine!

Bandcamp

Egyptian Cotton Arkestra is a fluid entity anchored by the core quartet of James Goddard (saxophone), Lucas Huang (percussion), Markus Lake (bass), and Ari Swan (violin). They draw on the traditions of jazz and other out musicks. They have been performing together as Egyptian Cotton Arkestra since 2017. Their début album ‘Time and Place’ is set to be released by Watch That Ends the Night Records in 2025.

Live Performance Video: www.youtube.com/watch

Instagrams: @hsien @ari_swan @skin0tone @markus.floats

Photo by Lucas Huang

Fiver is songwriter Simone Schmidt. Schmidt has been playing music and producing recordings for 18 years, fronting country act One Hundred Dollars, psych unit The Highest Order, and chopped electronic duo Splitter. Lately, and for Sappyfest, Schmidt is playing with the Fiver Trois, which includes Jeremy Costello (bass, voice unimaginable) and Nathan Doucet (drums). Their continual practice is one of vision and revision, developing and redeveloping around old and new songs, seeking out new life and boldly going. Where? Maybe you'll be able to tell by listening. Come with.

Photo by Ted Bois, 2025

Website

Bandcamp

Ghostkeeper is the Mohkinstsis/Calgary-based band, led by songwriters Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle. Known for their experimental pop sound that expands into psychedelic rock, their music deftly explores experiences of Indigeneity while channelling the spirit world in all its pain, beauty, and wonderment. Their most recent release, Cîpayak Joy, mixes found noises with snippets of pop and trap, weaving a tapestry of haunting beauty.

Bandcamp: ghostkeeper.bandcamp.com

Instagram: instagram.com/ghostkeepermusic

Facebook: facebook.com/ghostkeepermusic

Emerging from the rich cultural landscape of their Wabanaki homeland, New Brunswick, The Hello Crows are a powerful Indigenous collective, whose songs and stories are woven with the threads of personal experiences, resilience, and a deep connection to their communities and culture.

With every note, lyric, and chant, The Hello Crows remind us of the strength of Indigenous identity, the importance of collective storytelling, and the unbreakable bond between music and culture. Combine their powerful individual voices and their own unique perspectives, and The Hello Crows are poised to become a very important voice on the Canadian musical landscape, and beyond.

Meet Jah’Mila, Juno-nominated reggae singer hailing from Kingston, Jamaica, who now calls Nova Scotia home. A beacon for Jamaican music and culture in Atlantic Canada, Jah’Mila's music embodies the spirit of traditional Jamaican roots reggae music, infused with light elements of jazz and soul.

Her Juno nominated debut album, "Roots Girl," released in 2022, is a spirited collection of reggae songs that not only honors her cultural roots, but also serves as a platform for social advocacy. Through her music, she champions a vision of a more inclusive, diverse, and supported arts community.

With the unwavering support of her musical team, Jah’Mila stands poised to light up every stage, continuing to captivate hearts and share her music and culture all across the world!

Website: www.jahmilamusic.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/jahmilasings

Bandcamp: jahmila.bandcamp.com

Spotify: open.spotify.com

John Haney lives in Wood Point, New Brunswick, on the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy. He makes photography, sculpture, installation, text-based works, and land art about place, stories, language, history, and magic. He is a tree worker by day, and that is helping him learn some tricks of the trade for better stewarding the patch of Wabanaki/Acadian Forest he is lucky to call home. In 2019 he launched Wood Point Art Projects with an inaugural event called the Ark, bringing together 22 artists’ work about land, the fragile future, and the present beauty.

Julianna Riolino knows how to capture and highlight beauty before it fades. On her debut LP, ‘All Blue,’ Riolino reflects on her own past, the memories of pain, healing, and love strewn through it. The songs focus morality and the stretch of time, seeping naturally into Riolino’s Americana-indebted songwriting, resulting in a golden and fluid debut.

Blending past and present musically represents Riolino’s own experience as well, the songs written over a period of years, their meanings picking beyond that stretch and pulling lessons forward. And in that process, her philosophical lyrics bring that complexity forward to the listener in surreally sweet melodies, pouring growth and healing directly through the ear and into the heart.

‘All Blue’ is out now on You’ve Changed Records

Photo by Colin Medley

Julie Doiron is a world-renowned songwriter, a world-moving singer, a mentor, a mother, an inspiration, a friend, an intergenerational viral superstar, the alpha and omega, decorated with awards, and truly Sappy Forever. She has written all your favourite songs. She is a collaborator of rare genius, generosity, and grace and will be presenting a special Julie and Friends performance during Sappyfest 20!

Website: www.bonsound.com/en/artist/julie-doiron

Music: Spotify

Bandcamp: Band Camp

Video: You Gave Me The Key

Instagram: @julie.e.doiron

Photo credit: Colin Medley

Katie Ward lives and works in the traditional unceded territories of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe nations. She draws from the inner world of the self and an experience of change connected to the world, her score-led dances are assemblages of forms, entities and rhythms. She has developed stage dances, spectator led performances, and a radio performance, Katie offers workshops and practice sharing situations. Katie has presented her work in the UK, France, USA, Québec and across Canada. With Marie Claire Forté, Katie is developing a practice sharing that actualises dancer's ever-changing embodied imagination – for dancing that continually forms and re-forms itself. 

Lauren Prousky (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based on land now known as Kitchener, Ontario. She makes installations, videos, performances, paintings and sculptures and writes poetry, short fiction and experimental essays. Lauren has an MFA from the University of Waterloo and a BFA from Concordia University. She was a 2023 AGO Artist-in-Residence, where she created the participatory performance project, Black Tie Soup Night. In March 2025, Lauren debuted her first one-woman show, Microsoft Office Suite Presence: I Look Forward to Hearing Back with Femme Folks Fest in Kitchener. Recent exhibitions include Artcite Inc (upcoming), Ed Video, SPACEMAKER II, the CAFKA Biennial, The plumb and Xpace Cultural Centre. Lauren has published writing with Textile, BlackFlash, Public Parking, Untethered, SUM, and Peripheral Review. 

Presented as part of Universal Dawn.

Quinton Barnes is a relentlessly ambitious Montreal-based artist exploring the edges of Canada's music scene. Since 2018, he's built a unique sound, writing, rapping, singing, producing, mixing, and mastering his own work across a prolific discography. His album CODE NOIR was long-listed for the Polaris Music Prize and was quickly followed by the collaborative ensemble album entitled BLACK NOISE.

Bandcamp

Mama’s Broke have spent the past eight years in a near-constant state of transience, pounding the transatlantic tour trail. They've brought their dark, fiery folk-without-borders sound to major festivals and DIY punk houses alike, absorbing traditions from their maritime home in Eastern Canada all the way to Ireland and Indonesia. Nowhere is the duo's art-in-motion approach more apparent than on their long-awaited sophomore record Narrow Line (May 13, 2022 on Free Dirt Records); it's the sound of nowhere in particular, yet woven with a rich synthesis of influences that knows no borders. It earned them a JUNO nomination for Traditional Roots Album of the Year 2022. The eleven songs on Narrow Line burrow deeply, with close harmony duets, commanding vocals, and poignant contemplations on cycles of life, including birth and death. Tinges of Americana stand side-by-side with the ghosts of Eastern European fiddle tunes and ancient a cappella ballad singing, melding into an unusually accessible dark-folk sound. A careful listen of Narrow Line invokes an ephemeral sense of place—whether real or imagined—inviting us to take comfort in the infinite possibilities of life, whether or not we ever choose to settle down. 

For a group defined by constant touring, it’s not surprising that the two artists that make up Mama’s Broke, Lisa Maria and Amy Lou Keeler, met on the road. As Lisa remembers it, “Amy was driving her old Mercedes from Montreal to Nova Scotia and I was looking for a ride. We spent the 17 hours in the car talking almost exclusively about music. By the time we reached Halifax we started playing together, and within a week or two became a band.” Both coming out of traveling communities that are focused on music and protest, the two owe the way in which they move through the world to the integrated and self-sustaining nature of DIY culture and activism. It was a busy life that took them on a roundabout annual touring schedule running between Canada, the United States, Ireland, the UK, and Europe. In each country, they built grassroots DIY communities to support their music or moved along the pathways of communal organizing that sustained other touring artists. 

The driving force behind this band is – and has always been – the commitment to challenge borders between people, places, and traditions; while encouraging freedom of expression and community through music.

Instagram: instagram.com/mamasbroke

Facebook: facebook.com/Mamasbroke

Website: mamasbroke.ca

Tiny Desk Concert: https://youtu.be

Mas Aya is the pseudonym of acclaimed Nicaraguan-Canadian composer, producer, and musician Brandon Miguel Valdivia. Over the past twenty years Valdivia has emerged as one of the most prolific and respected musicians in Canada. Until recently he was primarily known for his contributions to groups such as Not The Wind, Not The Flag, Picastro, The Cosmic Range, I Have Eaten The City, and alongside the GRAMMY Award-nominated Lido Pimienta. In addition to these projects Valdivia has also been heard alongside the likes of Laraaji, Bomba Estéreo, Tanya Tagaq, Sook-Yin Lee, U.S. Girls, Aidan Baker, Anthony Braxton, Michael Snow, John Oswald, and as remixer for Run The Jewels. He has toured widely as both an accompanist and soloist throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, Latin America, and China.

However, in 2021 Valdivia’s breakthrough LP as Mas Aya, Máscaras (Telephone Explosion Record), ushered in a new era. With warm reception from the likes of Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and NPR it shed new and long-overdue light on his inventive compositional outlook.

Coming And Going is the follow-up to Máscaras and, much like its predecessor, it represents yet another colossal shift in Mas Aya’s creative journey. The fact that its title is so evocative of flux is no mistake; it’s an album that teems with subtle contradiction and restless intrigue, all the while carving pathways toward the reconciliation of these opposing sonic and thematic forces.

Bandcamp: masayamasaya.bandcamp.com

Marco D’Andrea is an object maker and a sound maker, oftentimes putting those elements together in installations and sculptures. Currently, his work is focused on intimate processes—carving, shaping, and building by hand— using natural materials like wood and clay and found materials like brick. With sound, he uses analogue sound sources such as synthesizers and audio tape, adding these to installations to create continuous pulsing, droning soundscapes. He is motivated by the importance of making something and sharing it with others, and inspired by symbols, dreams and visions. As Reverend Marco, he performs live improvised ambient noise. He lives in Hamilton with his wife and three daughters.

Instagram

Michael Feuerstack is a songwriter, musician, and producer based in Montréal, QC. In his nearly 3 decades-long presence in the musical world, he has penned a deluge of records, collaborated with countless internationally renowned talents, and impressed those who encounter his work with his curiosity, musicality, and agility across genres. Feuerstack’s solo career (formerly under the name Snailhouse) comprises a collection of songs that simultaneously comfort and confront.  In both lyrics and music, Feuerstack seamlessly passes from traditional to experimental – revealing a willingness to engage in both contemporary and traditional forms. His explorations have resulted in a staggering body of work, beloved to many. His varied ongoing pursuits reflect a relentless appetite for growth, and a responsiveness to change, as well as a respect for the greats. In all of this, Feuerstack strikes a musical balance that pays the highest respect to the listener.

Feuerstack’s current and past artistic partnerships include composition and instrumental contributions to Bell Orchestre, Land of Talk, Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars, the Luyas, and many more. For this work he has earned two Junos and a number of other accolades.  He is equally known for his collaborative work with choreographers and filmmakers and for producing and mixing albums for both internationally regarded artists as well as for young artists emerging on the scene. Feuerstack is first and foremost a true artist. He is a tireless creator, collaborator, a seeker of stories to tell, and new ways to tell them.

Photo by Stacy Lee

Mollie Cronin (Art Brat Comics) is a cartoonist from Halifax, NS and Fredericton, NB. Her semi-autobiographical comics explore living and dating on the East Coast, body positivity, and fat liberation. She has a BA in Art History from NSCAD University, an MA in Gender Studies from Queen's, and is a current PHD student at York University in Toronto. Her debut comic book "Future Me is Fat" will be available in August 2025 through Conundrum Press. 

Presented as part of Universal Dawn.

Photo by Stevey Hunter

Playful as a puppy but smart as a whip, New Brunswick, Canada’s MOTHERHOOD has a knack for packing deeply conceptual art rock into a delightfully unpretentious package. Oft-described as “evil Beach Boys”, the trio blends the ferocity of punk, the finesse of surf, and the raw energy of garage into something as complex as it is endearing.

Aussi ludique qu’un chiot mais aussi affuté qu’un rasoir, MOTHERHOOD a le don de faire du art rock conceptuel dans un format décontracté. Ce trio mélange la férocité du punk, la finesse du surf et l’énergie brute du garage pour produire une musique à la fois riffée et rythmée. Leur prochain album, Thunder Perfect Mind, est une histoire inspirée de la science-fiction, philosophique et humoristique.

Website: https://motherhood

Instagram: www.instagram.com/mightymightymums

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist

Bandcamp: https://motherhoodmusic.bandcamp.com

North Barn Theatre is a puppetry and design-led performance collective based out of Atlantic Canada. Formed by Laura Stinson and Ian McFarlane, North Barn Theatre creates playful community activations and poetic puppet shows that aim to provoke thought around critical social and ecological issues. McFarlane and Stinson are theatre makers, scenographers and puppeteers who have worked internationally across the United States, Canada and Europe with companies such as Bread and Puppet Theater, the Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry and The River Clyde Pageant. 

Niko Stratis is a culture writer based in Toronto, Ontario by way of the Yukon where she spent close to two decades working as a journeyman glazier before coming out as a trans woman in her late 30s and being forced to abandon her previous line of work.

Now in her 40s, Niko provides a unique voice in cultural spaces seeking to work through lifelong traumas and emotional highs and lows through her work.

She has won a Digital Publishing Award for Best Personal Essay, and her work regularly appears in outlets like Spin magazine, Xtra, Paste Magazine and more. Her column in Catapult, Everyone Is Gay, was a widely read series that explored gender and sexuality in 90s music and music criticism, and its impact on her as a closeted queer and trans woman in her teen years. Her newsletter, Anxiety Shark, is a self-published weekly essay collection using music to explore her relationship to themes like gender and sobriety.

She lives in Toronto with her fiancé, their dog Bowie and two cats Winona and Ramona. She is a former smoker and a cancer.

Website: www.nikostratis.com

Newsletter: www.anxietyshark.ca

The Pits as in bad times, shit luck, sweat stains… but also cherries. Penny & The Pits is the new project from Maritime stalwart Penelope Stevens. Perhaps best known as one third of the feverish art rock band Motherhood, Stevens is also a vital organizer, collaborator and visual artist in New Brunswick’s weird art and music underground. Penny & The Pits, is the result of Stevens putting their voice front and center for the first time. It’s gritty, adventurous punk-rock that processes feminist joy, rage and revenge.

For the live iteration of the project, Stevens’ has pulled together an unholy trinity of badass femmes from across the Maritimes: Megumi Yoshida (Century Egg, Dog Day, Not You), Colleen Collins (Construction & Destruction) and Grace Stratton (Nightbummerz, Glitterclit). Get ready to crew up, rock out and take over.

Instagram: instagram.com/penny_andthepits

Bandcamp: pennyandthepits.bandcamp.com

Spotify: open.spotify.com

Get it or don't, we're on a mission!

Infomercial: youtube.com/watch

Video: youtube.com/watch

Sbot N Wo is Helen Pridmore and WL Altman.  The voice/electronics improvisation duo was formed at the Banff Centre for the Arts some years ago.  Since then the duo has toured and performed across Canada, including shows with Black Ice Sound (Yellowknife), Suddenly Listen (Halifax), Thunder and Lightning (Sackville NB), RE:FLUX Festival de musique et d’art sonore (Moncton), Montréal, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Regina, Sounds Like (Saskatoon), and 8East (Vancouver). They have also performed in the USA, Germany, the UK, Ireland, and Japan.  In pandemic times, Sbot N Wo contributed to numerous online performances, including the annual online ImprovFest and the Regina Dunlop Library’s “Every Possible Place” nationwide jam in 2021, as well as Sappyfest Online’s “Infinite Variety”.

Photo by John Haney

Shaki (Shakuntala) is currently on a mission to pronounce universal truths, and her own name. This is most often attempted through poetry and song. Shakuntala is most often inspired by nature and the quiet it stirs within her. She is the editor and co-founder of the newly formed literary and arts magazine Fais de Beaux Rêves, and lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Presented as part of Universal Dawn.

Shane Ghostkeeper is a musician from Calgary, Alberta. He is most recognized for his songwriting, singing and guitar playing in the band Ghostkeeper. Shane spent his childhood and adolescence years isolated by Northern Alberta's geography (High Level, Rocky Lane and Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement), listening to country music records and developing an admiration for individuals who had the ability to convey rich stories through song. Later he expanded his musical horizons beyond these roots, he found another world in the self-aware genres of art rock and experimental folk. Here, he developed his own storytelling language with which he could voice the traditional songwriting he grew up with. And now he comes full circle with years of education and experimentation to make his first Country music inspired record. This exploration of Country music is a dedication and tribute to his family and the stories they share.

Bandcamp: shaneghostkeeper.bandcamp.com

Polite punks coalesce in a sleepy small town on the marsh. Raised on house-show sing-alongs and 90s indie rock, Snake Noise plays high-energy, heartfelt pop-punk with “hooks to hang your hat on” (Cam Murphy).

Instagram: www.instagram.com/snake.noise

Bandcamp: snakenoise1.bandcamp.com

TEKE::TEKE is a wild, cinematic Japanese psych-rock group based in Montreal. Featuring traditional Japanese instruments, flute and trombone alongside raging guitars and a pulsing rhythm section, TEKE::TEKE creates a sound reminiscent of 1960’s and 70’s era psychedelic Japanese soundtracks, with an experimental approach and a frenetic, modern twist. Their albums Shirushi and Hagata are out now via Kill Rock Stars. They also recently released their soundtrack album Kage No Iro they created for the video game Assassin's Creed:Shadows.

Website: https://www.teketekeband.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teke_teke_band/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teketekeband

Thanya Iyer is an enigmatic songwriter who crafts sparkling, experimental pop music. Her live band features Pompey, Emilie Kahn, and Daniel Gélinas, whose acoustic and electronic contributions enliven serene, spiritual compositions. Thanya and the band’s arrangements empower listeners to embrace mindfulness, aesthetic beauty, and the interconnectedness of all things. The group has performed all over Turtle Island, supporting acts like Julia Holter, Land of Talk, Kimya Dawson, Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, Jeff Parker, and Kevin Drew. Following their 2020 Polaris long-listed, sophomore visual album KIND, the band's new record, TIDE/TIED, navigates the rhythms of communal identity, healing, and loving, within a dissonant world.

Thanya Iyer; auteure-compositrice-interprète énigmatique au son effervescent avec des accents expérimentaux et pop.  Son trio en spectacle tisse une toile sonore au teintes autant électroniques qu'acoustiques de façon à entrainer le public dans un état de sérénité où la compassion et un sentiment spirituel semblent se manifester d'eux-mêmes. La groupe a joué toute autour Turtle Island en première partie d'artistes tels que Julia Holter, Land of Talk, Kimya Dawson, Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, Jeff Parker, et Kevin Drew. Suite à leur deuxième album visuel, "KIND" (2020), qui figurait sur la longue liste du Prix Polaris, le nouveau disque du groupe, TIDE/TIED, explore les rythmes de l'identité communautaire, de la guérison et de l'amour dans un monde dissonant.

Website: thanyaiyer.com

Instagram: instagram.com/thanyaiyer

Tiktok: tiktok.com/@thanyaiyer

Facebook: facebook.com/thanyaiyermusic

Bandcamp: thanyaiyer.bandcamp.com

Live video at PHI Nord: http://bit.ly/3FRMPw3