Wild Party/ Cousin Simple

After releasing their debut record, Phantom Pop, in October of 2014, the band toured extensively during the following year and a half before finally calling it quits at the end of 2015.  “We played probably 100 shows in 2014 and 2015… but there weren’t a lot of people at the shows who knew the music, and we weren’t making a lot of money…things just weren’t working out,” frontman Lincoln Kreifels recalls. Family and financial obligations meant taking the focus away from music for a while. While Phantom Pop’s infectious melodies and danceable grooves never found a home with a larger market in 2015, the band’s nearly decade-old release has recently found a new, devoted fan base online. “The Spotify algorithm seemed to suggest us to a lot of new fans who were listening to bands that sounded similar to us, and things really began to take off around 2018.” To date, the band has hundreds of millions of streams and a half a million monthly listeners on Spotify alone. A newly found fan-base reinvigorated Kreifels and long-time collaborator Lucas Hughes, and they began demoing songs again in 2018. However, it wasn’t until a close call gave Kreifels what he describes as a re- awakening: “I got really sick about 9 about months ago, and it was almost a miraculous healing… I went from almost dying––my liver almost failed… but I came out of that floating almost, really thankful to be given another chance… music is something I need to pursue.” Together with band member and producer, Ethan Kaufmann, Wild Party has been steadily dropping singles since 2021, culminating into the band’s 2023 EP release, Get Up.

Columbus, OH natives Will Hoag, Ryan Ulibarri & Mitch Whittaker make up the indie alt-rock band Cousin Simple.

Friends since 1st grade, front man Will Hoag and guitarist Ryan Ulibarri have been inseparable ever since. Mitch joined the crew in middle school and rounded out the trio with his rhythmic bass. Starting as a group of friends with a mutual interest in music, they spent many early mornings and late evenings rehearsing in their parents’ garage. After being validated by their friends and family that the songs their 13-year-old selves were writing were “actually good”, the trio entered their first Battle of the Bands in Columbus, also their first ever public performance, and won.

Since then, Cousin Simple has brought their infectious spirit and high energy to every performance, selling out shows across the Midwest in Columbus, Cleveland, Chicago, and more. Drawing influence from bands like Cage the Elephant, Arctic Monkeys and GROUPLOVE; Cousin Simple has curated their own sound that has resonated with listeners across the world and has landed them playlists slots across multiple DSPs. At half a million streams, their best performing song, “Honeybee”, however is one that listeners have found organically.