Sofia Alarcon is a comic artist/illustrator originally from Guatemala and now based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. She graduated from NSCAD University, where she pursued her interests in film, textiles, and drawing. From 2021 to 2023, she self-published her multiple award-nominated comic series "Endsickness". The complete anthology of Endsickness was published by Conundrum Press in 2025 and was named a Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize Honor book in 2026. 

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

Presented as part of Universal Dawn.

Jordan Beaulieu is a visual artist and book designer from Epekwitk (Prince Edward Island, CA). Working primarily in drawing, she creates original artworks and longer-form graphic stories that explore how our local environments shape our perceptions and experiences. She received a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from NSCAD University. She contributes to many PEI-based art initiatives, including the Charlottetown Zine Fest, which she co-created in 2022.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caution.horse/

Website: https://jordanbeaulieu.com

Presented as part of Universal Dawn.

Misha Bower is a writer, musician and performer whose latest project, a live show called Meetings, puts her multi-modal arts practice on full display. A blend of original music and monologues, Meetings is a theatrical performance set in a support group where personal stories segue into character-driven songs. Meetings features music from Misha's album Trying to Have it All, as well as her new singles Surrender and  Eclipse. 

Bibi Club, the Montreal-based indie pop duo of Adèle Trottier-Rivard and Nicolas Basque, has been carving out distinct vibrations since their formation in the late 2010s, operating in the midst of the direct action and sonic intimacy that has defined their creative process from the very beginning. As they have continued to work together, however, Bibi Club and their artistic partnership have evolved tremendously, with their forthcoming release, Amaro, serving as undeniable evidence of that fact.

As young musicians, Adèle and Nicolas shared remarkably similar backgrounds. Both grew up in Montreal, earning their musical chops playing classic rock with local bands. Both, moreover, were later trained in jazz. They studied music in school, and both fell in love, at the time, with the arts of both composition and improvisation. This led Nicolas into the Canadian indie-rock band Plants and Animals, while it led Adèle into a singing career of her own.

The pair met when Adèle joined Plants and Animals on tour as a vocalist, and they quickly realised they had shared musical affinities. Although they were each committed to their work with Plants and Animals, they had also begun developing musical ideas independently, finding a mutual outlet for these creations through their budding friendship.

Bon Enfant, c’est un quintette aussi pluriel que ses membres et ses horizons, pour qui le rock est une passion autant qu’un mode de vie. Formé à la fin de la précédente décennie par Daphné Brissette et Guillaume Chiasson, le groupe - rapidement complété par Etienne Côté, Melissa Fortin et Alex Burger - livre en 2019 un premier album homonyme. Affirmant d’emblée une pop aux grooves bien-allants empruntant notamment au folk-rock et au psych, la formation rapplique deux ans plus tard avec un Diorama à la palette encore plus vaste, y intégrant des aspects disco, hard et glam rock - un probant assemblage qui lui vaudra le Félix de l’Album rock de l’année au gala de l’ADISQ 2022. À travers des tournées au Québec, en Europe et au Royaume-Uni, le groupe persiste dans son élaboration d’un rock perméable et ouvert, faisant siennes de nouvelles niches musicales pour la suite : Demande spéciale est paru à l’automne 2024 sous Duprince.

Bon Enfant is a quintet as plural as its members and horizons, for whom rock is as much a passion as a way of life. Formed at the end of the previous decade by Daphné Brissette and Guillaume Chiasson, the band - quickly joined by Etienne Côté, Melissa Fortin and Alex Burger - is releasing a homonymous debut album in 2019. From the outset, the band's groovy pop sound borrowed from folk-rock and psych, and two years later, Diorama was even more expansive, incorporating aspects of disco, hard rock and glam rock - a convincing combination that earned them the Félix for Rock Album of the Year at the ADISQ 2022 gala. Touring Quebec, Europe and the U.K., the band continues to develop a permeable, open-minded rock sound, embracing new musical niches for the future: Demande spéciale was released in 2024 on Duprince Records.

Website: https://www.bonenfantband.com

Bandcamp: https://bonenfant.bandcamp.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enfant.bon

Photo by Dominic Berthiaume

When Caylie Runciman started calling herself Boyhood, it was a nod to childhood nostalgia. The alias – and the beguiling bedroom anthems – are one and the same. Tough-kid guitar grit and deadpan verses give way to whimsical synth lines and delicate harmonies. But like an off-kilter merry-go-round, or a candy shop in a seedy part of town, there’s a shady layer to Runciman’s perfect pop. Her black magic is raw – equal parts ecstasy and heartbreak. And in among the bright colours, there’s the joy and the pain in knowing what it means to grow up.

Instagram: instagram.com/frankenshredder

Bandcamp: https://boyhoodsongs.bandcamp.com/

C.Ruth & the Mango Street is a dynamic hip-hop-jazz collaboration between Nigerian rapper C.Ruth and jazz fusion trio Mango Street. The genre-blending powerhouse fuses the sophistication of jazz with the edge of pop-rock, the soul of the blues, and the pulse of hip-hop, Latin, and fusion grooves. C.Ruth & the Mangoes are natural entertainers and high energy performers, which led to them receiving four 2026 Music PEI Awards nominations, taking home Entertainer of the Year.

Camelot, Jennifer Castle’s extraordinary, moving chronicle of the artist in early middle age, charts a realer place than the legendary Camelot of the British Early Middle Ages, but it too is a space more psychic than physical. In Castle’s Camelot, the fantastic interpenetrates the mundane, and the Grail, if there is one, distills everyday experience into art and art into faith, subliming terrestrial concerns into sublime celestial prayers to Mother Nature, and to the unfolding process of perfecting imperfection in one’s own nature: “Back in Camelot / I really learned a lot / circles in the crops and / sky-high geometry …

https://www.jennifercastlemusic.com/

https://www.instagram.com/jnfrcastle/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoaUJrAwmhFyWM9lV1j1eZw

https://www.jennifercastlemusic.com/press

Brìghde Chaimbeul is a leading purveyor of celtic experimentalism and a master of the Scottish smallpipes – the bellows-blown, mellower and more emotive cousin to the famous Highland bagpipes – and she’s taken them to the global stage. A native Gaelic speaker from the Isle of Skye, Brìghde roots her music in her language and culture. She rose to prominence as a prodigy of traditional music, but has since begun a journey to take the smallpipes into uncharted territory. She has devised a completely unique way of arranging for pipe music that emphasises the rich textural drones of the instrument; the constancy of sound that creates a trance-like atmosphere, played with enticing virtuosic liquidity. She draws inspiration from the world of interconnected piping traditions, and her most recent album brings in influence from ambient, avant garde and electronic music. One can talk about Brìghde’s awards (BBC Young Folk Award; BBC Horizons Award; SAY Award nominee) and her wide array of collaborators (Caroline Polachek; Colin Stetson; Gruff Rhys; Aidan O'Rourke...) but after it all, her music speaks for itself.

Haunting, entrancing, breathtaking, beautiful – this open-eared, understatedly virtuosic performer is transforming and creating new definitions for Scottish folk in the 21st century.

Anti-fascist, bone playing duo from Nova Scotia return to the marshland - swapping a swinging cagelight for spinning b2b decks. 

Often presented in a casual and playful techno collaboration format - Dj mommy & User 9 provide an invitational practice less focused on mastery and more grounded in community activation and cohesion. 

Inspired by local, underground art and music - their spirit is rooted in the simple knowledge that "we have to make our own fun" and that art is a vehicle that can transform reality and belongs everywhere with everyone. Together we cling onto the desperate hope that collective movement can provide temporary refuge in a world gone properly mad.

Green Eyes, Witch Hands is a folktronica band from Bathurst, New Brunswick, known for pairing acoustic guitars with crisp, crunchy beats. They mix natural, unplugged sounds with innovative electronic layers.They shift easily in tone, moving from songs that feel serious or slightly unsettling to moments that are unexpectedly light and humorous. Their lyrics offer impression rather than direct narratives, giving listeners room to find their own connections.

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

website: https://www.greeneyeswitchhands.ca/

nina protocol: https://www.ninaprotocol.com/profiles/greeneyeswitchhands

Steve Haley is a story-songwriter currently living and working within the incredible collective of musicians and artists in Sackville, NB. Within Steve’s newest release, Secret Knock, are dream mistresses, infatuations, and psychedelic adventures. Familiar places abound, like a driftwood-covered beach or a drive down your street that might lead you to the subconscious stomping ground of your grandmother's home.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com

Bandcamp: https://stevehaley.bandcamp.com

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/stevehaleymusic

Whess Harman is a member of the Carrier Wit’at Nation and currently resides on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. He doesn’t like cops and believes in land sovereignty for Indigenous peoples all across the globe, including Palestine. He’s most interested in finding paths to liberated futures alongside the many who share rage and despair in the face of the seemingly unrelenting shit-storm of empire.

POTLATCH PUNK WORLD TOUR 2 is a new series of ink drawings by Whess Harman depicting rambunctious, crowded, sweaty mosh pits from an imagined all-Indigenous, very queer, punk venue. These works center on the importance and impermanence of rollicking, chaotic DIY spaces as places of gathering, community-based resistance and survival.

Presented by Struts Gallery,

Gallery Space #1

Artist Talk Saturday at 11 am in Gallery #2

Reception Saturday at 12 pm

Gallery hours 12 pm - 7 pm Friday, Saturday, Sunday

HRT is euphoric hardcore you can writhe to. Sparked in 2018, Ana Westcott and Kirby Lees makeup the transgirl duo of ur dreams. Born and based in the gurgling musical bellies of Montreal, seaborne sirens by way of their Maritime & Atlantic roots, HRT’s electronic sound is forever changing shape. Lees’ piercing gaze and voice cut above the noise, while Westcott nods, wielding the pulsing controls and skittering synths. Their latest work, warm wet stroke of luck, bottles the feeling live from the floor — the sticky, sweaty, the loud, the sheer bodies crashing into each other. HRT leaves not one crossed arm in the house, not one person undanced, not one person uptight. Take your medicine.

https://hrtmtl.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/666_hrt_666/

Jane Inc. is the solo moniker of Carlyn Bezic, forged after years spent building bona fides in the Toronto music scene with groups like U.S. Girls, Darlene Shrugg and dance-pop duo Ice Cream. Pitchfork has described her as “an all-seeing art-pop auteur equally enamored with electro-disco and bossa nova, like a DIY Madonna who never left the Danceteria”. Stereogum called A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH “both extremely fun and nakedly emotional” with Pitchfork adding, “Bezic’s glassy vocals seem braced for uncertain adventure, poised between melancholy and euphoria”. In her live show Bezic takes the conceptual edges of her work and pushes them with a physical abandon and “incredible presence, keeping the audience rapt even when she was just dancing hypnotically” (Brooklyn Vegan). "

JOYFULTALK is the brainchild of composer, producer, arranger, instrument builder, multi-instrumentalist and award winning multimedia artist Jay Crocker. Since relocating to the maritimes over a decade ago. Crocker has been broadening the scope and pace of his visual, sculptural and video work in tandem with his musical exploration.

JOYFULTALK creates instrumental compositions that straddle analog and electronic sound explorations in uniquely inventive ways. Guided by graphic scores, handmade kinetic sculpture, Guitar synthesizers and junked/recuperated. Crocker delicately weaves between human interaction and machine clockworks.

As a multimedia and visual artist working under his own name, Jay Crocker exhibited the award-winning BIBELOT (a hand built kinetic sculpture of sixteen ceiling-mounted mechanical ‘music boxes’) across the Maritime provinces (Eastern Canada), culminating in an exhibition at the prestigious Phi Centre in Montreal in 2019.

His monumental 5’x10’ graphic score for A Separation Of Being, the latest composition of his Planetary Music System, was acquired by the Nova Scotia Art Bank that same year. Recently, he unveiled an interactive laser installation called Last Life On Earth, as part of Tatafest Music & Art Festival in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia.

Crocker’s musical work has received critical acclaim from The New York Times, The Wire, Uncut, The Quietus, The Globe And Mail, and the BBC. In recent years he has been profiled in MusicWorks, Clot Magazine and at KEXP. Crocker has amassed a substantial production resume, including Ghostkeeper’s Polaris-nominated self-titled album (Flemish Eye Records, 2010) and Jon Mckiel’s internationally acclaimed albums Bobby Joe Hope and HEX (You’ve Changed Records).

Crocker's intention is to create pieces of music and art that mimic life on a moment-to-moment time-lapse. Meditations of unsynchronized behaviours that blend to achieve tandem relationships within our physical and digital environments. He creates synthesized improvised interactions of sound designed to create new interpretations of memory and feelings, while reinterpreting borderlines to create boundless, beautiful and stimulating sonic worlds that defy convention.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com

Bandcamp: https://joyfultalk.bandcamp.com

Jay Crocker is the Official 2026 Sappyfest Musical Artist-in-Residence. We would like to acknowledge the support of the New Brunswick Arts Board in the Artist-in-Residence program.

Kxng Wooz is a Halifax-based hip-hop artist known for his deeply personal storytelling, versatile sound, and commitment to authenticity. His music blends raw emotion with contemporary hip-hop elements, offering a reflective and immersive experience that speaks to themes of growth, resilience, and lived experience. With a style that combines introspective lyricism and captivating beats, Kxng Wooz brings a unique voice to the Canadian hip-hop scene, resonating with listeners seeking depth and sincerity.

Throughout his career, Kxng Wooz has achieved key milestones that highlight his evolving artistry and international appeal. In 2022 and 2023, he took his sound abroad with a performance at New Skool Rules festival in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Pitch Scotland in Glasgow, solidifying his place on the global stage. Collaborations with notable artists like Ghettosocks, Timbuktu, Aquakultre and Leila Dey further showcase his ability to adapt and shine across diverse musical landscapes, proving his versatility and creative reach.

With his third album "MALIK" that was released this past April, Kxng Wooz continues to grow both personally and artistically. This project is his most introspective yet, a culmination of the experiences and lessons that have shaped him. With previous singles like “See Thru It,” “Mistakes,” and "Say To Me” laying the groundwork, Kxng Wooz is poised to leave a lasting mark through music that is as thought-provoking as it is sonically engaging.

Victoria Cheong aka New Chance is a Toronto-based producer, composer and vocalist. Her work in music also includes DJing, remixing, and a long time collaborative practice in contemporary dance. New Chance incorporates both acoustic and electronic instrumentation, weaving together machine and embodied technologies in equal measure. As an active collaborator in Toronto's avant music scene as well as a practicing astrologer, Cheong brings a wide array of influences to her mesmeric solo work. In 2023, New Chance released an art edition mantra record, Peaceful Mind (Personal Records). Her most recent release, the full-length concept album, A Rock Unsteady (We Are Time) combines spiritual strains of downtempo, dub, house and electronic pop. New Chance performs the songs from her latest album in collaboration with musician Johnny Spence.

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

Bandcamp: https://newchance.bandcamp.com

Photo by Fiona Lu

Eliza Niemi is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and film composer from Toronto. Her lyric-driven, uniquely-arranged music has been described as “slice of life” and “ASMR pop.” Before she became a cellist and vocalist, her father taught her the basics of bass and guitar at home. They would play together by ear, which fostered her deep musicality and a creative ethic that prioritizes joyful collaboration. Collaboration has always been at the centre of her practice — whether it be in improvising, playing in her friends’ bands (Dorothea Paas, André Ethier, Little Kid, Evan J Cartwright), or running her label Vain Mina Records. Her LPs Staying Mellow Blows (2022) and Progress Bakery (2025) were long listed for the Polaris Music Prize.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eliza.niemi/

Twitter: https://x.com/elizaniemi

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

Annie France Noël is a visual artist, photographer, educator and cultural worker. Her practice lies at the intersection of the invisible and the inexpressible, where she explores intimacy, vulnerability and the mechanisms of perception. Annie France lives, mothers and creates on unceded Mi'kma'ki territory (Moncton, NB).

Texere Memoria is an allegorical interpretation of the French folk song La Laine des Moutons presented as an installation-performance. Annie France works with sheep’s wool and its various stages of transformation to evoke care, emotional labour and transference.

Struts Gallery, Gallery #3

Gallery hours: 12 am - 7 pm, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

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

North Barn Theatre was formed in the Spring of 2020 by Laura Stinson and Ian McFarlane in the Ohio Valley, Antigonish County, Nova Scotia. 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. As visual artists and material-based performers we aim to engage in design-led creative processes that promote interdisciplinary collaboration and community advocacy. Our vision is to provoke thought around critical social and ecological issues by using playful imagery and public spectacle. We work from the belief that art is nourishment and should be available to everyone.

Website: https://northbarntheatre.ca

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

PISS is a noisy, genre-bending punk band from Vancouver B.C. The band combines music, poetry, sound collage, performance art, and various mediums of visual art to address complex themes that blur the line between personal and political.

Bandcamp
Instagram

A Toronto based free-folk quartet, Potions writes and performs ambling songs that mix improvised side-quests with involved and concerned lyrical stylings. Coming up in the jazz, experimental, and songwriting scenes, Aidan McConnell, Josh Sparks, Steven Noronha, and Ben Rositsan craft songs inspired by and indebted to avant-songwriting. Potions is named in honour of their youtube channel Potions95, a home for their shared love of archival documentation and obscure internet intimacy.

Ribbon Skirt is a Montreal-based post-punk band led by Anishinaabe musician Tashiina Buswa and lead guitarist Billy Riley. The band released their debut album, Bite Down, on Mint Records in April 2025. Produced by Scott Munro (Preoccupations) and mixed by Greg Saunier (Deerhoof), the album marks a shift toward a darker, more introspective sound, exploring themes of memory, grief, and Buswa’s connection to her Indigenous identity and cultural practices.

Ribbon Skirt has performed at major festivals across North America, including New Colossus, Sled Island, Sappyfest, and Pop Montreal, sharing the stage with artists like Dehd, Ombiigizi, Packs, Wombo, Marnie Stern, Enumclaw, and Chad VanGaalen.

Instagram

Video

Sam Salmon & the Grand Manan Bandits is a bare-bones country band made up of beloved New Brunswick alt-rock band Motherhood and guitarist Keith Hallett.

DOWN FOR LIFE features foot-stompin’ tracks like “No One Likes Losing," a self-deprecating look at being competitive yet never managing to get ahead, “Waste Your Time,” about the confusion of suddenly losing someone you love, as well as a reflection on familial personality traits, and “If I Needed You Now,” showcasing country music at its finest - three chords and the truth. Or, in this case, two chords.

The album was recorded by Mike Trask and Keith Hallett at Never Nuthin Studio in Fredericton and mastered by Riley Hill at No Fun Club in Winnipeg. Sam Salmon & the Grand Manan Bandits features Penelope Stevens (bass/vocals), Brydon Crain (vocals/guitar), Keith Hallet (lead guitar, console steel), and Adam Sipkema (drums).

“a loping country-rock groove and never lets up, landing in a spot that sounds like a vintage recording of the missing link between fellow Canadian twang-masters The Sadies and Neil Young.” – Bandcamp

“DOWN FOR LIFE is a Maritime dirt country album” – PAN M 360
“your official foot stomper” – CBC

Bandcamp: https://samsalmon.bandcamp.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samsalmon506

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s music is an act of re-worlding, a record of struggle, a nuanced and complex shore combining a surprising influence from formative alternative music with a vital Nishnaabe presence to create a fugitive and expansive space of relationship and affirmation. Simpson’s latest album Live Like The Sky joins a growing body of emergent creations from the Michi Saagiig Nishinaabeg writer, scholar, artist, including the Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize for non-fiction winner, Theory Of Water, the letter-exchange-as-manifesto Rehearsals For Living (with Robin Maynard), and the Dublin literary prize short-listed Noopiming. Present in all of these is a deep engagement and response to the world, the wild fire smoke, the genocides, the driving fascism.

Musically, Live Like The Sky draws directly from Simpson’s personal history, growing up in rurally and discovering alternative music, punk, new wave, and goth through the static and poor reception of the distant alternative station broadcasting from the city; this music offered an escape from the ubiquitous country music and hard rock, offered difference, offered possibility; offered an otherwise. In the space between the aesthetics of the lyrics and the aesthetics of the music, Live Like the Sky was born, carrying the undercurrents of resistance alongside a celebration of (still) being here.

“In a fraudulent world of misused traditions and teachings it’s so compelling and refreshing to see honesty and truth have a place in our guilt ridden colonial grant system. Not only am I blown away by this human being as an artist but the music she surrounds herself with always cuts so deep into any empathic teenage heart. This record contains the beauty of stories and words that will help the teaching of what so many of us don’t understand. Once again Leanne has made a stunning album”  Kevin Drew, Broken Social Scene

I’m Ive (pronounced like “eevee” the Pokémon)! I’ve been line dancing for 3 years with Spurs Night, and I've danced a variety of other styles -- heels, latin dance, swing, and more! In 2025, I started Lucky Line Dance, a beginner-friendly queer dance event that invites participants to learn and enjoy line dancing in a welcoming, low-pressure environment. We provide step-by-step guided tutorials that allow people to connect and move together. 

Freddy Hyun Smith is a poet and performer living in Mi’kma’ki/Sackville who is trying to get organized: ddeFHhimnrStuy. Much better. Freddy also works at Gaspereau Press, has been walking since 10 months, and was the recipient of the George School Children’s Center Kind Heart Award (2003). 

Presented as part of Universal Dawn.

With a name that demands attention, Status/Non-Status is a band that boldly explores Indigenous identity, politics, and ancestry. Their music blends folk rock, psychedelia, post-rock, and grunge into powerful soundscapes that resonate with emotional depth and cultural significance.

Adam Sturgeon—lead singer and Anishinaabe community worker—is the driving force behind Status/Non-Status. Defined as “non-status” by the Canadian government, Sturgeon’s identity is rooted in the complex history of his family. His grandfather enfranchised to join the Armed Forces and become a Canadian citizen, creating a legacy that Sturgeon confronts in his music and work. His artistic journey is deeply intertwined with raising awareness about the impact of colonization while striving to reconnect with his Anishinaabe/Potawatomi roots and community. Committed to analyzing and questioning colonial systems of oppression, his work reflects the struggles of his people and offers a path toward healing.

“Teagan Stewart and Jacob Puffer are two pals who happened to live relatively close together, with nothing to do in the summer. And ummmmm an enthusiasm for art. Aaaand chatting. And cats. And a desire to help ppl connect with each other. Short form of people? This is very lazy typing. (scoff). Hahaha. K that’s perfect.”

“I don’t want to say anything. No I’m not going to. We’re just going to sit in silence.”

Porta-Confessional is a participatory art installation comprised of two adjacent handmade cardboard porta-potty confessional-booths. Sappyfest attendees of all ages are invited to either write or speak, and then leave behind, their confessions.

Ongoing!

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

Stone Bonnet Choir is a polyphonic ensemble exploring early vocal music and Canadian traditional songs, in French and in English. The group’s musical approach is as distinctive as it is accessible, showcasing the melodies and texts of carefully chosen material, compiled from rare songbooks and remembered personal histories.

The ensemble’s repertoire includes a selection of rounds and canons from the oral tradition (Musing, Ô bruit doux), Canadian traditional songs (Là-bas sur cette montagne, Ceux qui s’aiment, Do You See That There Bird) and Renaissance pieces (Quant de vous seul [Ockeghem], Come Again [Dowland]).

Eugénie Jobin, Frédérique Roy, Robin Love, Camille Deléan, Adèle Trottier-Rivard, Helena Deland

Surprise Pink are a loud psyche/fuzz trio from Halifax.

After several years of jamming out songs and playing shows with Nap Eyes, Diamondtown, Cut Cult, Dog Day, Motherhood, Piggy, etc, they have finally completed a much-anticipated LP. Recorded live off the floor with a few overdubs, it shows the band melding the buzz of garage punk/shoegaze with the lyricism of brit folk and 60's pop.

Live they don't talk much, but instead try to create an immersive rock experience for The People.

https://www.instagram.com/surprisepinkband

surprisepinkmusic.bandcamp.com

photo credits: Corey Isenor

Swamp Magic is a funky saltmarsh synthpunk duo based in the Maritimes.  Their music is weird, but in a really cozy way, conjuring up the mystique and splendour of the marshlands they call home. Their influences are various, throwing into their cauldron sounds from New Orleans funk to Bristol trip hop, 70s Krautrock to 80s synthpop. They knew they found their name when they first saw the banner spanning the porta potty bay at Sappyfest. “Someday,” they vowed, “we’ll play that stage.”

Zamani is a sonic storyteller—writing, producing, engineering, and performing every note she creates. Hailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Zamani weaves together R&B, Neo Soul, and Urban Jazz into a vibrant soundscape that celebrates self-love, optimism, identity, and unapologetic Black girl magic. Her musical passport spans the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa, lighting up stages alongside heavyweights like London’s Estelle, Jamaica’s Tarrus Riley, and R&B icons Mya and Genuine. She also shared the bill with pop legends UB40 at the renowned St. Lucia Roots and Soul Festival.

A fearless collaborator, Zamani has crossed genres with Classical, Gospel, Pop, Hip Hop, and Jazz artists, co-writing with Grammy-winning Canadian songwriter Gordie Sampson and hip-hop pioneer Tracey Lee.

Known for her magnetic live performances, Zamani has electrified international festivals including Toronto Soul Fest, Boston Tree Lighting, Rotterdam’s New Skool Rules, Canada’s Juno Festival, and the St. Lucia Roots and Soul Festival. Her evocative songwriting and steady stream of singles from 2019 to 2024 have earned her an impressive collection of accolades: the Stingray TD Jazz Rising Star Award, SOCAN’s Young Canadian Songwriter Award, Atlantic International Film Festival’s Best Musical Score, and Emerging Lens’ Best Music Video Award.

A six-time ANSMA Award winner—including Artist of the Year, Single of the Year, and Songwriter of the Year—Zamani also holds four ECMA Awards, including African Canadian Artist of the Year and R&B Recording of the Year. Recognized at the highest levels, she is a proud recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for excellence in music.

With every beat, lyric, and performance, Zamani continues to push forward—one unforgettable song at a time.

http://www.zamanifolade.ca/

http://www.instagram.com/zamanifolade

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpWQkjDtTF-pJ1YTrVV3U0w