(Awad Bilal, Mary Regalado) Clear Channel, a Washington, DC-based duo featuring Awad Bilal (Too Free) and Mary Regalado (Downtown Boys, Gauche) emerge as a force of joy. They are an eclectic mix of artists and activists fusing funky post-punk with humor, bouncy bass lines, and celebratory rhythms. Described as “making party music on the brink of psychic annihilation” by the Washington Post, Clear Channel is distinctly DC and glowing.

Wet Specimens are a punk band from the Capital District of New York State, having haunted the Northeast since 2018 through the binding of '80s inspired hardcore with death rock melodies. The tempos fluctuate between manic rushes and creeping lows, and an odd musicality is to be found prostrated in cacophony with desperate and hopeless imagery throughout. Here lies the abyss.

Intercourse formed in 2013 and has been annoying ever since. With the goal of ditching the pretension of noise rock and fusing it with the immediacy of hardcore they’ve managed a release a year since 2014. 2023’s Halo Castration Institute helped the band reach a new level of notoriety with positive reviews across the board. With the release of a new ep Egyptian Democracy looming for winter of 2024 the band is sure to become the high watermark for annoying adults who dress like they’re 17 and simply will not quit.

Empathetic Assessment Module (EAM) is a Los Angeles based darkwave / coldwave duo featuring Mexican-American Vicente and Iranian-American Kamyar, both with roots in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. From 2019 to 2020, the duo released three EP’s on the OasisLtd label. The music draws on a range of dark genres, from industrial to electronic body music (EBM), with shades of blackgaze in their most recent EP. The songs explore the bitterness of nostalgia, longing, and death for those doomed to a life of exile.

Mani Nilchiani is an Iranian musician & interdisciplinary designer based in New York and Mexico. In his music, he explores the notion of Home as an evolving transitory space of imagination and memory. He uses elements of Iranian classical music (Radif) to retrace, explore and retell a story of displacement while researching new genre-bending sonic spaces. Mani has performed in venues such as Moma PS1, Public Records, Barbes, Symphony Space in NYC, and La Bestia, Aire Libre and ATEA in Mexico City.  

Photo credit: Cyrus Moussavi + Brittany Nugent

Yavaran is a Los Angeles based electro-acoustic musical project. The sound draws on influences from California to the Persian Gulf in an attempt to create a musical representation of the experience of life, death, and survival in diaspora. With influences ranging from lo-fi hip-hop to Chicago footwork to synth punk, the music seeks to conjure the sound of memories, nostalgia, and loss.

East-coast based Palestinian-American musician Ala’ Jitan started their solo project in 2014 as part of a greater, ongoing effort to narrate their own search for identity and space. A multi- instrumentalist with roots in both jazz and traditional music, Ala’s work narrows down to a

harmonious blend of mixed percussion, folk-inspired acoustics, and disarming, melodic storylines. The Lookout Shift’s music is available to stream or download on Bandcamp, with new singles and projects forthcoming.