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3x Grammy Winner Billy Strings Brings the First-Ever Ionia Freak Fair to Michigan This August

Eric Alper
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3x Grammy Winner Billy Strings Brings the First-Ever Ionia Freak Fair to Michigan This August

Billy Strings is bringing something entirely new to Michigan this summer. The first-ever Ionia Freak Fair takes place August 28 and 29 at the Ionia County Fairgrounds, and the lineup assembled around him makes it an immediate must-attend event.

Hosted by Mark Lavengood, the 2-day festival features Greensky Bluegrass, Sierra Hull, Leftover Salmon, Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper, Lindsay Lou, and Full Cord, alongside a Pyramid Scheme Pinball and Metal Tent. Tickets are on sale now, with limited RV parking passes available as an add-on through Ticketmaster.

The announcement comes on the heels of another landmark moment for Strings. His most recent album, ‘Highway Prayers,’ won Best Bluegrass Album at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, his second consecutive win in the category and third overall. Produced with Jon Brion and released via Reprise Records, the album debuted at number 1 on Billboard’s all-genre Top Album Sales Chart, the first bluegrass album to do so in 22 years.

The praise has been widespread and emphatic. GQ called Strings “the hottest roots-music phenomenon in decades.” Pitchfork noted that he “expands his palette, exploring new textures and emotional registers while staying true to his beloved genre.” Neither description feels like an overstatement.

Beyond ‘Highway Prayers,’ Strings released a collaborative album with Bryan Sutton, ‘Live at the Legion,’ recorded live at Nashville’s American Legion Post 82 on April 7, 2024. The 20-song set pulls from traditional bluegrass and folk, including takes on Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” and Doc Watson’s “Way Downtown.” An exclusive Apple Music Nashville Sessions EP featuring reworked album tracks followed shortly after.

Since his 2017 debut, Strings has stacked accolades at a remarkable pace: Artist of the Year at the 2022 and 2023 Americana Music Awards, and Entertainer of the Year at the International Bluegrass Music Awards in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2025. The live show has always been the engine driving all of it, and the current tour reflects just how far that reputation has spread.

Strings continues his extensive headline run through the summer, culminating in the Ionia Freak Fair.

2026 Tour Dates:

July 14 — Roanoke, VA — Berglund Center (SOLD OUT)

July 17 — Portsmouth, VA — Portsmouth Pavilion

July 18 — Portsmouth, VA — Portsmouth Pavilion (SOLD OUT)

July 21 — Boston, MA — Agganis Arena (SOLD OUT)

July 22 — Boston, MA — Agganis Arena

July 24 — Portland, ME — Cross Insurance Arena (SOLD OUT)

July 25 — Portland, ME — Cross Insurance Arena (SOLD OUT)

July 28 — Hartford, CT — PeoplesBank Arena

July 31 — Bethel, NY — Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

August 1 — Bethel, NY — Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (SOLD OUT)

August 28 — Ionia, MI — Ionia Freak Fair

August 29 — Ionia, MI — Ionia Freak Fair

Jesse Hector, Frontman of the Hammersmith Gorillas and Proto-Punk Pioneer, Dead at 78

Eric Alper
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Jesse Hector, Frontman of the Hammersmith Gorillas and Proto-Punk Pioneer, Dead at 78

Jesse Hector, the Kilburn-born guitarist, frontman, and cult rock figure who led proto-punk pioneers Crushed Butler and the Hammersmith Gorillas across more than 2 decades of London’s underground music scene, died on May 6, 2026. He was 78.

Hector picked up a guitar at 11 years old and never really put it down. Through the early 1960s he moved through Sun Records-influenced rock and roll and R&B, absorbing everything around him and developing the sideburned, extravagant stage presence that would define his public image for the rest of his career. By the late 1960s he had formed Crushed Butler, a short, sharp proto-punk three-piece whose savage songwriting lit up London clubs but failed to secure lasting label support despite brief flirtations with EMI, Dick James Music, and Decca.

After several name changes and lineup shifts through the early 1970s, Hector settled on the Hammersmith Gorillas, named with a knowing nod to the Hammersmith Guerillas, a pro-Castro activist group operating in London at the time. The band’s debut release was a cover of the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” on the Penny Farthing label in 1974, produced by Larry Page and timed to mark the tenth anniversary of the original. It captured exactly what the Gorillas were: amplified, energetic pub rock with a raw edge that predated British punk by several years.

Signing to Chiswick Records, the band released a series of singles and built a loyal fanbase on London’s live circuit. In 1976, they played the Mont-de-Marsan Punk Festival in the south of France alongside the Damned and Eddie and the Hot Rods, a booking that confirmed their place in the lineage connecting pub rock to the punk explosion. Their only studio album, ‘Message to the World,’ arrived on Raw Records in 1978, a record that wore its influences proudly, including a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” and a track performed in the style of Marc Bolan, 2 of Hector’s most cited heroes.

The Gorillas disbanded in 1981 after bassist Alan Butler died from injuries sustained in a horse riding accident. Hector continued performing through the 1990s with Jesse Hector & The Sound and later the Gatecrashers, contributing to retro-garage rock compilations and releasing an EP in 2000. In later years he worked as a cleaner at the Hackney Empire theatre and the Royal Horticultural Society, a detail that somehow only added to the mythology around him.

In 2008, director Caroline Catz made a full documentary about his life, ‘A Message To The World,’ screened at the Raindance festival and at the Barbican as part of its Pop Mavericks season. It introduced his story to a new generation and confirmed what those who’d followed him since the early days already knew: Jesse Hector was one of the genuine originals, a man who played the music he believed in without compromise or commercial calculation, for over 6 decades.

He was 78. The sideburns were magnificent.

The Haunted Youth’s ‘Boys Cry Too’ Arrives and Joachim Liebens Is Done Playing It Safe

Eric Alper
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The Haunted Youth’s ‘Boys Cry Too’ Arrives and Joachim Liebens Is Done Playing It Safe

‘Boys Cry Too,’ the second album from The Haunted Youth, is out now via Play It Again Sam, and it’s a deliberate, fully committed break from everything that came before.

Joachim Liebens built his debut ‘Dawn Of The Freak’ on fragile bedroom-pop innocence, a record that earned genuine cult status. This time, he’s kicked the door open. Live drums and guitars push to the front, distortion and aggression run through the DNA, and the emotional stakes are considerably higher across every track.

Liebens describes the shift without flinching: “I was a kid on ‘Dawn Of The Freak.’ It sounds almost like nursery rhymes to me, everything is so fragile and childlike, like a cry for attention. And now I’m angsty and kicking in doors.” That energy is all over ‘Boys Cry Too,’ from the towering 8-minute opener “in my head” to the closing track “ghost girl.”

Lead single “deathwish” features Orlando-based singer-songwriter Max Fry, and it arrives as a strong early indicator of where the album lives. The record moves through goth grunge thrash on “murder me,” icy morning-after regret on “wake up,” New Order-influenced propulsion on “i hear voices,” and the ground-leveling instrumental “falling to pieces.” The shadowy “castlevania” Liebens describes as “the perfect triangle of Nirvana, Alice In Chains and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.” That’s a bold claim. The track earns it.

The album’s emotional architecture is deliberate and considered. “The first half of the record is basically how everyone sees a boy when he’s heartbroken: he puts his walls up, he’s paranoid, he’s angry, he’s aggressive,” Liebens explains. “But then the second half is this whole other story, it’s vulnerable. I want to show the vulnerable part of men and boys and celebrate it instead of making it this whole stigma that’s been going on for so long.”

Hip hop was a surprising but crucial influence during the writing process, with emo-rap outlier Lil Peep cited as a key reference point. Liebens took specific note of how hip hop lyrics resist resolution. “It’s so much more powerful to have these lines that people just instantly engage with,” he says. That instinct runs through ‘Boys Cry Too’ from start to finish.

The record was born from Liebens’ own pain, but he’s written it wide open, leaving room for listeners to bring their own experience into the songs. That generosity of spirit is what makes ‘Boys Cry Too’ land the way it does.

The Haunted Youth have festival dates ahead this summer.

2026 Festival Dates:

July 12th – Cactusfestival, Brugge

July 24th – Rock Olmen, Olmen

Canadian-Born Rock Powerhouse Sierra Levesque Delivers Cinematic New Single “Don’t Go”

Eric Alper
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Canadian-Born Rock Powerhouse Sierra Levesque Delivers Cinematic New Single “Don’t Go”

Sierra Levesque’s new single “Don’t Go” is out now on all streaming platforms, and it’s already making noise where it counts, landing on Spotify’s editorial playlist “Rock Now” straight out of the gate. Listen here.

The track is a cinematic rock anthem built on soaring guitars and impassioned vocals, fully self-written and recorded by the 20-year-old Canadian-born artist. Produced, mixed, and mastered alongside legendary guitarist and producer Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, “Don’t Go” bridges classic rock influence with a sharp modern edge that feels entirely her own.

Levesque wrote the song from a deeply personal place. “I wrote this song about the moment you realize someone you love is slipping away, that desperate feeling of wanting to hold on just a little longer,” she explains. That emotional specificity is what separates “Don’t Go” from the pack. It’s urgent, immersive, and completely unguarded.

Born in Pembroke, Ontario and now based in Los Angeles, Levesque is currently studying Songwriting at Berklee College of Music while simultaneously building one of the most compelling independent rock careers of her generation. Guitar World Magazine has featured her, Guitar.com named her “Gen Z’s Most Ambitious New Guitarist,” and she’s been recognized among “10 Young Shredders Shaping Rock and Metal Today.”

Her live show is its own statement. Levesque performs vocals, lead guitar, and original fully self-recorded backing tracks simultaneously, a one-woman operation that has already taken her to stages like Whisky A Go Go and TD Place Arena. With over 3 million Spotify streams, more than 350,000 social media followers, and a debut album already under her belt from September 2025, the foundation is firmly in place.

“Don’t Go” is the clearest signal yet of where Sierra Levesque is headed, and the trajectory is straight up.

Pop-Punk Duo Teenage Joans Go Full Outlaw on New Country-Tinged Single “Bandits”

Eric Alper
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Pop-Punk Duo Teenage Joans Go Full Outlaw on New Country-Tinged Single “Bandits”

Teenage Joans have released “Bandits,” and it’s a genuine statement of where this Adelaide pop-punk duo is headed.

The track pairs their signature urgency with a country-tinged edge, a combination that sounds unexpected on paper and completely natural in practice. Written during a beachside writing trip in early 2025, “Bandits” channels the reckless devotion of a Bonnie and Clyde-style romance, all blind loyalty and chosen consequence.

The duo puts it directly: “We really wanted to blend a country vibe with our classic pop punk. The song is about feeling an intense connection to someone, so much so that you would do anything for them and rule out the worst because you love them so much.” That emotional core lands hard, and the production gives it room to breathe without softening the punch.

Cahli and Tahlia have been building toward this kind of creative leap since emerging in 2018. Their resume backs it up completely. Winners of triple j Unearthed High in 2020, back-to-back appearances in the triple j Hottest 100, a record-breaking 7 wins at the 2021 South Australian Music Awards, and three consecutive Best Punk Artist wins in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Their 2023 debut album ‘The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest,’ released via Domestic La La and UNIFIED, debuted across 7 ARIA chart categories and earned a nomination for Best Hard Rock and Heavy Album. A surreal short film accompanied the record, reimagining it through an Alice in Wonderland-inspired lens. The ambition has always been there.

Globally, they’ve shared stages with Foo Fighters, Sum 41, Sleeping with Sirens, PUP, and The Strokes, and have showcased at Music Matters Singapore and The Great Escape in London. “Bandits” arrives as a duo fully in command of their own evolution, expanding their sonic palette without losing a single volt of their live energy.

They’re currently on the road in the UK now.

2026 UK Tour Dates:

May 9 – Bristol – Rough Trade

May 12 – London – The Black Heart

May 13-16 – Brighton – The Great Escape

Chicago Avant-Woodwind Composer Emily Rach Beisel’s ‘Sumptuous Branching’ Is a Solo Album Like No Other

Eric Alper
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Chicago Avant-Woodwind Composer Emily Rach Beisel’s ‘Sumptuous Branching’ Is a Solo Album Like No Other

‘Sumptuous Branching,’ the second solo album from Chicago-based woodwind composer and improviser Emily Rach Beisel, is out now on Amalgam, and it’s one of the most conceptually rich records to emerge from the avant-garde this year.

Beisel performs everything here: bass clarinet, vocals, piccolo, and electronics, woven together in a singular, theatrical flow. The album was recorded at Marmalade in Chicago by Bill Harris, mixed by Harris and Beisel, and mastered by Edward Hamel. It’s a fully realized sonic world, and every element of it was deliberate.

The conceptual foundation runs deep. “Sumptuous Branching is born from late medieval chant,” Beisel explains. “Early chant doesn’t have strictly codified rules in place yet, so it has a wild freedom and rich density that I find so compelling. The work in Sumptuous Branching is my imagining of this replete style in my own voice.”

Lead single “Cantilevers” sets the tone immediately. Inspired by Mark Z. Danielewski’s ‘House of Leaves’ and the structural logic of chant, the track layers lines that stretch forward and overlap without ever resolving at a single shared point. Beisel describes it as “a kind of chant that doesn’t loop back on itself, does not end.” It’s as arresting in practice as it sounds in description.

The album draws from a remarkable range of source material: Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s ‘The Iliad,’ Guillaume de Machaut’s ‘La Messe de Nostre Dame,’ and Danielewski’s architectural fiction. Beisel moves through these influences with genuine command, never letting the conceptual framework overwhelm the music’s visceral immediacy.

A Jazz Noise captured it well: “heavy stuff, sounds retrieved from the deeper places… BEISEL pokes around in the sonic depths and brings leviathans out to play.” That description holds across every track on ‘Sumptuous Branching.’

Beisel, a 2024 3Arts Awardee in Music and Northwestern University graduate, approached this record differently than their debut, touring the material through Spring 2025 before entering the studio. “I love albums that offer an intentional journey and reward listening from beginning to end,” Beisel says. “This record very much falls into that category.”

The Midwest release tour continues now through May 12th.

‘Sumptuous Branching’ Tracklist:

  1. Introit
  2. To Rise In Arms
  3. Cantilevers
  4. Hollow Ships
  5. Her Still Singing Limbs
  6. We Who Behold The Bright Surface
  7. Sumptuous Branching

Sumptuous Branching Midwest Release Tour 2026:

May 9th – Carnegie Art Center – Mankato, MN

May 10th – The Pattern Room – Minneapolis, MN w/ Liz Draper

May 11th – University of Minnesota – Minneapolis, MN

May 12th – Art Lit Lab – Madison, WI

Vendredi Sur Mer’s New Single “Des Montagnes de Toi” Proves the Swiss Pop Sensation Is Impossible to Ignore

Eric Alper
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Vendredi Sur Mer’s New Single “Des Montagnes de Toi” Proves the Swiss Pop Sensation Is Impossible to Ignore

Swiss singer-songwriter Vendredi sur Mer has released “Des Montagnes de Toi,” a stunning new track that deepens the emotional world she’s been building with her album ‘Malabar Princess.’ Listen here.

The song is built around a bewitching piano and a melancholic melody that feels completely at home in her catalog. It’s intimate, unhurried, and quietly devastating, a natural extension of the emotional current already running through “Écoute Chérie” and the previously released “Si t’étais là.”

Charline Mignot, the Swiss singer-songwriter and photographer behind the Vendredi sur Mer persona, has always written from a deeply personal place. ‘Malabar Princess’ draws directly from the landscapes of her Swiss mountain childhood, born out of a writing residency in Montréal and shaped by collaborators Sam Tiba, Adrien Gallo, and Owlle.

The album carries real range. “Arrêter le temps” pairs her voice with renowned French pianist and composer Sofiane Pamart in a piano-voice duet that feels like an open letter. “Hard,” featuring Hanni El Khatib, brings a different kind of tension. The title track reads as a nostalgic ode to Switzerland and the Alps, soft and searching.

‘Malabar Princess’ marks her third album and a clear return to the warmth and intimacy of her debut ‘Premiers émois’ (2019), following the darker sonic territory of ‘Métamorphose’ (2022). The evolution feels earned. Mignot describes the record as a sincere, poetic work where she fully reveals herself, blending desire and truth.

Her sound pulls from French chanson and 1980s pop, wrapped in lush, retro-styled production and her signature sultry vocals. Tracks like “Écoute Chérie,” “La femme à la peau bleue,” and “Les filles désirs” have already built her a devoted global following, and “Des Montagnes de Toi” gives that audience exactly what they came for.

Vendredi sur Mer recently completed her North and South American tour, including festival appearances at Foro Indie Rocks and C4 Stage in Mexico. The momentum she’s carrying into the rest of 2026 is considerable.

Vendredi sur Mer’s “Des Montagnes de Toi” is out now.

Lowertown’s ‘Ugly Duckling Union’ Is Here and the New York Indie Duo Earned Every Second

Eric Alper
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Lowertown’s ‘Ugly Duckling Union’ Is Here and the New York Indie Duo Earned Every Second

Lowertown’s ‘Ugly Duckling Union’ is out now, and it’s the record the New York duo has been building toward their entire career.

Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg have signed to Summer Shade and delivered something genuinely ambitious: a fully self-written, self-recorded, self-produced, and self-mixed album that doubles as a conceptual world. The creative independence here is total, and the results make that clear.

Lead single “I Like You A Lot” arrives as a rare love song from the pair. A spry drumbeat and lo-fi, twangy guitars carry a lyric about the physical grip of infatuation, the obsessive pull of admiring someone before you even know them. It’s warm, a little restless, and entirely alive.

The band put it plainly: the song “was written about the hope of a new crush, and the intoxicating feelings of admiring and fantasizing about someone from afar.” They describe that feeling as “almost like a sickness taking over the body, but maybe not in a particularly bad way.” That kind of honest, layered writing runs all through this record.

‘Ugly Duckling Union’ grew out of a difficult stretch. Constant touring, a label split, creative frustration, and the particular intensity of navigating all of it in their late teens and early 20s pushed their friendship and artistic partnership to the edge. Returning to their roots, both in Atlanta and in the online communities that shaped them, brought the album into focus.

The conceptual spine of the record follows Dale, a duckling protagonist, and his companions as they resist LBH, a tyrannical media corporation built on isolation and control. It’s a framework inspired by the communal creativity of Gorillaz and the audience-first ethics of Fugazi, and it comes loaded with accompanying materials: a playable Minecraft world, drawn comics by Doctor Nowhere (Silas Orion), plush dolls, and a full handbook.

Osby describes the album’s spirit directly: “Our home has been the people who make us feel understood, and the music that makes us feel understood. I feel like Avsha and I have just been two misfits doing stuff together, and I feel like this music is for people like us, it’s for the misfit toys.”

The record lands with real emotional range, from the tender pull of “I Like You A Lot” to the blunt charge of “DIPSH*T,” and every moment reflects a duo fully in command of their own sound.

Lowertown are on the road now through late June, wrapping with a hometown show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom.

‘Ugly Duckling Union’ Tracklist:

01 Mice Protection

02 Worst Friend

03 Echo of Desire

04 Forgive Yourself

05 Big Thumb

06 Cover You

07 I Like You A Lot

08 (I Like To Play With) Mutts

09 DIPSH*T

10 Anything Good Takes Blood

11 Found A

12 Some Things Never End

2026 Tour Dates:

May 9th – Chicago, IL @ Subterranean

May 10th – Whitefish Bay, WI @ The Argo

May 12th – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry

May 13th – Des Moines, IA @ xBK

May 14th – Lawrence, KS @ The White Schoolhouse

May 16th – Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge

May 18th – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court

May 19th – Boise, ID @ Shrine Social Club

May 22nd – Seattle, WA @ Baba Yaga

May 23rd – Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall

May 26th – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop

May 29th – Orange County, CA @ Constellation Room

May 30th – Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy

May 31st – San Diego, CA @ Quartyard

June 8th – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar

June 11th – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger

June 12th – Austin, TX @ 29th St Ballroom

June 13th – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada

June 15th – Nashville, TN @ The End

June 17th – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade (HELL)

June 19th – Jacksonville, FL @ Hard Love

June 20th – Orlando, FL @ Conduit

June 22nd – Miami, FL @ Lincoln’s Beard

June 23rd – Tampa, FL @ The Orpheum

June 25th – Durham, NC @ The Pinhook

June 26th – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd

June 27th – New York City, NY @ Bowery Ballroom

The Ultimate Festival Packing List: What Every Music Fan Needs

Eric Alper
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The Ultimate Festival Packing List: What Every Music Fan Needs

Festival season has a way of separating the prepared from the people spending $18 on sunscreen at the merch tent. After enough weekends in fields, parking lots, and campgrounds across North America and beyond, the list of what actually matters becomes very clear. This is that list.

Start with your feet. Everything at a festival begins and ends with footwear. Comfortable, broken-in shoes you’ve actually walked in before are non-negotiable. Blisters by noon on day one cost you the entire weekend. Bring a backup pair. Bring waterproof options if there’s any chance of rain, and there is always a chance of rain.

Pack layers you can move in. Festival weather operates by its own logic. Scorching at noon, freezing by midnight, sideways rain at 3am. A lightweight packable jacket, a long sleeve layer, and a bandana cover most scenarios and fold down to nothing in a bag. Dress for all 4 seasons because a single festival day can deliver all of them.

Protect yourself from the sun before you feel it. High-SPF sunscreen, a wide-brim hat, and UV-blocking sunglasses are the trio that determines whether you make it to the headliner or spend Sunday recovering from heat exhaustion in a tent. Reapply the sunscreen every 2 hours. The sun at an outdoor festival is relentless and doesn’t care about the set times.

Carry a refillable water bottle everywhere. Most major festivals have free water refill stations, and staying hydrated through a full day of sun, crowds, and dancing is the single most important thing you can do for your body. A collapsible bottle takes up almost no space and saves you a fortune over 3 days.

Build a festival first aid kit that actually works. Blister pads, ibuprofen, antacids, earplugs, hand sanitizer, a portable phone charger, and a small flashlight. These 7 items solve 90% of the problems that derail a festival weekend. The earplugs are essential even if you think you don’t need them. Tinnitus is real and a full weekend in front of loud speakers without protection adds up fast.

Bring cash in small bills. Food vendors, local artists selling prints, independent merch tables, many of them are cash only or prefer it. An ATM at a festival charges whatever it wants and the line is always longer than you expect.

Know your schedule before you walk through the gates. Download the festival app, screenshot the set times for your must-sees, and build in buffer time between stages. Getting from one end of a large festival to another during a set change takes longer than the map suggests. Plan accordingly and build in time to discover something unplanned, because the best festival moments are often the ones you didn’t schedule.

Leave space in your bag for what you find. A festival is a full sensory experience and you will want to bring pieces of it home. A small drawstring bag or foldable tote handles the merch, the vinyl, the zines, and the random objects that find you over a weekend.

The best festival packing list is the one built from experience. Start here and adjust it to your own hard-learned lessons.

Here’s How to Use Instagram Reels to Actually Get Your Music Heard

Eric Alper
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0
Here’s How to Use Instagram Reels to Actually Get Your Music Heard

The artists breaking through right now aren’t waiting for a label push or a playlist placement. They’re posting Reels, studying what works, and doing it again. Instagram Reels has become one of the most direct paths from unknown to discovered in the music industry, and the barrier to entry is lower than it’s ever been.

Start with the first 2 seconds. Everything depends on them. The hook, the most striking lyric, the most unexpected sonic moment, it needs to land immediately. Viewers decide within a heartbeat whether to keep watching, and the algorithm is watching that decision closely. Open with your strongest material and build from there.

Use your original audio deliberately. When you score a Reel to your own music, every view builds your audio identity on the platform. Viewers who tap your audio land in your catalog. That one habit turns a single Reel into a discovery engine for everything you’ve ever released, connecting new listeners to your full body of work in seconds.

Show the process. Behind-the-scenes content, recording sessions, songwriting moments, rough vocal takes, the unglamorous parts of making music, these perform consistently well because they build genuine connection. People follow artists they feel they know personally. That relationship drives streams, ticket sales, and long-term loyalty.

Post with intention. 3 strong Reels a week outperform 7 mediocre ones every time. After each post, check your insights and prioritize watch time, shares, and saves over likes. A Reel that gets shared reaches people who have never heard your name. That’s the number worth optimizing for, the one that actually grows your audience.

Engage in the first hour after posting. Responding to comments immediately after going live sends a signal to the algorithm that your content is generating real conversation. Instagram rewards that signal by extending the Reel’s reach. This single habit can double how far a post travels without spending a dollar on promotion.

Collaborate visibly. Reels remixes and duets with artists in your genre build your network publicly and put your music in front of established audiences. Tag artists, venues, and music publications in your content. The platform rewards content that keeps people inside Instagram, so give it every reason to push yours further.

Write your caption like a headline. It’s not an afterthought. A strong caption with a clear call to action, stream the full track, follow for more, share this with someone who needs to hear it, extends engagement beyond the video itself and gives the algorithm another signal that your content is worth distributing.

Consistency builds momentum. Study each post. Adjust. Post again. The artists winning on Reels aren’t the most talented or the most polished. They’re the most persistent.

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That Eric Alper

Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.

Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com

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