Indie/Alternative Shows in Chicago

FITZGERALDS NIGHTCLUB PRESENTS: The Harbour Tour: Jon Bryant $20 General Admission / Reserved Tables Available "In an era shaped by artificial intelligence and algorithms, Jon Bryant remains defiantly, beautifully human---no spectacle, no posturing, just songs that meet listeners where they are. That spirit runs through his forthcoming album, Harbour: a record built on small, meaningful details rather than big statements, anchored in the unflinching honesty that has defined his work for 15 years. Harbour was co-produced with longtime friend Brennan Aerts, and finds Bryant fully recommitting to his folk foundations---acoustic instruments, clear arrangements, and straightforward songwriting. Written as he prepared to move back to his native Nova Scotia, Harbour feels like a homecoming, shaped by a major life shift with fatherhood on the horizon. The songs move between social reflection and personal reckoning: , "rdquo" -> Hard to Be Human" wrestles with disconnection and division; , "rdquo" -> See You Thru" revisits his brief involvement with NXIVM and the instincts it sharpened; and , "rdquo" -> Take Heart" confronts regret and distance from his younger brothers. The track features fellow folk artist and longtime friend Rose Betts, whose ethereal vocals add a gentle counterpoint. Across five full-length albums and multiple EPs, Bryant has built a career on emotional transparency and an unpretentious approach to making music. Harbour is the culmination of that return to self---an honest, roots-forward album made with trusted collaborators, and a reminder that staying human is still the point." Grab dinner before the show at BABYGOLD BARBECUE (link to restaurant website) Or enjoy full service dining inside the club when doors open. ***PARKING*** There is rather limited street parking in the area, we recommend arriving by rideshare, bicycle, or rickshaw. ***AGE RESTRICTIONS*** 21+, minors admitted with guardian

Doors: 8PM / Show: 9PM / 21+ Anna Johnson celebrates the release of her debut LP Swarm of Tongues, out October 2 on Somnimage. She will be accompanied by Paige Naylor, Ben Baker Billington, and Andrew Scott Young. Joining the night are the dark, lush art rock sounds of Facing and the haunting intensity of Louise Bock, solo project of Taralie Peterson (known from Spires That In The Sunset Rise), with experimental percussionist Michael Zerang. ~~~~ Anna Johnson's sound unites electroacoustic improvisation with backgrounds in medieval folk traditions and sacred music. Based in drone and hypnotic repetition, she is invested in vocal expression as a portal to somatic and emotional presence. Anna's performances integrate projection installations of her textural film work, and her approach to live art is ritualistic; she seeks embodied and communal experiences of vulnerability and spiritual catharsis. She is drawn to the meeting points between personal and mythical, present and ancient. Anna is based in Chicago and tours regularly in North America and Europe. She originates from Minnesota, where she was raised with Celtic and Anglo folk traditions and sacred choral music, and studied both Western classical as well as traditional Eastern European vocal polyphony. She holds an MFA from the Performance department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Studio Art from Macalester College. Anna's debut EP Unknowing was released in 2025 on UK label Industrial Coast and her debut LP Swarm of Tongues releases in October 2026 on Somnimage. She was awarded an Outer Ear Session at Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio in spring 2026 for a recording project, and selected as a finalist for National Sawdust's 2026 Hildegard Commission, which will culminate in a December 2026 concert featuring a performance of her compositional work by Trinity Choir and the National Sawdust ensemble.

Doors open at 7PM. Performance begins at 8PM. This show is for AGES 17 AND OLDER. Valid Photo ID is required for age restricted shows. Forms of valid ID are current and non-expired Driver's License, State ID, or Passport. House of Blues Chicago is a standing room only venue, all tickets are General Admission unless otherwise stated. *All support acts are subject to change without notice.* Individuals under 17 are allowed to attend if accompanied by their parent or legal guardian Upgrade Your Experience: https://www.sevenrooms.com/events/hobchicago/hobwebsite

There is a delivery delay on all orders until approximately one week prior to the show. This show will be taking place inside the Shed.

Dogpark started as four musicians playing parties and backyard shows at the University of Richmond: Eamon Moore (vocals), Billy Apostolou (guitar, bass), Declan Harris (guitar, bass), and Christian La Rose Conte (drums). Since relocating to New York City, they've released three EPs, sold out their first U.S. headline tour (2024), played Governors Ball and Lollapalooza, and toured with Marcus King Band.Their sound is melodic rock built on what Ones To Watch called "pithy choruses": driving, electric, and riff-driven, with pop hooks and lyrics leaning into wit and satire around money, fame, and modern life. Their latest EP, Corporate Pudding (January 2026), is a six-song set skewering corporate culture, wealth inequality, and social media's grip on modern life. It follows two earlier EPs, Breaking In Brooklyn and Until the Tunnel Vision Melts, and they toured behind it this year: headlining U.S. and Canadian venues over the summer, then their first-ever U.K./Europe run in September. Their new single, "Consequence," is out now, with their debut album on the way. They tour with Houndmouth in November, then headline their own run in spring 2027.

Doors @ 7PM, Performance @ 8PM This is an ALL AGES event. Aragon Ballroom is a standing room only venue, all tickets are General Admission unless otherwise stated. There is NO re-entry. https://www.aragonballroomchicago.com/

Doors: 7:00PM | Show: 8:00PM | 17+

Doors open at 7PM. Performance begins at 8PM. This show is for AGES 17 AND OLDER. Valid Photo ID is required for age restricted shows. Forms of valid ID are current and non-expired Driver's License, State ID, or Passport. House of Blues Chicago is a standing room only venue, all tickets are General Admission unless otherwise stated. *All support acts are subject to change without notice.* Upgrade Your Experience: https://www.sevenrooms.com/events/hobchicago/hobwebsite

Saturday, February 27 93XRT Presents… The Flaming Lips $49.50 Adv. / $55 Day of / $90 2-Show Pass / 18+ / Doors: 7pm / Show: 8pm

Sunday, February 28 93XRT Presents… The Flaming Lips $49.50 Adv. / $55 Day of / $90 2-Day Pass / 18+ / Doors: 7pm / Show: 8pm

Mei Semones VIP Experience includes the below: A Meet & Greet and photo with Mei Semones One (1) VIP exclusive merch item Early Entry To The Venue Early Access To The Merch Table One (1) GA Standing ticket Mei Semones - Howl Out January 15th via Verve/Interscope On the night of the Fourth of July, fireworks over Mei Semones' Brooklyn block were competing with something more primal. Up and down the street, dogs answered each burst with a long, ragged howl of their own. Semones, alone in her apartment with her guitar while the rest of the city celebrated outside, found she didn't mind the solitude. The howling struck her less as a cry for help than as a kind of greeting: proof that she was never really by herself, not with music always keeping her company. By morning, she had the seed of the title track for her sophomore album, Howl. "Sometimes making music feels like howling into the universe," Semones says. "I make music because I like it, because it feels instinctual --- but it also connects me to people close and far. I like to think of this music as my howl." It's a title that might invite a familiar story of pressure and release, but Semones sees songwriting differently. Nothing was bottled up, she says, waiting to come pouring out. Music is simply something she does, every day, because it feels natural to her. That idea runs through Howl, an album that embraces the full range of her experiences rather than settling into a single emotional register. Tenderness and joy coexist with grief, self-doubt and memories of loss --- the same range audible in a sound that can move from delicate fingerpicking to distorted, rhythmically restless swells within a single song. At 26, the Brooklyn-based Japanese American guitarist and singer-songwriter --- already named an Artist to Watch by The New York Times and Stereogum, and Artist You Need to Know by Rolling Stone and The FADER --- has developed a sound that brings together jazz, bossa nova, samba and grungy math rock without treating any of them as separate worlds. Her bilingual songwriting works in much the same way. Few songwriters weave between languages as naturally as Semones does, slipping between English and Japanese within the same song --- sometimes the same line --- and letting both languages become part of the music itself. As she puts it, writing in both languages "felt more true to myself." Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Semones began playing piano at age four on an instrument gifted by her Japanese grandmother before picking up electric guitar at 11, inspired in part by Marty McFly's performance of "Johnny B. Goode" in Back to the Future. Semones also spent summers as a child in Yokosuka, Japan --- where her grandmother lived --- attending a local elementary school for two weeks each year and spending long afternoons catching cicadas, playing soccer, building things with mud, and searching for rhinoceros beetles. Those unhurried childhood experiences would later shape her 2024 EP, Kabutomushi, named after the very beetles she would catch with her school friends in Yokosuka

Spanning genres and disciplines, Dessa's style is defined by wit, tenderness, rigor, and candor. As a musician, she's co-composed for large choirs; crowdsurfed at rock clubs; recorded a live album with the Grammy-winning Minnesota Orchestra; and contributed a track to the #1 album The Hamilton Mixtape. As a speaker, Dessa regularly presents on art, science, and entrepreneurship at colleges and universities across the US. Her TED Talk, which recounts her science experiment on how to fall out of love, has notched more than 4 million views. As an author, she's written for The New York Times and National Geographic Traveler; been broadcast by the BBC; and published several literary collections including the memoir-in-essays My Own Devices (Penguin Random House). She's currently serving as Artist in Residence at Georgetown University's Music Sustainability Initiative.

There is a delivery delay on all orders until approximately one week prior to the show. This show will be taking place inside the Shed.

There is a delivery delay on all orders until approximately one week prior to the show. This show will be taking place inside the Shed.

Artist GA Presale: Wednesday, September 30 @ 10am - Thursday, October 1 at 10pm General Onsale: Friday, October 2 @ 10am In an effort to mitigate scalping, Bottom Lounge does not certify any secondary ticket sales via third parties and is not responsible for fraudulent ticket sales on third party websites. Please be mindful of scammers. Tickets for this event will be sent on a delay (extra time is required to process and confirm all orders), but you'll always receive your tickets in time for your event. If you have not received your tickets one day before your event, be sure to let TicketWeb know.

There is a delivery delay on all orders until approximately one week prior to the show. This show will be taking place inside the Shed.

Independent local night out.

Doors: 8PM / Show: 9PM / 21+ JAKE XERXES FUSSELL Over six unique and very personal studio albums, Jake Xerxes Fussell has found his musicalfuture by reimagining, reorchestrating, and reunifying the past. By combining differenttraditional music sources in a completely original way, he routinely creates fresh works of artthat are at once rooted in tradition and ingeniously modern. Recorded in North Carolina,The Old Beloved Pathwas mixed by producer Ben Whiteley, amember of the band The Weather Station who has also played bass on tour with Fussell.Friends Dominic Billett, Isa Burke, Wayne Horvitz, and Ken Whiteley add their instrumentalvoices to Fussell's singular musical amalgams. As producer, Ben Whiteley fulfilled Fussell'sdesire to make an album that was more direct: a document of musicians playing live together ina room, dwelling less in atmospherics and musical elaboration. Working together, theyintentionally limited their palette - focusing less on all the things a song could be, and honing inon the essential. In the revelatory , "rdquo" -> Every Time I Go to Town," the sprightly spider rhythms of, "rdquo" -> Boney," a traditional tune rarely played let alone recorded, and his upbeat take on anothertraditional American classic, , "rdquo" -> Boll Weevil," the overall approach is airier, focusing on buildingtextures and staying focused and direct in the art that sustains him. The songs Fussell chose forThe Old Beloved Pathare songs he has heard for years, but many ofthem felt newly illuminated - hitting different., "rdquo" -> Traditional music gets more intense the older I get. The way that I see the world is throughthese songs. The world of traditional music has been such a gift to me. If nothing else, a lifelongcompanion. "The Old Beloved Pathis in stores September 18th via Fat Possum Records

Fishtailing across a trimmed sod lawn, the parking lot of a box-store strip mall, a fast food drive-thru----it's a hyperreal Americana fantasy that calls Caroline Rose (she/they) home on Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall. The release doubles as the debut of SUCK records, the LA based artist's own imprint---a fitting next form for an enigmatic musician whose work resists settling into one shape. Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall stretches the ordinary into the uncanny. The record pairs sharply observed, memoiristic songwriting with expansive guitar textures that render the everyday with violent clarity and mythic scale. Beneath its melodic sweep and signature hooks runs a current of violence and American dream leakage. It's Ennio Morricone with an AR15: surf guitars, spaghetti westerns, and suburban dread colliding until they become their own sharp vernacular. Reality is unstable, so we'll keep telling stories---and for Rose, the sinister slickness of the everyday grows a new head. Working with producer John Congleton, Rose built the record through humor, layering, and instinct rather than polish. Songs like , "rdquo" -> Conversations with Shiv," , "rdquo" -> Goddamn Train," and , "rdquo" -> Everything in its Right Place" were recorded in studio for the first time, with sessions that prized first impulses over perfection. The result is panoramic but never precious---songs that feel meticulously constructed while always threatening to mutate. Over the last six years, Rose's music has evolved alongside their work organizing around stronger labor protections and collective bargaining rights for musicians and crews. Creative and political practice have increasingly become the same project as Rose's career has taken on its hyper-independent form. Those concerns echo throughout Gentling the Horse. Its landscapes are populated by inherited systems that feel absurd yet inescapable, where humor becomes a survival tactic and satire reveals the quiet violence embedded in everyday American life.

Born from the womb of Y2K techno paranoia, dance-punk mega duo DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979 have been a cathartic through-line since 2001. Every now and then they come to fly their jumbo jet sound into the skyscrapers that the zeitgeist has erected. Youre a Woman, Im a Machine (2004), The Physical World(2014), Outrage! Is Now (2017) and Is 4 Lovers (2021), now in 2026 they once again blast off celebrating their 25th anniversary with a fifth LP, Private Lives, slated for a fall release. Theyve survived CDs, MP3s, pirating, streaming and AI slop undeterred and have delivered nothing but musky power-cock riffs, psycho tenor wails and frenetic juvenile delinquent rhythms. Will you join them on tour? Will you submit yourselves to the all-natural sound? Honk once for YES, honk twice for HELL YES.

Ruby Waters has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 per ticket goes to supporting communities in need with access to essential, life-saving resources, including clean water and other basic needs. From her home in the BC mountains, Canadian singer-songwriter Ruby Waters rattles off the definition of the phrase , "rdquo" -> to suppress." , "rdquo" -> It's the act of holding back or preventing something from developing, functioning, being seen or being expressed," she reads. It's a definition she's found deeply relatable over the last couple years. , "rdquo" -> A lot of that is what the album is about: hanging on to old habits and stopping myself from becoming the best version of myself," Waters explains. , "rdquo" -> It's also about the pressures of being seen by the world and wanting to hide like a little crab underwater in a safe little shell. Or the opposite, being weighed down almost underwater by suppressed emotions." Waters poured those feelings into her sophomore album SUPPRE$$IONS (out via Wet Records). Written mostly from this same house in the mountains, the smokey voiced singer dives into the dark waters of how her vices and the pressures of the world began to overwhelm her. She takes it literally on the album cover, wearing a collection of fishing lures as earrings and nose rings, and being lifted by a hook out of the water on the back cover. , "rdquo" -> I've been dealing with addiction and mental health issues for a very long time," she admits. , "rdquo" -> This album stems from wanting to change or being in limbo between wanting to change and building up the courage to do so." She states, , "rdquo" -> It's an acceptance album. Accepting all of these feelings, wants, and needs instead of suppressing them." Written and recorded with her longtime collaborators Sam Jackson Willows (The Beaches, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie), Harper (Burna Boy, Russ), TJ Whitelaw (John Legend, Syd) and mastering engineer Alec Ness (Alabama Shakes, Sam Smith) over the last two years, her 20-song opus honestly admits to many of the distractions and habits that she's used to escape her real life: sex, drugs, nature, and rock'n'roll. The candor comes with maturity as the artist details these crutches alongside her path away from some of them. , "rdquo" -> There are some deeper songs and some more fun ones, all mostly fueled with vices," she explains. Caught in the middle is album opener , "rdquo" -> SAME MISTAKES," a vulnerable, dreamy prologue that sets the tone for Waters' story. , "rdquo" -> I'm talking about being a piece of shit and not trying hard enough," she details. The hypnotic, soulful track recounts the loop she's been in: half-hearted attempts at changing her life that lead her right back to where she started. On a song like , "rdquo" -> OFTEN," she takes the cyclical nature of these experiences literally in the music, using sonics to replicate the experience of waking up from a bender and feeling your brain loop with regrets.

8:30pm. $20 ADV / $25 DOS In today's fast-paced mid-apocalyptic world it can feel like a waste of time to speak about time at all. Why dwell on the past when we could just live in the present because the future won't shut up about how bad it's going to be? But with This is the Kit aka Kate Stables (songwriter / banjo strummer / pinhole camera lover /Winchester UK born Parisdweller), we're going to have to give time just a modicum of consideration. Because not only is Kate still here and making albums of cataclysmic honesty and welcoming tonal embraces, they are continuing to grow, which is probably the only smart way to move forward through time. This IsThe Kit's music places companionship at a premium, so being welcomed into its space feels like an obvious privilege, on record and in concert hall with her stellar supporting cast of Rozi Plain (bass), Jamie Whitby-Coles (drums) and Neil Smith (guitar). And at this current point in our confusing history, continuing to be here at all, o stand tall and make music to gather to, that's a heroic act. Joyful survival as an act of time-wasting, I'll take that any day of the week. Look to This IsThe Kit to spend at least one day of your week this year, I guarantee it will be time well wasted.

Doors: 8PM / Show: 9PM / 21+ The record started like this: a move to New York from England. An out of the blue phone break-up, on Independence Day. A month of running, not eating enough, drinking too much. A month of writing thousands of words a day, frantically, from a place of guilt. A month where it felt like this loss of self. It started out like an exorcism. But it doesn't end that way. Because things started to shift for Fenne Lily. The blame she placed on herself dissipated. New York, her new city, started to feel like her home. A place she had some ownership; a place that now held her own memories and experiences. She drove to New England in a truck. She made music with her friends in the Hudson Valley. She spent nights running pool tables. She fell in love again. She began writing the songs to her fourth album, Win Win. And she found that as she did this, the songs she wrote were coming from a place of warmth, self discovery. Something new was emerging from inside of herself. , "rdquo" -> I wanted to make music that sounded like the sun was out," says Fenne. Win Win is a record that sounds like the sun is out. , "rdquo" -> What do you feel like you've won?" asked Fenne's father of the record's title. She explained to him that what she won is what she did not lose. Of course, she had experienced loss: the loss of a relationship, the loss of a beloved pet dog. But she did not lose her integrity. She did not lie. Win Win is an exploration of this idea; this need for grit and conviction as a means to make art and to feel whole. The resulting album is some of Fenne's best, most beautiful writing to date. It is a record that is honest, feels hopeful, sounds free.

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