St. Louis’ music community is XXL, two sizes larger than the city itself. Not that having an abundance of local artists is ever a bad thing, but the sheer amount of recorded music coming out of the river city is staggering and difficult to quantify. From retired St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright’s country album to rapper and activist Tef Poe’s latest project, 2024 was a historic year filled with many records that have flown under the radar. Time for a signal boost.
The following list is not comprehensive nor is it ranked, instead, we offer a starting point to explore a wide variety of St. Louis-based musical acts that range from solo performers to full bands and artist collectives across several genres.
Stay up-to-date with the local arts scene
Subscribe to the weekly St. Louis Arts+Culture newsletter to discover must-attend art exhibits, performances, festivals, and more.
January 15, 2024
Between celebrating her 30th birthday at her own EP release show in January to performing at a packed City Winery in early December, Aida Ade has had an unbreakable year filled with memorable sets at the St. Louis City SC Block Party, Music at the Intersection, SLAM Underground, Spring Church and even Webster Groves High School. Aida Ade kicked off a busy 2024 with the release of The Unbreakable Aida Ade, a four-song crystallization of the singer-songwriter’s distinct ethereal approach to the acoustic guitar. We even featured the opening track, “How You Love,” as one of the top 5 songs by a St. Louis artist in our annual A-List Editors’ Choice Awards.
One and Only, Organic Experiments, and Family Man
February 13, June 19, and November 29, 2024
Producer and emcee Davie Napalm had an especially prolific 2024 with three releases that vary in sound and scope. The St. Louis–based hip-hop luminary has had a hectic year hosting monthly Groovin in the Grove sessions with like-minded local musicians at Seoul Taco, yet he still found time to drop consistently stellar projects one after another. His Organic Experiments beat tape stands out with 18 tracks of elastic beats, sleek jazz, and sample-based black magic, while his slice of life EP, Family Man, offers a lyrically driven journey with a wild range of vocal approaches. When does Davie Napalm find time to sleep?
April 5, 2024
“I just fell in love with the writing process,” Adam Wainwright says. “I’ve been writing poems and messing around with songs all the way back to high school, but I’ve just fallen in love with writing songs and writing music. It’s just so neat to me. It’s all about creating something new that comes from the heart.” Perhaps the most soul-revealing song on the new record is “American Hearts,” which Wainwright wrote alongside Baker, Barnhill, and Jeff King. –Tricia Despres
Read more: Adam Wainwright is ready for a new kind of spotlight
April 19, 2024
The musicians describe Hot Joy as looser and more playful than their previous projects. This certainly shows in the music—lead single “Fingers on my Side” is an upbeat, breezy slice of washed-out indie pop, and the follow-up single, “Folded Tongue,” channels the ramshackle drive and searing guitar leads of slacker-savant godfathers like Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement. –Austin Woods
Read more: Hot Joy is making the music they want to hear
May 20, 2024
From the guttural guitar noise that signals the start of opening song, “Cutting Up,” to the pulverizing title track that closes Sick With Hate, Vile Desire stays at a fever pitch while keeping the vibes decidedly dark. When asked about the concept behind the project, the band minces no words: “Vile Desire is a band to exorcise overwhelmingly negative attitudes felt toward the human race. Lyrics come from a place of nihilism, disgust, and hopelessness. Some of the musical reference points are punk, noise rock, and some doom and sludge metal.”
May 22, 2024
Furthest is a trio of multi-instrumentalists who prefer to play musical chairs both on stage and in the studio. While all six songs on The Latest Surgical Trend feature some combination of guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, who is playing what will differ from track to track. “Continue To Fade Away” opens the album with a jagged chunk of alternative rock written by Lucy Dougherty, who also performs and produces music as a solo artist under the name Sloopy Mccoy. Every song offers a distinctly different vibe, but “Love, Alfafa” stands out with a melodic tsunami that moves in slow motion with a range of vocals by all three band members. Power trio doesn’t quite fit, so let’s call Furthest a magic trio instead.
June 6, 2024
“At first I was really aiming for the clean western post-punk sound, and I hit up some of the best people that I knew to do it. I am also very into multiple lead vocalists, much like the B-52s, so I wanted songs where two people can play with the space. I think after doing the first two EPs we wanted to make something a little bit longer and heftier. We laid out all the live tracks in my apartment for a couple days, and then it felt like I was in a wrestling match with the snare drum for half a year straight. This album relies on very slight variations between repetitions, and if you follow the riffs closely, you can hear how the phrases create something cohesive but unsettling. As soon as we put out REPETITIOM VARIATIOM, the way opened up and we started writing new music again. It kind of feels like we’re in a whole different world now,” says Julio Prato, singer and guitarist of Kids.
July 12, 2024
“I shied away from making recordings for the longest time, because I feel like music is such a living art form,” Brian Woods told SLM in July. “Every performance is different. Every time I play one of these pieces, it’s going to sound very different, because maybe I take more time, or maybe I play something faster, slower, louder, or softer. But I think this was a really exciting project for me to make some strong decisions about how I wanted to interpret this music written by someone else.”
July 27, 2024
Summoning the Lich‘s Under the Reviled Throne is an ambitious effort, comprising 11 tracks of lightning-fast blast beats, tightly delivered and technically marvelous riffage, and manic vocals that alternate between guttural growls and piercing shrieks—a tour de force in jaw-droppingly well-executed extreme metal musicianship. It also just so happens to tell a sprawling story about wizards. And dragons. And druids. And frankly, all manner of subject matter that would be right at home in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Track titles include “Potion Seller,” “Praise to the Bog,” and “Reviled Crystal Wielders,” and what lyrics can be deciphered through the oft surprisingly melodic cacophony stick to that theme like a soul to a phylactery. –Daniel Hill
Read more: Summoning the Lich releasing second full-length album, Under the Reviled Throne
August 8, 2024
Starwolf’s Tropical Disco is filled with intricately arranged funk-jazz odysseys and impressively polished yacht-disco instrumentals like the aforementioned “Get Down Tonight” and the flute-filled “Piña Colada,” although it should be noted that the former is not KC & the Sunshine Band’s 1975 hit, and the latter is not Rupert Holmes’ 1979 soft-rock classic. However, Starwolf’s songs do in fact sound like they were born amid those ‘70s hits, back when there was room for these kinds of dreamy soft-dance grooves and smooth jazz fusion songs on the radio. It’s a throwback sound that the trio says they grew passionate about while playing in bands together and developing their musical identity. –Steve Leftridge
Read more: Starwolf is a band out of time on “Tropical Disco”
Dead End Thoughts Under a Crawling Sky
August 16, 2024
Recorded by Ultraman drummer Gabe Usery at Encapsulated Studios, Dead End Thoughts Under a Crawling Sky comprises 13 tracks of dark, melodic punk rock informed by the group’s nearly 40-year history. It also features the band’s strongest lineup to date, with Ryan Meszaros (the Cuban Missiles) on bass and guitarists Fancher and Tim O’Saben (Fragile Porcelain Mice). The album’s cover, which takes elements of old Westerns, the original Ultraman TV series and Jamison’s own vivid imagination, was drawn by Brad Fink, a longtime friend of the band and part owner of Iron Age Studios. –Joseph Hess
Read more: Punk pioneers Ultraman to release first new album in nearly 20 years
VILLADAYS and VILLANIGHTS
August 30 and November 1, 2024
While Benny Greenheart and Cue Coldblooded are the faces of TreeVilla, the group works as an expansive artist collective that includes contributions from local visionaries Moe, Marty and Steve N. Clair. The St. Louis-based boom bap crew stayed busy throughout most of 2024 by releasing two key projects in August and November, VILLADAYS and VILLANIGHTS, respectively. Both EPs are affectionately referred to as “A Film by TreeVilla” on the collective’s website, which makes sense given the theatrical vibe that permeates each of the eleven songs across both releases. Not a group to rest on their laurels, TreeVilla closed out the year with a surprise drop “On The Side Freestyle,” which provides yet another example of why this crew is a mainstay in the St. Louis hip-hop community.
September 13, 2024
Foxing finds the band working with some of the most atmospheric, exciting, and abrasive songs of their career to date. Foxing vocalist Conor Murphy notes that guitarist Eric Hudson suggested they “try to make songs that sounded like the parts of the ‘80s people don’t really touch anymore,” pulling from more experimental synth bands such as Talk Talk and Art of Noise. Talking about the more abrasive side of this record, Murphy notes that the band was less interested in writing “hits” than making something of which he and his bandmates could be proud. –Max Havey
Read more: Foxing are betting on themselves with their self-titled fifth album
September 7, 2024
Few albums on this list are as unapologetically St. Louis as Barbie Bee Jammin’s Show me State, which opens with an aggressively confident “who hotter” before blasting off with a set of perfectly cut hip-hop gems. Since relocating to Atlanta earlier this year, Barbie Bee Jammin shows that while you can take the girl out of the river city, St. Louis still remains a key part of her musical DNA. Released in September, Show me State features collaborations with Hitman Audo, 9wd_Bigdog, Destinee lynn, Bonni drip, and Duckman for a record that is unwavering in its flow and execution.
October 8, 2024
“Those Kinds of Friends was written about the moment of realization that a connection between yourself and a friend/partner isn’t healthy for you, and about entertaining the desire to detach. It was written largely in vans and hotel rooms over a three month time span, on the nights I couldn’t sleep, while on two back-to-back tours in support of other friends’ bands. Touring can definitely make you feel ungrounded, and I think the sound palette is a pretty accurate representation of the unrest and general sense of isolation I was feeling at the time,” says Ian Jones, the producer behind Shinra Knives.
October 21, 2024
From designing a baseball jersey in an official collaboration with the St. Louis Cardinals for Black Heritage Day at Busch Stadium to his work as a mural artist around the city, it can be easy to forget that Brock Seals is an excellent emcee who has now released two excellent full-length albums two years in a row. Hot off the heels of 2023’s standout record Cabo, Brock Seals kicked off this year by curating Blessed By The Ancestors, an artist exhibit that was on display at the City Museum for all of February. Released in October, Let There Be Light stands as an eight-song sonic culmination of the St. Louis–based rapper’s exploratory approach to the genre with features by like-minded performers Zado, Khiro Kano, Sir Michael Rocks, Najii Person, Amaris, and Tre Cool.
October 21, 2024
Lobby Boxer began performing again in 2022, and they spent the next two years recording the songs that would become Head Shoulders Knuckles Floor, working with Ryan Wasoba for tracking and producing the record themselves. The intention was to write an album that played around with more traditional pop song conventions. While the band has identified with more niche subgenres in the past, Lobby Boxer is first and foremost a rock band, and exploring the boundaries of what they can do under that umbrella was part of the process. –MH
Read more: Lobby Boxer’s latest album explores ‘every sound that a guitar can make’
October 25, 2024
The hardcore genre is having a major moment, as bands like Turnstile and Angel Du$t reach bigger audiences and local scenes grow across the country. With their debut album, Big Hand, St. Louis hardcore band Squint seeks to bring more people into the Midwest hardcore and punk community while also holding true to the genre’s ethics and principles. Assembled from veterans of the STL scene (Time and Pressure, New Lives, Choir Vandals), Squint’s birth can be traced back to a chance meeting, when vocalist Brennen Wilkinson and guitarist Ian O’Leary bumped into each other at the Tower Grove Farmers Market. –MH
Read more: Squint opens up the pit for a new generation of Midwestern hardcore
October 26, 2024
Aside from the sounds culled from arcane ‘60s garage-rock releases, shades of art-punk bands such as Television and Suicide abound across Cyanides. The jangly, washed-out guitars on tracks like “Calloused” even recall noise pop pioneers The Jesus and Mary Chain. And closing track “Eyes” reveals that underneath all the scuzz is a killer, no-frills rock ‘n’ roll band. But Stuttler calls “Speedball,” another stripped-back rock ‘n’ roll number, the best encapsulation of Cyanides’ sound. The group’s songwriting chops are on full display on this track, built on a primitive guitar line and backup vocals that sound like a sweaty, drunken singalong. –AW
Read more: Cyanides’ self-titled debut revives forgotten garage rock and punk sounds
October 27, 2024
For [the Lucky Shells album] it was about realizing my capabilities and limitations and applying them to the recordings,” Lucky Shells guitarist Jesse Rae says. “A lot of the process was just learning Ableton and relating my understanding of professionally recorded music and the albums I love.” Although cellist Mere Harrach and Rae are multi-instrumentalists who have performed in many different bands, the pair describe their songwriting process in Lucky Shells as wholly collaborative, with both members bringing ideas to the table. The duo writes songs with flexible structures, which means that every live show offers a different experience even if the setlist is the same. –JH
Read more: Lucky Shells delivers vivid, dream-like songs on their new debut album
November 9, 2024
Sonically, The Vondrukes have always more or less defied any easy genre classification. While their earlier work hewed more to a cowpunk, alt-country sound, they eventually found themselves experimenting with prog rock, Latin music, and bluegrass. Too Many Monsters feels like a showcase of how well they can navigate between these different musical forms. “As we went, we just kept playing what came to us,” bassist/vocalist Jeff Griswold says. “We never really pigeonholed ourselves into one genre. We still have some twang in our new songs, but we also have some riff rock and hard rock, and we all love prog rock too.” –MH
Read more: The Vondrukes have plenty to say on their new album, Too Many Monsters
November 15, 2024
Blond Guru is justifiably excited about their terrific new album, The Purpose Is To Entertain, released on November 15. The record is a 10-song tour through the band’s influences, and it’s fun to identify the post-punk, garage-rock, lo-fi, jangle-pop, and goth-lite wells from which Blond Guru’s music springs. Whatever their inspirations, they’ve got it down to an impressive amalgamation of their own. The Gregorys, who are still in their early twenties, were classmates with Hezel and bassist Cole Conner at Lindbergh High School, where they first started creating music together in different configurations. (Drummer Sean Buchert is the band’s sole non-Lindbergh Flyer.) By the time they all graduated, they had accumulated a fertile collection of intriguing musical ideas. –SL
Read more: Blond Guru’s The Purpose Is To Entertain blends nostalgia with innovation
December 2, 2024
Tef Poe’s December release, Crow Life 7, caps off a prolific 2024 for the rapper, scholar, and activist whose name should be familiar to regional hip-hop heads and local music fans alike. While the St. Louis–based artist dropped a metric ton of projects on streaming platforms throughout the year, many of the tracks were past cuts uploaded for archival purposes. Crow Life 7 offers Tef Poe’s freshest set of collaborations with explorations down the hip-hop rabbit hole that include producers Byanybeatnecessary, Hugo Baws, and Malcom Martin to name a few. With much of the rapper’s expansive discography now available for all to hear, it’s easy to recommend any album under the Tef Poe umbrella. But Crow Life 7 will likely stand out in future years for its range and distinctly river city vibe.
December 14, 2024
Karl Frank’s songwriting process includes making voice notes on his phone and working outward from a core idea. Whether he’s referencing Turok on the Nintendo 64 or speaking on the truths of growing up poor in the midwest, Frank uses nostalgia as a way to lyrically bridge the gap between his band and the people who just want to hear a cool riff. Rather than change up the group’s garage-rock leanings, the new Boreal Hills record explores a wild structural limitation. Every song on Bloodcode shares the pattern of ABACABB, the very code used to enable blood in the Sega Genesis release of the original Mortal Kombat video game from 1992. –JH
Read more: Boreal Hills celebrates the release of Bloodcode at The Sinkhole’s 8 Year Anniversary Show
