Seven Philadelphia artists who will change your life (for the better)
Music shouldn’t be as easily accessible as it is in our current age.
We used to chip fingernails and choke on dust bunnies to uncover the next best sound. We used to hedge our weekly allowance on a show that a friend of a friend promised would change everything, a show that might end up being three novices, two guitars, and a broken amp. It was a struggle, but the mission to find music that could emote more than words was worth the risk.
Now, the algorithm replaces the hunter-gatherers in us. Spotify spits out artists so close in style, sound, proximity, and context to your other favourites that you have no reason to resist, and in doing so, builds an AI drone somewhere so far off it feels like a dream. You become placated. Music discovery becomes a thing dead in the water. As a result, things get duller. Nothing is surprising anymore.
There is one place, as far as I am aware, that has resisted this modern tragedy: the suburbs of Philadelphia. I know, I’m just as surprised as you are. Beyond the sludgy Philly cheesesteaks and the Rocky statue, the streets widen out to wood chimes that twinkle with the promise of escape. Philly, all DIY bunting, porch-lit outdoor stages, and busking in bedrooms, has captured my attention. Now it’s high time it captures yours.
A five-day trip in early September returned the promise of what I hadn’t realised I’d lost: the wonder I felt as a child, burning pirated CDs to drive around in my car, the search, the reward. A buffet of genres was before me, each as tantalising and fresh as the last. The Wissahickon River, traipsing like a dog’s tail as it does above the city, connects the new Philly sounds to magical greenery, to gleaming waters, and an alternate way of life away from the stars turned to Amazon drones in the night sky elsewhere.
You might not have realised you were in danger of this great cultural deadening, but no matter: here are seven Philadelphia artists who will change your life.
Seven Philadelphia artists who will change your life:
Paperdisk
Want bragging rights for life? Introduce your friends to Paperdisk, a math folk band and brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Robin Ong.
The very definition of an undiscovered gem, this eleven-piece (and counting) outfit weaves compelling, hypnotic energy around guitar songs that come from the soul. On their first, and only, full-length release, Material and Chemical, the band flirts with polyrhythms in the most surprising places and lays a feast of surprises at every corner.
The album’s run from ‘Time and Temperature’ into ‘Growth and Composition’ might just be the best seven minutes of music recorded this year. Frontman and mastermind Ong has the perfect voice for such a feat, all breathy runs, chesty depth, and painful pining. A little American Football, a little something you’ve never heard before, let the crunch of autumn sounds fall over you and rejoice, dear listener, that real artists still walk among us.
Kipp Clifford
Kipp Clifford are a charming folk duo hailing from the Philadelphia suburbs, and have a honed, indie-folk sound perfectly ready for a major label. Some parts Ethan Tasch, some parts Del Water Gap, some parts the happy plentitude of brotherly love, the band delights on their 2024 EP, Determiner.
‘Fargoner’ is a perfect coming-of-age offering, new and yet familiar, like an open road near your childhood home. Jesse Harper’s voice distorts momentarily before breaking out into the undeniably anthemic refrain, “This kid is gonna be something,” offset by a mature and invigorating sonic background. The brothers then dive into ‘Determiner’, a mature contemplation of time’s passing with a synth-laden instrumental break and lyrics like the charged, “I’m not good by being good enough / Hungry still with riches from above.”
Julia Finegan
When I think about the truly great female songwriters in recent memory – Connie Converse, Joni Mitchell, Carole King – I have to fight the urge to sneak one more name onto that list: Julia Finegan. Harpist, singer-songwriter, and full-time poet, she seems to breathe in air and breathe out lyrics.
There’s something in the way she exists, somewhere between a shimmering melody and the snap of a flip-phone closing. Her voice has proper range, both in sound and emotion, and her lyrics carve out a tangled world of mixed signals, quiet shame and lonely moments, all handled with a kind of effortless grace.
Finegan’s latest EP, Screendoor, opens with the playful ‘Rome Itself’, which showcases her impressive vocals and the ease of the delightful two-step between her spindly guitar playing and melodic lyricism. It also includes the enchanting titular track, which constructs and scrutinises its own moral universe through embodied, colourful, and heavily nostalgic language. “I want to be near you and I do as I please,” she sings hauntingly. Her single, ‘Day That God Made Us’, depicts an apocalyptic America through the window of religious suburbs, coating the slow rot of modern politics with an inquisitive, fairy-tale hue.
Syl Fisher
Syl Fisher might just have found the way to pry a heart open and still walk among us as if nothing life-changing had happened at all. I’ve been lucky enough to hear Syl play live at their debut London show at The George Tavern, and even in the confines of their beautiful home in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and I haven’t once taken it for granted.
Their upcoming EP promises a whirlwind of poetics, divine storytelling, and a voice round, firm, and impossibly inviting, sung with a whole body in free-fall. Distilling music back down to its simplest parts, polished and re-cut into pristine new forms, Syl is the kind of artist we all need, reminding us why we do it all in the first place. What it means to exist in a body, what it means to dance, what we mean when we say I love you.
Ilan Isakov
If the name is ringing bells for you, it’s not because you’ve been staring at a screen for too long. Ilan is the brother of ‘Amsterdam’ singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov. Ilan, however, is a cornerstone in the Philadelphia independent arts scene in his own right. His voice is unique, warm, and sharp like coffee, lilting and inviting, and softly invigorating. His lyrics even more so.
On his 2021 album, Straight Lines, Ilan bares all. On ‘Desdemone’ is painted in the same hue as those all-encompassing, echoey, and expansive indie-folk ballads, this time pushed effortlessly by Isakov’s own ukulele playing that melts out into a hypnotic piano section. On ‘Till the Questions Were Gone’, Ilan sets wrongs to rights, uses his voice and a cushy percussion section to wipe clean the ego, to start again, fresh with the yawning sun. A cigarette, a low light, a speaker crackling around ‘Silver Breath’… feel yourself transported.
Generalife
During my time visiting Philadelphia, I was recommended Generalife several times. None piqued my interest more than the promise: “It’s like Bar Italia, but from the Philly suburbs.” Whoever deemed this fact might as well take my job; Generalife are sprawling, chaotic, and devilishly unpolished in the best way.
Available only through Bandcamp or scuzzy hand-cam recordings of sweaty bunker shows, the band are tenacious and bold, mixing a little shoegaze with a little post-punk sensibility. On ‘Every time I imagine myself I imagine I am lying down’, the vocals begin as a stream of high-pitched moans, before bursting into a Geese-like charge and a strutty beat that shows they could do whatever better than most, if they wanted to.
On ‘Pre-science’ they brandish their instruments like weapons while a barely-distinguishable voice croons “I think that I’m smarter than everyone / My new speaking style abstract and blameless.” It’s hot, it’s racy, it’s bold, and I need more of it. So do you.
Yellow Alert!
The only thing that Yellow Alert! Can tell me about themselves is that they became a band in 2023, and that “we’re probably alternative, I guess.” It’s this cool nonchalance that defines their mercurial post-rock sound, though they easily fit the bill of a hardcore show I was lucky enough to catch.
‘Hangdog’ is a six-minute epic closing off a dramatic three-song run that opens their 2025 album, Sleeper//Fault. Every change in the song is surprising, from a Muse-like breakdown to an exalted melody line teetering above the heavy-set texture. Spencer Rubino’s vocals are quiet, formidable, and change in accordance with the suggestion of each song. No band seems to have guitar arpeggios down like Yellow Alert! do.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out New Music Newsletter
All the latest New Music from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.