Matt Alber

GWYTHAINTS

When you're a sheltered prairie kid, nothing is cooler than your best friend's biker dad's pagan girlfriend reading aloud to you from epic fantasy books based on Welsh mythology over extended camping trips under the stars on the rocky shores of Puget Sound. That's where Adam Sweeney first heard about the Gwythaints-fearsome birds that served as the all-seeing eyes of the dark lord in Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. When he found his band emerging from the ashes of the pandemic with a new record and a cinematic alt rock sound, the name just fit.

Leading into 2020 Sweeney's old band The Breaking had been at the height of its powers. They were sharing stages with bands like Rubblebucket, The Sherlocks, Avi Buffalo, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Floater, Lemolo and The Stone Foxes. They had just made a record with a production team of Grammy award winners and nominees-including producer Patrick Tetrault (Laura Gibson, The Features) mix engineer Craig Alvin (Kacey Musgraves, Kathleen Edwards) and mastering engineer Pete Lyman (Weezer, Brandi Carlile)-that launched them into new sonic territory. But then Covid-19 happened, tours were canceled, and their record never saw the light of day.

That band has evolved. They are now Gwythaints!
Wall-of-guitar alt-rock power meets cinematic pop production lyrically charged with poetic angst.

The new music finally emerges in Spring 2022.

City of Echo

City of Echo is a Portland-based rock band that works to make connections out of disparate and contrasting pieces. The members of the band (consisting of current and former members of local bands like Wow & Flutter, the Stubborn Lovers, and Charmparticles) have wildly different origin stories: their roots span the continent from Minnesota to Oklahoma to Idaho. There's a healer, and pilot, and an army brat in the bunch, and collectively the band infuses its earnest midwestern-inspired indie rock with more than a drop of Americana and a thick layer of airsy shoegaze dreaminess.