You have no idea how excited I am to be hosting the 5th anniversary show at Beat Kitchen we’ve put together April 25th. I’m featuring three bands that are very well known to me, and hopefully you, but not household names by any means. My greatest joy is introducing people to new music through this site and over the last few years I’ve covered a whole heck of a lot. Not all the bands are still together, but their songs have stayed with me this whole time.

I made a playlist of tracks made by artists I’ve covered here at some point. All of them are acts I think people should be listening to a lot more than they currently are. Most of them are local to Chicago in some way, with a few from New York thanks to my great friendship with the people at Mama Coco’s Funky Kitchen. I wish we could feature all these bands at the show (logistical nightmare for sure), I like to think that Benny Bassett, Molehill, and Cousin Dud represent a wide variety of sounds that capture the essence of what I like.

Take a listen to the songs and make sure you keep in mind the ones that you like so you can dig deeper into the band’s catalogue. A lot of them have bandcamp pages where you can buy directly from them and they get more of the money than they would if you bought it via iTunes or Amazon-even at a local record store. If you’re in the Chicago area, RSVP for the FREE show here.