Like every year, 2025 promises to bring a wealth of can’t-miss live music to the Front Range. You and your friends are already scheming to be first in the queue to avoid resale hell for the season’s landmark gigs, so we don’t need to tell you about the major names coming to town in the months ahead. But what about the opening acts supporting your favorite artists?
Here at Boulder Weekly, we’re big fans of the little guy — because we are the little guy. That’s why we’re passing over those giant letters on the marquee for a look at the emerging music artists who will be kicking off this year’s slate of touring shows in Colorado. From queer antifascist black metal to heartland indie rock, alternative hip-hop and points in between, here’s a glance at the year’s upcoming bottom-bill acts that might just become your next favorite band.
Paris Texas
The patiently paced art films of German “slow cinema” auteur Wim Wenders might not seem to be a spiritual cousin to the brash exuberance of L.A. hip-hop duo Paris Texas, but the ruckus made by young emcees Louie Pastel and Felix thrives on upended expectations.
Taking their stage name from the celebrated director’s 1984 masterpiece starring Harry Dean Stanton, the outfit has whipped up a fierce and devoted following since crashing into the rap game six years ago. But don’t mistake the high-art association for stuffy pretense: As the fuzzy, guitar-driven sound of their latest LP Mid Air suggests, Paris Texas gets their mileage from bringing together disparate elements of punk and hip-hop to smack you across the teeth with something new.
“It was about both places, respectively, being polar opposites,” Felix said of the duo’s moniker in a 2023 interview with The Fader. “That worked for us in terms of how [we] grew up and the music we make and our interests, juxtaposed to what the norm is. Nobody is doing it how we’re doing it.”
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Headliner: Tyler, The Creator with Lil Uzi Vert | 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, Ball Arena, 1000 Chopper Circle, Denver. $212+
Ragana
At first blush, the somber and emotive black metal mélange of Pacific Northwest duo Ragana feels like the perfect soundtrack for pondering the winter frost of the Front Range and daydreaming of death.
But creative partners Maria Stocke and Coley Gilson are interested in a lot more than doom and gloom on Desolation’s Flower, the avant-garde act’s latest release via “dark music” juggernaut The Flenser. Describing the title track as “a hymn of gratitude for queer and trans ancestors,” the record opens with a call to survival: “Unending holy bloom that cannot be denied,” Stocke howls, her glass-busting shriek breaking into a guttural, wounded cry. “We hold eternity / they cannot make us die.”
“I have always found a lot of resonance and catharsis in the imagery of apocalypse and destruction of the current political configuration of the world,” Coley told Bandcamp Daily upon its release in the fall of 2023. “But also in the imagery of building a new world inside the dead shell of the old.”
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Headliner: Mount Eerie | 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder. $27.50
Wild Pink
On his fifth LP with indie-rock upstart Wild Pink, founding member John Ross is throwing out the rule book. Stepping back from the lush arrangements of the Brooklyn-based act’s 2022 breakout ILYSM, his latest record Dulling the Horns finds the 37-year-old songwriter refining the formula that’s made him a rising star in the world of heartland guitar music while hanging onto a witty and wistful sense of longing.
“There must be a long-ass German word / for when you’ve destroyed something good,” he sings toward the end of the record’s clean and propulsive Side A. “Something you used to love / but had to let go of.”
“I feel like I’m kind of starting over in some ways,” Ross told Beats Per Minute last year. “For this record, I just wanted to make things as easy to get my head around as possible. I didn’t want a ‘big concept record’ or anything. I just wanted to make a record that sounds like the band when you go out to see the show. … I wanted to strip things down to their bare bones.”
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Headliner: MJ Lenderman | 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27, Fox Theatre. Resale: $80+
Gouge Away
Smashing together shards of ear-splitting noise rock, shoegaze and melodic hardcore, Florida-based outfit Gouge Away are carving a singular shape for themselves in the wide world of heavy music. Since the band’s 2012 formation in Fort Lauderdale, the bruising quintet led by Christina Michelle have won listeners the old-fashioned way by building meaningful connections with audiences through relentless touring.
Last year’s watermark LP Deep Sage — the band’s third full-length after a pandemic-induced pause — found Gouge Away deepening their sound by practicing the fine art of restraint. The outfit’s latest for hardcore standard bearer Deathwish Records finds them incorporating elements of grunge and druggy ’90s guitar rock to craft an 11-track offering that provides a close approximation to their blistering punk-club gigs.
“We definitely wanted to produce an ode to the live show,” Michelle told New Noise. “We just wanted to sound like ourselves and put down on tape exactly how we sounded in that moment. It never crossed our minds to go the traditional way, because the guys recorded the guitar, bass and drums live on [previous LP] Burnt Sugar. Then I recorded all the vocals by myself. This time I knew I wanted to record live with them, even if just for a few songs.”
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Headliner: Chat Pile | 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 6, Gothic Theatre, 3263 S. Broadway, Englewood. $25+
Hana Vu
Singer-songwriter Hana Vu isn’t interested in taking things slow. By the time she graduated high school in 2018, the multi-instrumentalist had a debut album and Willow Smith collab to her name. Now 24 and dubbed “L.A.’s indie-pop prodigy” by the Los Angeles Times, Vu is poised to take her brand of bummer guitar rock to a new level of notoriety.
That much is clear on the opening track of her latest full-length LP Romanticism, released last summer via Ghostly International. Over an aching swell of synths and strings, Vu’s voice bubbles to the surface with quiet confidence and a subtle sting of sadness: “There’s no song in my heart like I thought there was when I was young.”
Given the artist has three full-length albums under her belt before the development of her prefrontal cortex, we can safely assume this lament is a metaphor. With an emotional wisdom beyond her years, Vu likely has many more songs to sing and many more lessons about love and loss to impart.
“As I get older, I’m more aware that love is fleeting — everything is fleeting,” Vu told Teen Vogue upon the album’s release in May. “There is great sadness when you come into contact with other people and you love them.”
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Headliner: Soccer Mommy | 8 p.m. Monday, March 10, Ogden Theatre, 935 E. Colfax Ave., Denver. $35+
Alex Lahey
Headliner: Laura Jane Grace | 8 p.m. Friday, April 4, Aggie Theatre, 204 S. College Ave., Fort Collins. $40
There’s a famous rule in the world of improv comedy: Say “yes” to the comedic premise at hand, then expand it. You’ll hear an echo of this tried and true maxim in The Answer Is Always Yes, the latest LP from Australian indie-rock smartass Alex Lahey, which finds the 32-year-old musician embracing the bit and taking it to new heights.
But there’s more to Lahey’s music than acerbic wit and a sharp sense of comedic timing. Beneath the Aussie’s layers of barbed humor is a human-level unpacking of what it feels like to be an outsider.
“Living in a world that wasn’t made for you makes you pretty strong and adaptive, and you find the fun in it,” Lahey told Women in Pop last year. “It also makes you realize how absurd everything is. With The Answer Is Always Yes, I wanted to get weird because the world is weird, and it’s even weirder when you realize you don’t fit into it all the time.”
CUTLINE: Credit: Pooneh Ghana
Hiss Golden Messenger
Headliner: Watchhouse | 4:30 p.m. April 19, Macky Auditorium - CU Boulder, 1595 Pleasant Ave. $50+
Singer-songwriter M.C. Taylor wanted to turn the page when he went into the studio to record his latest LP, Jump for Joy. Following the introspective folk-rock of 2021’s Quietly Blowing It, his twelfth album under the moniker Hiss Golden Messenger, the 48-year-old songwriter from Durham, North Carolina, set out to make a clean break from the album’s lockdown-era predecessor with a more effervescent sound.
“I wanted the songs to feel more outward-facing, to feel more ‘up,’ and to reflect what the band is capable of,” he said in a 2023 Boulder Weekly profile. “I think that giving myself that assignment came in part from thinking about the type of record Quietly Blowing It was … [a] very internal and inward-facing record. I probably couldn’t or wouldn’t make a record like that again. I felt like I reached the end of that particular road.”
Taylor returns to the Front Range with his more joyful sound as part of the Bluebird Music Festival in Boulder. Headlined by fellow North Carolina folk duo Watchhouse, the weekend will include two sets from Hiss Golden Messenger: a full-band show on April 19, followed by a stripped-down performance the following night as part of the fest’s Strings & Stories series.
“We make it a point to not ever play the same set because it keeps us on our toes, keeps things interesting,” he says. “We’re trying to combine [the songs] into setlists that seem kind of varied, that are going to touch on as many of the different emotions, themes or rhythms that we can.”
Looking for more live music on the Front Range? Here you go.