FKB, The Medium, Stray Arcade & Bobby Kitchens

FKB is a high-energy, four-piece, indie pop band based in Nashville, influenced by the mystique, glamour, and excess of the 1960s-1980s entertainment business. 

Formed in Bonnyville, Alberta, the band is fronted by JUNO Award-nominated songwriter (2019), Drew Shalka, and features Travis Topylki (lead guitar), Derek Chalut (drums), and Alex Fedorouk (rhythm guitar). 

FKB’s infectious, disco-inflected single, “Color Blind” (2023) is produced by Shalka. “’Color Blind’ is us finding a way to connect our influences from the past, like The Beatles, The Jackson 5, and The Beach Boys, with the modern sounds of Foster The People, Portugal the Man and The Weeknd,” says Shalka. “We wanted to draw from the excitement of our live shows and give people something they can dance to.” 

The band won the Jim Beam National Talent Search (2023), which culminated in a performance at the Indies Awards at History (Toronto). Since 2017, they have performed over 300 shows across North America.

FKB appears as themselves in the feature film, Moments in Spacetime (Oct 2020), performing their single, “My Bedroom” (2018). The film stars John Rhys-Davies (Indiana Jones, James Bond, Lord of the Rings), Patty Srisuwan (Misfortune) and Sam Gittins (EastEnders, Call The Midwife, Await Further Instructions).

Clayton Bellamy, a JUNO Award, multiple CCMA and SOCAN Songwriter of the Year recipient has produced all of FKB’s prior music including, “Beautiful Fantasy” (2021) and ”Glow” (2020), with Dan Davidson, “Backstreet Daydream” (2019); “My Bedroom” (2018); “Casual Love” (2018), released via KnightVision Records (Amsterdam), “Bright Lights” (2017), which was nominated for Adult Alternative Recording of the Year at the Edmonton Music Awards; and FKB’s debut EP, 123 FKB, which featured the Alternative and Active Rock single, “Crystal Ball”.

Since coming together in 2015, Nashville four-piece The Medium have crafted melodic, intricate pop rock tailor-made for summer nights and sweaty house shows. On their debut album Get It While It's Hot, the band brings together their eclectic musical influences and humorous, big- hearted takes on life and love for their first proper full-length statement.

Comprising Sam Silva, Shane Perry, Michael Brudi and Jared Hicks, The Medium met by happenstance in and around Nashville, and have spent the intervening years playing live and honing their sound, which pulls from the best of '60s pop and psychedelia, '70s rock, and current- day lo-fi and DIY.

The band wrote Get It While It's Hot in 2016 at their shared home, the Chapel House, and finished recording the tracks in the summer of 2018 in a buddy's garage and at their own home, with production from friend and frequent collaborator Jake Davis, another Nashvillian also known for his work with Rainsticks. Since then, the tracks have had plenty of time to marinate, with the band playing them around town, on the road and in jam-packed house show living rooms.

Opening track "Caroline" shimmers with crystalline vocals and gauzy guitar, turning a tale of heartbreak into a breezy sing-along that's sure to be a staple of live shows. Early single "The Groove" refracts the woozy experimentation of Sgt. Pepper through a modern indie lens. Closer "Good Ol' Days" is, as the band describes it, the quintessential The Medium song, heavy on rose- tinted nostalgia and even heavier on tasty vocal harmonies.

Lyrically, the band splits up songwriting duties between Silva and Perry, with Get It While It's Hot's narratives showing both their sense of humor ("Some of it's just a bunch of gobbledy-gook," Perry offers) and their honest introspection. "We like to draw inspiration from real things, but there's some nonsense, some gibberish thrown in there, too," Silva says, with Perry adding, "Some of the songs have a basis in reality, but then turn into spaghetti fun."

Spaghetti fun with a side dish of reality well sums up Get It While It's Hot. The album is a colorful, kaleidoscopic look at the real world as seen by The Medium, and is a hell of a lot more fun than reality ever will be.

Formed in the early ‘20s by lead singer Kevin Babb, guitarist Jake Kimble and bassist Jameson Cunningham, Nashville rockers Stray Arcade debuted in May ‘23 with their exuberant lead single ‘Wandering Eyes.’ Subsequent EP ‘Underneath It All’ built on a sound as informed by British guitar pop as the jangly alternative stylings of Matthew Sweet and The Lemonheads. Their first single of ‘24, wistful ballad ‘Fade Into Familiar,’ was produced by Nolan Brown, recorded at Rabbit Hole Recordings and released on March 2.

Bobby Kitchens is a songwriter and performer from Elizabethton, Tennessee. His albums The Best Things, Lay Low, and Kitsch can be found on Bandcamp. He also appears on The Tumble’s Almanac, Eugene Wolf’s Clear, and Ariel Marx’s West of Her soundtrack. Additionally, Kitchens is an actor who has performed with The Barter Theatre, The Wooster Group, La Mama, The Public Theatre, and regionally across the country.