Article Contributed by Rebecca McDevitt & Ilana Bornstein Some bands come together through industry connections. Others start because a group of friends simply never stopped playing music together. For Chicago-based alternative pop band Flwers, it’s the second story. SoundCheck first discovered Flwers the same way a lot of fans did lately… scrolling through TikTok. Between honest lyrics, hook-heavy melodies, and videos that felt more like friends sharing music than a careful

There's a phrase Lily Forte stumbled across while researching lily flowers, a deep dive that started, she'll tell you, because she couldn't decide whether to self-title her debut album. Don't gild the lily. It means, roughly, that beauty isn't found in excess. That adding to something already whole only diminishes it. The moment she found it, the album had a name. And more than that, it had a through line.

Lila Holler writes like she’s slowly unfastening something fragile inside herself. Her sound shifts between indie pop glow and alt-folk vulnerability, shaped by a life spanning coasts, climates, and now continents. That constant motion shows up in her music as shifting light and quiet self-redefinition, the kind that comes from picking yourself up and starting again in new places until you learn what feels like home.

Louis Knight is a singer/songwriter that leaves you with something to carry. British-born and Philly-raised, he first caught attention on American Idol, but it’s the music that came after that’s carved out his place. His songs feel like late-night conversations, the ones you remember long after the lights go out.