NIVA Unveils Its 2024 Live List

Last week, we put the spotlight on 10 artists from the National Independent Venue Association’s (NIVA) 2023 Live List, seeing where some of our favorite bands and artists are now after a year packed to the brim with phenomenal live shows. Now, NIVA has officially unveiled its 2024 Live List in partnership with the Black List. NIVA partnered with The Black List—a platform that connects writers in film, television and theater with industry professionals in those industries via its annual list of most liked unproduced screenplays, online writing database, writers labs and corporate and non-profit partnerships—in 2023 to release the inaugural live list.

Compiled from suggestions of more than 1,000 member venues and promoters—which included them contributing the names of as many as 10 favorite up-and-coming live touring artists—the Live List is a curated popular vote that reflects the values and interests of the NIVA community, which represents independent live performance venues, promoters, and festivals throughout the U.S. capitalizing on the expertise of entertainment professionals who dedicate countless nights a year to seeing live shows and furthering artists’ careers in the process.

This year’s edition of the Live List features a towering 47 artists, including Alana Springsteen, Annie DiRusso, Arcy Drive, Ax and the Hatchetman, Brainstory, Daniel Donato, Dehd, Devon Gilfillian, Dry Cleaning, Etran de L’Air, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Gianmarco Soresi, Glove, Hermanos Gutierrez, Jessica L’Whor, LA LOM, Lip Critic, Liz Miele, LP Giobbi, Mannywellz, Michigander, Miya Folick, Model/Actriz, Otoboke Beaver, Petey, Raye, Sir Chloe, Sweeping Promises, Taylor Acorn, The Beths, The Last Dinner Party, The Moss, The Nude Party, Vandoliers, Yard Act and Young Gun Silver Fox. Check out 11 artists from the list we here at Paste adore, including Ratboys, Willi Carlisle, Bob The Drag Queen, Say She She and more.

bar italia

In 2023, London trio bar italia put out not one, but two LPs. Kicking things off with Tracey Denim, the band became one of the buzziest bands in the world. Made up of spotlight-sharing singers Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton, the Londoners’ grimy spin on alt-rock evokes a bootlegged Silversun Pickups rehearsal captured on gnarled tape. bar italia wandered onto the scene with minimal fanfare, but they had an easy time finding a voracious, uber-trendy audience. Shortly after their Matador-issued debut, Tracey Denim, hit shelves in May, the act was selling out back-to-back shows at some of the hottest venues in New York City and Los Angeles. I was in the crowd for bar italia’s jam-packed set at vaunted Ridgewood, Queens venue TV Eye, and was surprised by how many people I saw singing along to oblique tracks, like “Horsey Girl Rider” and “Mariana Trenchrock,” just mere days after they had come out. bar italia’s second release of 2023, The Twits, finds the group nonchalantly leveling up. The noisy songs are louder, the edginess is more precise and, when bar italia tone down the bite, genuine creativity bubbles from the calm. I’ve spent the last few months trying to figure out what has allowed this understated, lo-fi band to become so canonically cool. I think I’ve finally figured it out: Once you learn to accept bar italia’s frustrating normalcy, the cheeky brilliance quickly reveals itself. After a roaring run of live performances in 2023, bar italia are set to continue a North American tour through April that will bleed into performances at festivals like Roskilde, Melt and Dour.

billy woods

There aren’t many artists who had a 2023 like billy woods did. The New York rapper popped up on tracks by Aesop Rock and Noname, released another perfect album with his buddy E L U C I D as Armand Hammer—We Buy Diabetic Test Strips—and, a few months earlier, messed around and dropped a second full-length collaboration with producer Kenny Segal. Listening to Maps, it became evident that the two men have learned how to play to each other’s strengths. Segal knows that woods can make hay with any beat no matter how twisted or spiky, and woods knows to let those beats breathe and evolve before stomping through them. In interviews, woods called the album a “hero’s journey.” In that case, it’s akin to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours or Dante’s Inferno—a long day’s journey into the inner circles of hell, meeting gentrifiers, dodging wildfires and daring to down a glass of New York tap water upon his return. In 2023, woods toured the US, UK, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Finland and Denmark and, in 2024, aims to keep the momentum churning with appearances at Summerhall in Edinburgh, Sons d’Hiver Festival in France, Pitchfork Music Festival CDMX in Mexico City and Big Ears Festival in Knoxville.

Bob The Drag Queen

There’s no doubt that Bob The Drag Queen is a superstar. From winning RuPaul’s Drag Race to hosting HBO’s We’re Here, the multi-talented star’s light isn’t dimming anytime soon. The drag artist kicked off 2023 by dropping GAY BARZ, their first EP and a follow-up to their hit “Purse First.” The 37-year-old spent the latter part of the year sharing the stage with the queen of ‘80s pop, Madonna, in a celebration of queer art. Bob acted as the show’s emcee, charismatically hosting the ball to end all balls. Throughout the set, Bob popped in to perform “Vogue” by bringing in a modern twist, including a remix of “BREAK MY SOUL.” In the swirl of excitement surrounding Madonna’s tour officially kicking off in October, Bob graced fans with a surprise comedy album Woke Man In A Dress, which took audio clips from the titular hilarious special that came out over the summer. Bob remains a master of style, comedy and music. I expect 2024 to find them sparkling as bright as they did in 2024.

Medium Build

Is there anything Medium Build didn’t do in 2023? Nick Carpenter, known by his stage name Medium Build, spent the year touring, dropping music and collaborating with huge artists. The indie singer/songwriter from Anchorage, Alaska, kicked the year off by releasing his EP Health—the follow-up to his 2019 album Wild. He soon got busy touring with two shows at SXSW in Austin, TX, including at our Paste Party. Throughout the rest of the year—most of which was spent on the road—Carpenter released a handful of singles, culminating in a live EP of Health. However, his biggest release of the year, “Friend For Life,” was a collaboration with X Ambassadors and landed him a spot on the Billboard charts. Carpenter followed up the track’s release with an announcement of his signing to Slowplay/Island Records. That was only one of the impressive collaborations the multi-instrumentalist had throughout the year. He had the opportunity to open for both FINNEAS and Lewis Capaldi throughout 2023. “I am deeply honored and so incredibly stoked to be part of NIVAs Live List this year,” Carpenter says. “Independent venues work so hard to bring live music to their cities, night after night. Every concert you attend is the efforts of a hundred people that you’ll never see. Playing live is my fave part of this whole music thang, and I wouldn’t be able to do it without independent venues. The hugest of thank yous to the countless humans who make live music happen.”

Nation of Language

Last year, Brooklyn trio Nation of Language unveiled their best album yet, Strange Disciple. It was unlike anything the group had done before. On a track like “Sightseer,” you can find all of the familiar fixtures—the push and pull of minimalist arrangements that blossom into an explosive unraveling, all done beneath the gloss of woozy, beautiful electronica. The band making these denser, bolder and bigger songs was always a visible path. The result on Strange Disciple is an immensity that comes alive more and more with every passing chapter, a living room and nightclub album drunk on technicolor, dancing and candy-coated longing. The album evokes a stirring emotional maximalism, through vignettes and a cloud of splashy, arresting opulence. “Weak In Your Light” follows a pulsing metronome of erotic, low-octave key turns—which allow for Ian Devaney to take his own vocals into these operatic, church-clearing ranges; “Stumbling Still” offers a tangible, muted pop tone bustles in conversation with a drum machine—only to tumble into a titanic, appetizing arrangement of malleable dance-floor brushstrokes. Constriction was erased from Nation of Language’s vocabulary, and Strange Disciple is a blown-up, successful imagining that erases the limiting confines of any rough draft. It’s, in no minced words, the band’s greatest document yet, and they took it on the road all across 2023, playing gigs with Miss Grit, Reggie Watts, Walt Disco and LCD Soundsystem and making stops at Primavera Sound and Outside Lands. This time around, they’ll be performing a residency at the Bowery Ballroom in Brooklyn and playing Bonnaroo and All Points East. [Read our feature on Nation of Language here]

Paris Texas

In 2023, Los Angeles rap duo Paris Texas released an unbelievably unforgettable debut LP, which landed on our year-end list. At 50 minutes in length, Louie Pastel and Felix established themselves as one of the most primitive MC duos working right now. At every turn, Mid Air is catchy, stirring and brilliant. While Paris Texas have been kicking up dust since the late 2010s, this is their introduction to the rest of us. But OGs will remember just how good their debut EP I’ll Get My Revenge in Hell was about five years back. Mid Air infuses everything from alt-rock to punk to old school hip-hop in an amalgam of challenging, impulsive compositions. “BULLET MAN” and “Sean-Jared” remain standouts six months later, but the entirety of Mid Air is a masterclass from two musicians who are deftly uninterested in conforming to any boundaries laid out before them. The album is energetic, transparent and boastful all at once, as Louie and Felix have firmly made it certain that Paris Texas is a torch-carrying, heroic outfit. After playing Coachella and Camp Flog Gnaw in 2023, Louie and Felix will be playing all across the globe this year, with two headlining sets in Australia and appearances at St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Brisbane, Sydney, Auckland, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth, along with a stop at C6 Festival in Sao Paulo.

“NIVA members are actively booking, promoting and attending hundreds, if not thousands, of shows every year and therefore have proven ability to identify talent that can have long and sustainable careers in the live space. The Live List has been the perfect initiative for NIVA to continue to help foster these acts in our rooms and beyond. —Jordan Anderson, Booker The Troubadour / Live List Co-Chair

Ratboys

Few indie bands had the 2023 that Ratboys had. On their breakthrough new album The Window, they zeroed in on everything they do exceptionally well and put it in a blender. Julia Steiner’s songwriting, in particular, was at a pinnacle—which says a lot, given how dense and heavy and immaculate Printer’s Devil was three years ago, the demos for which were tracked in the emptied rooms of her childhood home in Louisville after it was sold. Somewhere on the spectrum in-between Rilo Kiley and Wildflowers-era Tom Petty, Ratboys have made it to a place in their own artistry where they have ample reserves of courage to execute risks. At the center of it all are Steiner—whose lyrics probe familiar and personal imagery through Lake Michigan parables and wholehearted reflections—and Dave Sagan—whose guitar-playing is one of immense finesse and sublime shredding. Together, they write themselves out of longing, through the anxieties of isolation still frozen in the stars, into moments of smoke sessions and graveyard escapes. They burn blank CDs and turn a life-changing freshman orientation encounter into a time capsule of stubbornly curious poetry. Much like its title suggests, The Window is a portal into a world Steiner is still considering the weight of. No longer fixated on how the grief of childhood can tumble into adulthood, the work here examines what chapter comes next; the ways that love and what-could’ve-beens can haunt the present. Across 2023, Ratboys gigged across North America, the UK and Germany with Free Range, Another Michael, Disq and This Is Lorelei and, this year, they will make noise on another North American tour with Ducks Ltd. and take a bow at Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival in the summer. [Read our feature on Ratboys here]

Say She She

Built from late-night practice sessions in the heart of NYC, female-led trio Say She She were quick to follow up their 2022 debut album Prism with the soulful sophomore release Silver last September. Their second album saw the group get even louder with their social and political statements, from callouts on abortion bans to gun reform. Say She She aren’t afraid to let the world have it, and Piya Malik, Nya Gazelle Brown and Sabrina Mileo Cunningham somehow found time in the 11 months between albums to record a 16-track disco-psychedelic dream. Apart from cranking out music, they spent most of 2023 on the road, performing in Europe and the U.S. and booking gigs at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Levitation as a part of their headlining tour. The Brooklyn-based group also put on an unforgettable performance on Seattle’s KEXP-FM, which has garnered over 130,000 views. If we can’t get another killer album from Say She She this year, you can bank on them keeping their on-stage momentum set ablaze.

Slow Pulp

Last year, we crowned Chicago quartet Slow Pulp as the Best of What’s Next for the work they did on their sophomore album, Yard, where they deployed peculiar, harmonious sounds to unpack conflicting emotion—and their introspection arrived catchier than ever before. The album tracks the band’s ever-evolving relationships with isolation and collaboration, the fluctuating roles one plays as an adult whose independence grows more complicated year after year—offering the ideal soundtrack for any mid-20-something who is caught re-assessing their social role in those unwieldy years that immediately follow college. Yard sees the band toy with its sound playfully and freshly. Emily Massey pushes her vocals beyond the deceptively low-effort utterances that have become her trademark. Take “Cramps,” for example—a punk-leaning track with immersive guitars reminiscent of mall emo hits breaking only when Massey sustains: “But I want everything.” “Mud” is its closest neighbor, at times pummeling and at other instances crunchy, falling somewhere between pop punk and fuzz rock. Yard was a genuine level up for Slow Pulp that revealed the band’s versatility—confirming that the band has extensive new sonic avenues to explore in depth moving forward, which involves slots at Kilby Block Party, Best Kept Secret and an extensive gig opening up for the Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie on their upcoming North American tour. [Read our feature on Slow Pulp here]

Thus Love

Thus Love, the Vermont art-punks who started playing together in an apartment, have quickly made their way onto the list of many renowned festivals and stages. Following their signing to Captured Tracks and the release of their 2022 album Memorial—which they began working on when they moved in together during the pandemic—Thus Love took on Europe by supporting Sprints and Dry Cleaning throughout 2023. In addition to their tour with Sprints, the band made stops at SXSW and New Colossus Festival, playing four sets at the former throughout the week, showing that their hunger to perform never quits. Throughout the rigorous touring schedule, the trio put out two singles, “Put On Dog” and “Centerfield,” which we can only hope is a tease for another full-length project to come in 2024.

Willi Carlisle

2023 was a dream year for Carlisle—and the virality of his tune “Cheap Cocaine” is partially to blame. In the age of shortened attention spans for digital material, it’s rare to get an opportunity to have views online turn into bodies at in-person concerts. Right now, country, folk and roots music doesn’t have the touring problems that other genres are facing. “We can still sell a bunch of tickets in Omaha and get people to spend hard-earned money on a live show,” Carlisle explains. But that truth doesn’t come without its hitches. When he was on tour with Sierra Ferrell, someone came up to him and said “Man, I love that cover of that cocaine song,” and it was a moment where Carlisle realized he’d written a somewhat popular song. Between “Cheap Cocaine” and now, Carlisle has remained busy. He’s written three plays—a one-man show about a folk singer’s last concert that included masks and puppets, a cross-dressing, horror play for him and another actor and, then, a one-woman show for somebody else—and put out the record Peculiar, Missouri in 2022. Now, Carlisle is gearing up to release his third album (and his best LP yet), Critterland. It was recorded in February 2023, and many of his favorite tracks were written in the November, December and January prior. It was a more intense and condensed period of creating, but it gave him a body of work he’s beyond proud of. Carlisle is quite a prolific writer, scrawling in his journal every day—even if it’s only a few sentences. And he sings every day, too, even if it’s just a snippet of a song. A lot of Carlisle’s music stems from aggregation, as he continues building his own treasure trove of language that he can return to and pull fragments out of ad infinitum. The Darrell Scott-produced Critterland lingers in a definite place, one that is a lot sadder and rife with melancholia—but it’s a necessary burden of grief, and listening to it will make you a better person. It’s the kind of record that documents a life you might not know, but one you sure as hell still remember. [Read our feature on Willi Carlisle here]

It’s exciting to see the authenticity of the list come together from our peers. We hope the list inspires NIVA members, fans, and the industry to check out these acts and continue to book them in independent venues across the country! —Jake Diamond, Marketing Director Union Stage Presents / Live List Co-Chair

NIVA Live List