For the last five years, I’ve served as your Expert In Bands At The Bottom Of The Poster. That role has since spiraled into A Case For, an interview series that began at Riot Fest 2023 that highlights bands that are embedded in the alternative community, but don’t find their music being played on Q101. On the 20th anniversary of Riot Fest, the greatest festival in the world has provided the deepest lineup ever. These 7 under-the-radar bands are bands that you need to add into your playlists immediately.
Big Ass Truck
Every so often, a band simply appears out of the ether and enters people’s lives in a very hard and unsuspecting way. Big Ass Truck formed at the end of 2023 and while I wasn’t familiar with them for the first year of their existence, they became inescapable after their performance of 2024’s For The Children, a yearly, Christmas-time fundraiser by some of the best bands in hardcore. Big Ass Truck came, saw, and conquered at 2024’s FTC. I have not been able to escape Big Ass Truck since then. They are exactly what you’d want a band called Big Ass Truck to sound like. I’ve found the last few years of hardcore releases to be slightly frustrating. In an effort to filter out some people that were sucked into hardcore during 2021’s Turnstile Vortex, I feel the scene aggressively gravitated towards acts that I will label as Big, Dumb Riff Bands. Now, I like a big, dumb riff. I occasionally find myself in the back of the room, though, crossing my arms and getting annoyed at just how much people like Big, Dumb Riffs. This band serves as a great reminder to me that there’s not only a place for that in the scene, but that it’s okay to have fun. Not every band should exist to reshape your mind. Some bands exist to remind you of your love for big ass trucks.
Citizen
Let me start by saying this: it took me nearly a decade to understand Citizen. For far too long, I simply did not understand how or why this band got the reactions that they did. I wasn’t being a hater, I just couldn’t grasp what made this band so special. 2021’s Life In Your Glass World was the first Citizen release that truly grabbed me, while 2023’s Calling the Dogs is what officially won me over. I finally clicked with not only that record, but the band’s discography after that. Continuously morphing their sound in the way that they have feels like an utterly exhausting process, but as a result, they’ve racked up over a decade’s worth of material in which every album feels different than the last.
Dehd
I remember reading Pitchfork’s review of Flowers of Devotion, Dehd’s standout release, while I was briefly back living in Indiana during the pandemic. They had been a Chicago buzz bin band for a handful of years by that point, but I had never given them a real listen. I flipped on Flowers of Devotion and immediately yearned to be back in Chicago. I couldn’t believe I had turned down so many chances to see a band so great. They were, and are, a true representation of the kind of greatness that only this city can produce. Since 2020, the band has only gotten better, dropping scorchers like “Bad Love” and “Dog Days”. Dehd will complete the Holy Trinity of Chicago Music Festivals with this performance after having played Lollapalloza and Pitchfork in years past. This could end up being one of the best sets of the weekend.
Footballhead
There’s a lot of good music coming out of Chicago right now – few acts, if any, are better than Footballhead. A band that sounds like they should be on the soundtrack of an old MX vs. ATV or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game, this Chicago quintet has been turning heads in 2025. By the time Riot Fest rolls around, Footballhead will have spent time playing shows with the likes of Taking Back Sunday, The Used, and DRAIN all within the last year. In short: they’ll be rolling into Riot Fest with a gross amount of momentum.
A Case For: Footballhead, in which Case and the gang construct the Butt Rock Mount Rushmore, can be viewed here.
Harrison Gordon
Is there an act in music I’m more bullish on than Harrison Gordon? I think not. Harrison Gordon is a man (and a band) from Normal, Illinois who have been ripping across the United States and racking up scores of fans following every gig they play. At the beginning of April, I saw Harrison Gordon kick off a thrilling night of music at the Metro with Free Throw and Ben Quad. It’s been years since I’ve seen an opening act get the sort of response that Harrison Gordon got that night. It’s become clear at this point that there’s a group of people that have heard their music and are eagerly anticipating the next time that they come to town so that they can sing along with them, and a group of people entirely unprepared for the emotional experience that is seeing Harrison Gordon live and in-person. Gordon feels like the spiritual successor of the Run For Cover and SideOneDummy-stalwarts of the 2010’s – The Front Bottoms, Tigers Jaw, Joyce Manor, etc. – and as a result, they’ve become one of the most thrilling acts in all of music.
A Case For: Harrison Gordon, in which Gordon explains how the band nearly died on their most recent West Coast tour thanks to a faulty van, can be viewed here.
Microwave
The most underrated release of 2024 was Microwave’s Let’s Start Degeneracy. At the risk of largely insulting an entire genre, Microwave accomplished the rare feat of writing an incredible and not corny “grown-up” emo album. I liked 2016’s Much Love a lot, but I LOVED what they did with Let’s Start Degeneracy. The four-song run of “Circling the Drain”, “Bored of Being Sad”, “Straw Hat”, and the title track was as good of a run on an album that I heard last year. After crushing last year while opening for Rise Against at The Salt Shed, I can’t wait to see what they do when they take the stage at Riot.
Militarie Gun
A perennial contender for the title of “best band in the world”, Militarie Gun has continued to up their game since their scene-altering EP, My Life Is Over, in 2020. Chicago has become a second-home for the L.A-based five-piece. Their first Chicago show was downstairs at SubT in the fall of 2021, and since then, they’ve torn up nearly every venue imaginable, from Empty Bottle to Metro to the Aragon, opening for fellow Riot Fest act Knocked Loose last fall. As far as I’m concerned, this band can do no wrong.
A Case For: Militarie Gun (Live From the Q101 Lounge), featuring myself making the entire band uncomfortable with my general existence, can be viewed here.
Texas Is the Reason
While this list of bands is usually reserved for artists that don’t have their own font represented on the poster, emo icons Texas Is the Reason must be mentioned here. Why? Because why would I not want to write about Texas Is the Reason. An active band from 1994-1997, initially, the group has sustained a three-decade legacy off the bank of their one full-length release, 1996’s Do You Know Who You Are? A heart-pounding, introspective record that has since etched its way into every possible “guide to emo greatness” blog, the nine-track album is one of the best ever released by the iconic Revelation Records. Texas Is the Reason have not played a show since 2016 and have only played Chicago one time in their career, a 2013 performance at House of Blues. You may never see them again. You will not want to miss this.
Touche Amore
Touche Amore is the best band of the 21st century. A lofty claim, but an accurate one. The post-hardcore act has built up a discography since 2008 that is entirely unmatched by any other act this century. Their hit-rate has been astronomical. 2009’s …To The Beat of a Dead Horse blew people away with tracks like “Honest Sleep” and “Broken Records”. The follow up, 2011’s Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me, became a standout record among their contemporaries in “the wave”. They followed that up with a gem in 2013 with Is Survived By. After three slam-dunk, stellar records, the band dropped Stage Four in 2016. The album, which was heavily influenced by frontman Jeremy Bolm and his grief following his mother’s passing from cancer, elevated the band to new heights. Four years later, they expanded the scope of hardcore with Lament, a Ross Robinson-produced masterpiece. Finally, in 2024, the band dropped Spiral In A Straight Line, which felt like a hybrid between the sound of Stage Four and Lament. That album featured “Hal Ashby”, which may very well be the best song in Touche’s rich catalogue.
A Case For: Touche Amore, featuring insight on the band’s experience working with Ross Robinson and surviving for so long as a hardcore band, can be viewed here.
Wishy
I love a band that feels entirely unqiue unto themselves. Wishy has all of the warm comfort of a 90s rock radio act with all of the feverish excitement of a fresh, new act. I was absolutely floored when I heard “Love On The Outside”, the standout track from 2024’s Triple Seven. Very few songs sound like they are ready-built for creating memories in the way that that track does. If I were a betting man, I would say that this won’t be Wishy’s last Riot Fest, and that going forward, they’ll only be on bigger stages and in better spots.
