Melody & Mystery II: Live Music Showcase

Hemlock for Socrates is electronic, post-punk pop rock from Pittsburgh, PA. Their music sets scenes of outsider experiences in otherworldly dystopias. Lyrical melodies, syncopated rhythms, and sensual synths create cinematic dreamscapes, you’re at turns being chased by hostile villagers swinging torches and meeting a lover in the vines on an alien world. The group recently released a 2-song EP in November of 2025 and 3 5-song EP’s in the summer of 2025, each one centered around a different theme: from intense bitter rock to lush languid electronic love songs to orchestral dance rock. Their sound is unique, diverse yet cohesive.

Babel Map from Harrisburg, PA, brings their immersive blend of gloomgaze, shoegaze, and experimental post-rock to the stage for an evening of dense textures, soaring melodies, and hypnotic energy. Fresh off the release of their latest album, Teeth, on Lost Future Records, the band delivers a live experience that shifts between crushing intensity and dreamlike beauty, inviting audiences into a world that is both deeply personal and otherworldly. Their track ‘Bubble Tape’ appears on the soundtrack of Kristen Stewart’s film, The Chronology of Water.

Some Faith from Pittsburgh, PA, is the brainchild of Brian Sikes Howe and Indigo Baloch, with recently added Leo Rogers on live drums. Their chill but heartbroken slick synth pop pulls you into the mirror of self-reflection and languid longing, through infectious melodies and dynamic, post-EDM grooves. Like a spell spoken in a secret room, their lyrics invoke the rituals of modern love and archaic lore. Their last single, Valentine, was just released in January of 2026.

[melter] from Chicago, IL, has been described as “a sonic disturbance made of flesh, blood, and machine”. Rob Hyman’s propulsive live drums combine with samples, buzzy synths, and distorted bass to underpin Jax Allos’s potent, intense vocals and relentless energy. Their music is an alchemical blend of driving rhythms and industrial noise shrouded in the brooding atmospheres of darkwave and menacing rock, like driving down a nighttime highway, feeling invincible, adrenaline spiking.

Arms & Armour from Cleveland, OH, is a collaboration between Lauren Voss and John Panza. Their music combines live recording, loops, and industrial samples with fierce vocals, swirling synths, and crushing guitar to create a hypnotic soundscape. It’s an experimental sludge tinged with blues rock that feels like being enveloped in the dark humid forest at night, with whirring machinery just out of sight. The band has a new album releasing in the summer of 2026.

bella figlia is Elizabeth Joan Harris, a multidisciplinary, genre-fluid artist and sound designer from Pittsburgh, PA. Using piano, guitar, found sound from her own field recordings, and her classically trained voice, bella figlia extracts the divinity from the mundane, fuses the grotesque to the holy, and finds the sensual in the spiritual. She seeks the beauty of the earthly to quell the fierceness of heartache through the frequency of emotion and the amplitude of change.