Nicotine Dolls

Nicotine Dolls make the kind of music you can’t hide from. The storytelling is front-and-center, beckoning your attention like a dusty old novel you can’t put down until the last page. The vocals are gritty and honest, holding nothing back in fits of joy, regret, and sadness similar to a phone call from one of your best friends at 3am. The instrumentation is equally punchy and nuanced, grafting rafter-reaching hooks on top of rich soundscapes. The moment the New York alternative quartet—Sam Cieri [vocals], John Hays [guitar], John Merritt [bass], and Abel Tabares [drums]—plug in, it’s as if a rush of collective emotion floods through the speakers.

Nicotine Dolls officially emerged in 2019 at the crossroads between its members’ respective paths. As the story goes, Sam met John Hays in 2015 during a Broadway tour. “I ended up there because I was getting evicted from my apartment, and my friend told me to try musical theater since you get a consistent paycheck,” he recalls. They instantly became best friends.

By this time, Sam’s journey had already twisted and turned from “leaving high school to be a musician, living in motels, playing Las Vegas, going to South Florida, and amassing all of these crazy ass stories.” Nevertheless, his newfound musical bond with Hays eventually attracted Merritt and Abel to the fold. The guys gained traction with the likes of “What Makes You Sad” which has received more than 13 million Spotify streams. The band’s cover of Tina Turner’s iconic “The Best” has surpassed 12 million streams. Collectively, music released to date, is nearing 50 million streams on Spotify alone.

Impressively, they attracted north of 1.7 million followers on TikTok, and nearly 900k on Instagram as well.

Nicotine Dolls have released a series of self-penned and produced singles and EPs, including the 2024 live EP Nicotine Dolls on Audiotree Live. After signing with Nettwerk Music Group, the band have been hailed by SPIN for their “vulnerability and determination,” calling Cieri a “charismatic, gravelly-throated powerhouse with the rasp of Bruce Springsteen and the emotion of Lewis Capaldi.”

Nicotine Dolls debut full length album (set for early 2025) is already gaining serious attention.

“This album has been my own internal attempt to be OK with wanting to love, and be loved in return,” he explains. “I wanted to be dumb and nervous and brave and scared and everything that you drown in when someone looks at you in that way that derails the whole plan you had for your life. I live alone with my dog and I’m not saying I don’t adore that life, because I do (my dog is my sweet big boy Indiana). But I miss laughing with someone in the kitchen or falling asleep watching trashy TV. I pride myself on my independence, but I think I made this record as a way to admit to myself that having someone there…would be nice.”

Lostboycrow

Oftentimes the greatest art is born of the right partnership. Lostboycrow, aka Los Angeles singersongwriter Chris Blair, found just that while collaborating with producer Chris Chu on his upcoming album Indie Pop.

Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Blair grew up singing along to his parent’s Beatles cassette tapes and watching that thing you do religiously. It was not until high school that he picked up a mic and started performing everywhere he could from showtunes in the gymnasium to pop-punk in a local dive. He later established his genre-fluid style with 2016’s Sigh For Me EP, which he followed up with 2017’s Traveler EP trilogy, 2019’s full-length Santa Fe, and last year’s Valleyheart.

For Indie Pop, it felt important to Blair that he make Lostboycrow “feel more like a band,” something Blair had begun to do on Valleyheart but sought to expand when working with Chu. Chris Chu, who performs with Pop Etc (formerly known as The Morning Benders), built his career touring with ’00s indie-pop staples like Grizzly Bear, Death Cab For Cutie, Ra Ra Riot, We Are Scientists, and more, so was the perfect person to produce the record. “That’s always been what I love,” Blair explains of his musical history spent listening to decades-spanning pop-rock bands like the Beach Boys and Fountains Of Wayne. Through working with one of his musical heroes and good friends, Blair crafted the most expansive, ambitious album of his career.

Taking a handful of ideas left over from the Valleyheart sessions, Blair and Chu wrote 10 new songs where the two played nearly every instrument – along with some help from Cole Petersen on drums. Together, they honed a distinctly power-pop sound, which led Blair to ultimately call the project Indie Pop: a nebulous, purposefully tongue-in-cheek name that reflects Blair’s lighthearted nature and self-awareness. “It just stuck out to me as the perfect amount of not taking itself too seriously because the songs don’t really take themselves too seriously,” he says. “This process was a very deliberate I-wanna-make-a-band album, but by the same token, I didn’t want it to come off as, ‘All right now, take me seriously.’”

Lostboycrow adds, “If Santa Fe was a conversation between my younger and older selves, and Valleyheart was a bouquet of love songs written longingly from my apartment, then I suppose Indie pop is a solitary dance on the way to somewhere unfamiliar. I wanted the music to be as stripped back and carefree as I felt heading into the next chapter. Free from any self-importance or pomp. It was a chance to not take myself too seriously, in all my excitement, hopelessness, hopefulness, and curiosity. A time to lace up my shoes and be more than an observer of life.”