Judah & the Lion

For Judah & the Lion, the last two years should’ve been the best of their lives as the Nashville
band toured behind a powerful single and a genre-upending album, sharing stages with heroes
and playing to oceans of fans. But as everything was coming together for them, singer-guitarist
Judah Akers’ world was falling apart as his family was hit by alcoholism and affairs, death
and divorce. From that tension comes Pep Talks, the trio’s third LP and a hard left turn into
deeply personal terrain. Knowing they had something new on their hands, Judah, Brian
Macdonald (mandolin), and Nate Zuercher (banjo) took their time crafting a set of songs that not
only shores up their one-of-a-kind sound—a heart-pounding whirl of folk, bluegrass, rock, hiphop
and electronic production—but takes the listener on a bracingly candid, surprisingly
anthemic journey from the kind of pain that tears your whole world apart to the sort of hard-won
hope that can bridge the deepest of rifts.

Judah & the Lion has been a family unto itself since forming at Nashville’s Belmont University in
2011. Judah was from nearby Cookeville, an aspiring baseball player with a secret love for folk
guitar. Brian, from Chicagoland, was mostly obsessed with piano. Coloradan Nate was a son of
symphony players but preferred metal. Their differences were their strength as they crafted their
sound over a bluegrass-heavy debut, Kids These Days, and a mold-breaking follow-up, Folk
Hop n’ Roll, both produced by Dave Cobb (Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell) and made in two
weeks. In 2017, their triumphant “Take It All Back” topped the alternative songs chart for three
weeks in a row, paving the way for a Best New Rock/Alternative Artist win at the 2018
iHeartRadio Awards. While many of Pep Talks’ songs were written on the bus immediately after
the band’s famously high energy shows—at various festivals and on tours with Twenty One
Pilots, Incubus, Jimmy Eat World, and Kaleo—the boys co-produced and recorded this LP over
three inspired months with help from boundary-busting friends like Darren King, Jon Bellion, and
Kacey Musgraves.

Flora Cash

Husband-and-wife duo Flora Cash craft atmospheric indie folk and pop music born from a cross-Atlantic courtship. In 2012, the pair met on SoundCloud and struck up a musical connection, leading Shpresa Lleshaj to travel from Stockholm to Minneapolis to meet Cole Randall in person. They returned to Sweden together and immediately began work as Flora Cash. Their debut EP, Mighty Fine, was released just months later. The next year, they released another set of harmonious tracks on Made It for You. Flying back to Minneapolis, they got married and honeymooned in Los Angeles before making their way back to Europe in 2014. Their third EP, I Will Be There, was issued that year. After signing with Icons Creating Evil Art, they released mini-LP, Can Summer Love Last Forever, in 2016 and followed that with a full length offering, Nothing Lasts Forever (And It’s Fine) in mid 2017 to rave reviews incl. a 9/10 review from Earmilk, 98/100 from Elmore Magazine, a #1 single on the Hype Machine’s Most Popular chart and support from Noisey by VICE, Paste, The Music Ninja, Interview Magazine, The Line Of Best Fit and more.