Why it matters if we’re listening to Geese, New York’s newest indie rock darling
The last drops of summer heat beat down on me as I arrived at the rising indie rock band Geese’s pop-up show in Brooklyn. Shortly after releasing their third studio album Getting Killed, Geese exploded within the indie music scene. Admittedly, I had just found out about the band a few days prior, yet I am not one to turn down an opportunity to see a live set, especially if it's free.
When I arrived at Banker’s Anchor, a new plaza in the heart of Greenpoint, I was surrounded by hordes of men, around 25 years old, wearing baggy jeans, some with a skateboard in one hand and a beer in the other. I wandered around the small space, looking for a place to stand. Everywhere I turned, I would come across yet another indie white boy with the same floppy haircut. I paid little attention to the crowd that surrounded me as I found a spot to see the show. Even though I only saw about fifteen minutes of their set due to crowd logistics, I became hooked.
Cameron Winter, the band’s frontman who also released a solo project in late 2024, has a voice unlike any other in music right now. He oscillates between a sort of scream-singing and crooning, invoking a yearning feeling of vulnerability in the listener. Their sound, influenced by the New York indie rock scene, is full of chugging guitars and propulsive drums, wrapping the emotive vocals in a protective armor. To me, this is what makes Geese one of the most important bands of the year. People yearn for emotionality, to feel through art, but we also need a tough exterior to get through the day to day.
Geese’s ability to modernize elements of traditional rock music creates a sonic experience that feels relevant to 2025’s complicated music scene. Throughout the past few years, we’ve seen an influx in young, female indie singer-songwriters break into the mainstream: Olivia Rodrigo, Phoebe Bridgers, Gracie Abrams to name a few. Similar to Geese, these artists hold lyricism and intense vulnerability at the core of their music. Another key factor in their success is their extremely loyal fanbase. Fans will spend an arm and a leg for resale tickets and merch, even enduring brutal conditions as they wait in line for hours (even days) for a front-row spot. It seems that having a fanbase with an almost unhealthy level of obsession is essential to an artist’s success. Even though these kinds of fans have been around for decades, social media has made music fandoms more contentious than ever. These developments not only affect fan behavior, but also the artist’s connection with their audience, their work, and ambitions.
On “Getting Killed,” the track “Husbands” discusses an artists’ relationship with fans and the impact of art’s legacy. Winter masterfully finesses this emotional tension, asking his audience, “When your husbands all die? / Will you know what I mean?” Here, there’s a conflict between an artist’s inherent need to create and their need for an audience to understand or relate to what they’ve made. Winter questions how much their art can endure without fame or success. As Geese’s popularity continues to rise along with the resale ticket prices for their upcoming tour, they are beginning to get a taste of viral success, but with the largely uniform audience that permeates indie rock music: white men in their twenties.
Indie music has largely been dominated by men. Male musicians, male fans, male managers – you name it. Radiohead, Nirvana, The Strokes, The Smiths, and LCD Soundsystem, just to name a few. Meanwhile, female, particularly women of color, musicians receive credit or accolades for their artistry and musical prowess at disparate rates compared to their male counterparts. Only 20 percent of the Grammy’s Album of the Year nominations in the history of the award show have been women. Only four of those have been Black women. Despite holding the record for most Grammy nominations and wins, Beyoncé finally won her first Album of the Year award at last year’s ceremony after being nominated four times before. That same night, Doechii became the third woman ever to win Best Rap Album. Although the industry is starting to recognize the powerful music by women, the cultural impact of music by men is still largely acknowledged and analyzed more.
Women have been the backbone of indie music in particular in countless ways – such as influencing marketing tactics and essentially creating online fan culture (e.g. stan twitter). However, it's easy for an artist's audience to become uniform in terms of gender, race, age, class, or other social factors. For example, an overwhelming majority of Gracie Abrams fans are young women and most of Geese fans are white men in their twenties. Of course these demographics do not make up the entirety of their respective fanbases, but we cannot ignore the tendencies for certain characteristics to be more prevalent within audiences. Diversifying music tastes allows one to experience a wider variety of perspectives and experiences. Artists are not responsible for creating art to please everyone, but understanding why specific communities resonate with certain pieces can bring us as a society together not in spite of but because of our differences. In the final track of Getting Killed, “Long Island City Here I Come,” Winter sings, “Nobody knows where they’re going except me.” Hopefully that destination is a world of complexity, and broadening perspectives, and diverse nuances.
