KWUR 90.3 Clayton FM, Washington University’s own underground student-run radio station, annually hosts a week of free musical events featuring local and student music, open to all Washington University students. This year’s KWUR week, which began on March 25, featured over a dozen acts, with performances ranging from lively jazz waltzes to hardcore punk screams and instrumental folk. As proud Spotify Wrapped posters, Bandcamp purveyors, and KWUR DJs, the opportunity to explore the local St. Louis underground scene and gain exposure to student music called to us like an unmissable siren song.

The week kicked off with an alternative show at the Duck Room of Blueberry Hill on Monday night, featuring three hardcore punk bands, with St. Louis-local acts Nimble and Squint opening for Headliners We Weren’t Invited. The small venue, paired with a modest crowd (undoubtedly chipped away due to the torrential rains and regular Monday-night duties) gave the gig the intimate, relaxed feeling of a basement session — mysteriously sticky floors and all. Nimble and Squint both delivered lively sets that roused the modest crowd up enough for some light swaying and attempted moshing that paid homage to the genre’s punk origins. Nimble, formed only six weeks ago, showcased their members’ dexterity and skill, with the drummer and bassist swapping instruments halfway through. The five-piece Squint was slightly cramped on the small platform, diminishing the band’s overall presence, but frontman Brennan Wilkinson took their cramped quarters in stride, giving his all to a dramatic entanglement with the mic cord.

Headliners We Weren’t Invited didn’t appear until well past 9 p.m. and by then, much of the crowd had trickled out. The Chicago-based band seemed disappointed by the dearth of audience members, with frontman Johnny Wynne inexplicably choosing to perform most of the set with his back to the few attendees that remained — was that performance art, or did he just not want to see how small the crowd had gotten? Although the turnout had dwindled, alt night officially kicked off KWUR week with a rousing wave of distorted vocals and thrumming D-beats.

With no event on Tuesday, KWUR Week returned Wednesday night, taking over Risa Commons for the KWUR Week Student Showcase. While five bands were scheduled to play, blues rock band Foggy Moondog dropped out at the last minute. 

The evening started on a calm note, with the crowd perched on the floor in front of the stage to listen to the first band, a folk duo composed of sophomore Effie Lillig and first-year Kathryn Myers. Lillig and Myers pushed through technical difficulties, restarting their first song a few times as their mics were calibrated. They handled the issues with grace as the crowd cheered their support. 

Lillig and Myers, who have known each other since middle school, have a strong dynamic that was reflected in their performance, as the audience sat cross-legged, swaying to the effortless guitar strumming. Their harmonies truly resonated in their original songs. 

In an interview, they spoke of being inspired by artists such as Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Adrianne Lenker, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They discussed their experience performing as a student band. 

“We’ve performed before but this is our first time playing at WashU,” Lillig said. “We felt OK about it.  There were a couple times where I was nervous and fumbled, but it went great.” 

The next band to perform was Acoustic Kitty, composed of sophomores Sam Reynolds on drums, Noel Hixson on bass, Auriel Prepejchal on trumpet (who could not perform due to an organic chemistry exam), first-year Manuel Lopez on saxophone, and a local senior in high school, guitarist and vocalist Ezekiel (Zeke) Bilborn. Acoustic Kitty specializes in ska punk, a genre that combines brass and woodwind instruments with the traditional punk style. When talking with Acoustic Kitty, Reynolds touched on how he describes their sound. 

“Our music tastes are all over the place. We listen to a lot of indie rock, alternative, metal, jazz,” he said. Reynolds even expressed his appreciation for Norwegian power metal. 

 “Chasing a sound isn’t the goal. First and foremost, we want our shows to be entertaining to people and hope to get good feedback,” Hixson said. “As long as people are having fun, we don’t care.” 

Hixson and Reynolds reflected on their dynamic as a band and their hopes for their future. 

“We became friends pretty fast. Musically, no matter what you’re playing, there’s a learning curve where everyone sinks in and locks together,” Hixson said. “I think we’re hitting that from playing and writing songs.” 

“This is our fifth show that we’ve done and we’ve had fun at every single one, and no show has ever been the same,” Reynolds said. 

Hixson expanded on upcoming projects, including “hoping to put together an EP before the end of the semester.” 

Their show surely did entertain, with the crowd jumping and dancing to the saxophone. Acoustic Kitty and Paralipsis started a bet on who could start a mosh pit in the crowd, which fueled the crowd’s enthusiasm to jump around and get rowdy. Hixson and Lopez even jumped into the crowd and danced around while they continued to play their instruments. While ska punk was perhaps unknown to many before their show, their memorable performance opened the genre up to all at Risa. 

Indie rock band Watch Out took the stage next. If you were at the KWUR Fall Show, you may recognize Watch Out from their distinct werewolf howling during their show. The large band, composed of seniors Boxuan (Wolf) Chen on vocals, Mengtong (Esther) Liu on piano and vocal, Chuzhi (Tingting) Xu on guitar, Tong (Eric) Wu on guitar, Jingyan (Russell) Zeng on drums, and Haochen (Allan) Wang on bass and sophomore Yifan (Jack) Qidiao on drums, came prepared with a set list of only original songs. 

Wu spoke about their goals as a band and how their sound can be described. 

“Originally, we were just jamming and covering others, and after half a year, we decided to do a show and then we got more serious and started to write our own songs, and we are finishing our first album before we graduate,” Wu said. “We play a lot of indie rock, pop, hard rock, and metal. We look up to a lot of Taiwanese indie rock bands.” 

Their show drew in a small crowd as people danced around to their rock songs, maintaining the energy from Acoustic Kitty. Their opening song started on a deceptive note, leading with mystical synth songs from Liu on the keyboard before delving into belting. The crowd enjoyed their set so much that they cheered for one more song until the band obliged, ending with another original, “Pluto.”

The last band to perform was Paralipsis, WashU’s first true metal band. The band is composed of five members: first-years vocalist Maxwell Spencer, guitarist Logan Zutter and guitarist Dario Antonio Barrera Pacheco, and sophomore bassist Dayan Parker and junior drummer Aadit Ramesh. 

Parker talked about his appreciation for the emerging student show scene at WashU. 

“I came in after COVID so a lot of stuff was still shut down, but some WashU house shows have opened up and KWUR puts on these events which have been really great. I think advertising, availability, and range of music are important for shows. More music is better. There should be more student shows.” 

While the crowd in Risa began to dwindle as they waited for drummer Aadit Ramesh to finish his organic chemistry exam, the energy picked up with the first scream. Stepping onto stage with handmade masks that fully covered their faces, a product of Spencer’s artistic creativity, the band fearlessly opened the show. 

Spencer spoke about their masks and creating an image for their band, following in the image of famous metal bands that they admire. 

“I love the performative aspect of the mask, sometimes with the mask I can be more myself. I’m on the spectrum and find it hard to be myself sometimes, but when I put the mask on something comes out. It’s horrifying and I love it.” 

Curious underclassmen attempting to enjoy a peaceful meal at BD wandered in, curious as to where the screaming and heavy instrumentals were coming from. As the crowd grew, the energy continued to escalate as mosh pits formed and students raucously jumped around and cheered on the band. The band’s enthusiasm for the music was palpable as Spencer jumped on, off, and around the stage, all whilst head banging. 

After the excitement and intensity of the past two performances, Thursday evening continued KWUR Week in a composed, but just as lively, jazz performance in Holmes Lounge. The only performance of the week open to WashU students and community members alike, the hall glowed with the animated performances of The Braxton Hart Quartet all night long, with swinging melodies that spiraled up and down scales, bringing listeners along for the ride. Featuring two WashU students, the quartet was formed after junior trombonist Braxton Hart and senior pianist Daniel Herrera met drummer Ben Dicke and bassist Bernard Terry at a jam session in the city. Over the course of the evening, the quartet performed a mix of standard jazz repertoire and debuted their own original compositions, written by Herrera.

Herrera and Hart credit the greater St. Louis jazz scene greatly for their musical development and progression, and the pair constantly seek out new places and musicians to play with. Still, interpolating music back into the WashU community has proved difficult.

Both students take lessons and play in a combo at the 560 Music Center, a mile away from the main Danforth campus on Delmar, but the physical separation splinters the Department of Music from the rest of WashU. 

Herrera’s brother, freshman Samuel Herrera, echoed the quartet’s sentiment, saying, “There should be more [opportunities] to get together in a group and perform in a setting like this. When we showcase our talents, we just do it at the [560] Music Center, not on campus, and we don’t reach out to people who aren’t looking for it.”

Instead, the quartet chose to highlight other individual student performers, ceding the floor to a group of other WashU students at the midway point, who formed a loose collective in a jam session. Herrera said choosing to use their performance time to platform other student musicians was an easy decision on the path to creating a broader musical community on campus.

“I want to have a space where people can play. WashU should do more stuff like that. Right now people just play in their combos, but when they truly grow is when you play together,” said Herrera. 

The week culminated with a return back down the steps to the Duck Room of Blueberry Hill on Friday evening. The lineup featured WashU student band Non-Euclidean Geometry, and St. Louis-based indie singer Lydia Newsom. The headliners were again a Chicago-based band, Horsegirl. This time, the venue was fully filled with a crowd abuzz with excitement for a Friday night gig.

Non-Euclidean Geometry’s WashU roots meant the band was met with enthusiasm by a hometown crowd, filled with friends and fans. The audience sang along to the upbeat indie rock melodies, bopping to the group’s clean-cut, confident style. The band’s assured performance livened up the audience, setting the stage for Lydia Newsom to follow. 

Newsom’s decidedly mellow bedroom pop production and emotive, confessional lyricism cooled down the crowd considerably, although the vibe of palpable enthusiasm lingered. Newsom’s vocals were hauntingly beautiful, and her talent was apparent. However, the lyrics she chose to deliver with that voice don’t match her advanced vocal skills, utilizing simple rhyme schemes like, “Lydia this, Lydia that / who f—- cares go take a nap” and “the night is not over / and I’m not sober” that infect her songs with “dear-diary” juvenility. 

Unfortunately, even Newsom’s emotive performance couldn’t save songs with lines like “playing with your nose / now you can’t breathe” and “sleep paralysis /now I can’t sleep.” Mining her darkest emotions (repeating “misery” twenty-odd times throughout a two-minute song) is undoubtedly cathartic in “washing the pain away” for Newsom, but plodding through her heavy set of songs addressing the same dark and dreary subjects set to slow, synth-pop beats that melded together was emotionally draining and incongruous with the other acts.

Headliner Horsegirl appeared last to a slightly diminished crowd, but their enthusiastic indie rock sound brought the audience back to life. Towards the end of their set, a pseudo-mosh pit formed, echoing the audience participation in Monday’s show, but this time at odds with the band’s decidedly non-aggressive sound. Perhaps the atmosphere of the Duck Room simply inspires attempts by passionate Midwestern scholar champions to release their inhibitions and go bumper-to-bumper with their peers.

Ultimately, what the crowd wanted was the experience of total entrancement in the music. And under the ambient lighting of the Duck Room stage, sitting cross-legged in Risa Commons, or tapping their feet to trombone trills in Holmes Lounge, in the midst of others also gathered to experience and celebrate the thriving musical scene of WashU and St. Louis, audiences found it in KWUR Week.