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Tuned In

Canadian Music Week artists that alternative fans should know
From Vancouver to Montreal, these Canadian musicians deserve a spot on your summer playlist

Canadian Music Week 2023 took place from June 5-10 in venues across Toronto. Artists hailing from across the country played nightly showcases at local venues, including The Wheatsheaf Tavern, Cameron House, and El Mocambo. For this month’s Tuned In story, Alternative Motive is sharing five alternative-ish artists that we think our readers should check out.

Neomi
Montreal-based singer-songwriter, Neomi, has powerful vocals ready for both radio and stage. Her 2019-single, “Dangerous,” is pop-rock to a T, with a confident attitude and driving bass that pulls listeners in with its edge. Her most recent release, “I Hope You Know,” leans heavier into her pop side, but remains reminiscent of the women of pop-rock in the early 2000s, from Avril Lavigne to a young Miley Cyrus.

Sunlust
Sunlust has been busy since their conception, playing frequent live shows in and around Toronto before their debut album even came out. Songs off 2021’s Geek Confessions, such as “Year of the Rat” and “Action Figure” are upbeat and gritty. The band is consistent with head-banging rhythms and energetic guitar riffs that support frontwoman, Steph Woulfe’s, authoritative vocals. The live shows haven’t stopped, with Sunlust playing twice at Toronto’s Hard Luck Bar this July.

Spendo
Looking for some “Rock and Roll for the soul?” That’s Spendo’s motto. The Vancouver-based band is evidently inspired by classic rock, with a sound that exudes intensity through its slower tempo paired with powerful melodies. Guitar solos in songs like “Fighter” and “The Great Unknown” showcase musical skill intentionally, never feeling like filler. Their song, “Easy To Lie,” is featured on this month’s Alt New Monthly.

Growers
Toronto’s pop punk scene is growing with the help of Growers. The four-piece group joined together in 2019 and just a year later, won the Fan Favourite Award for their song, “The 90’s,” in 102.1 The Edge’s Summer Song Contest. Growers’ music can stand strong in a playlist alongside pop punk artists of today, but what makes them different is the grunge and noise that throws it back to the 90s and early aughts. The music video for their most recent single, “17 Cigarettes,” comes out this Friday.

Housewife
Housewife is an indie band that, according to their Spotify bio, thinks “genres are boring and reductive.” This statement shows through in the band’s sound, which shifts from song to song, yet manages to stay cohesive, creating a “Housewife style” held together by singer, Brighid Fry’s, unique voice. The band’s dreamy and upbeat single, “King of Wands,” is featured on this month’s Alt New Monthly. 1% of the song’s royalties are being donated to fighting the climate crisis through a partnership with Earth/ Percent.

Backstage

Koven Wei’s Creative Mix
Markham’s Koven Wei speaks on being a “creative,” experimenting with genre, and Asian excellence

Koven Wei wants you to know that he is not an artist. Rather, the 24-year-old from Markham, Ont. identifies as a multidisciplinary “creative,” a term that he uses to represent the “everything” that he pursues.

“An artist is somebody who dedicates their life to making music. I’m not someone who dedicates my life to music – music is just a big part of my life,” said Wei. “I like making things in general. That’s my reason here.”

Wei’s track record holds up. While he actively makes, releases, and performs songs, he has a background in social media marketing, has ventured into fashion, and currently operates and is a producer at LAB0916, an audio-video company that specializes in music videos, pre-recorded live performances, and marketing assets.

“As soon as I started dropping music, [people] called me an ‘artist,’” said Wei. “But no, I was always just me: a creative.’”

The multifaceted nature of Wei’s pursuits makes it difficult to nail him into a singular brand or image. But that versatility is his strength, and it comes up within each of his creative endeavours.

Wei can recall a memory that not everybody is able to: he remembers the first time he actively listened to music. At 8 years old, one of his earliest friends introduced him to the rock song, “Old School,” by Hedley. It was the first song that Wei downloaded onto his own small, blue iPod Nano. It sent him on a music downloading spree, using peer-to-peer file sharer, LimeWire, to accumulate songs from Fall Out Boy, Green Day, Metro Station, Owl City, and Panic! At The Disco. 2000s pop-punk was his earliest introduction to music.

It was in high school – when Wei, like so many other teenagers, was figuring out his identity – that he became interested in rap and hip hop. As a fan of artists such as Mac Miller and Logic, Wei would freestyle and partake in rap battles at parties and dinners. It was after someone told him that he should try making his own music, that Wei plugged a Blue Snowball microphone into his computer, opened audio editor Audacity, and recorded his first song directly onto the program. He put it on Soundcloud.

“At school, a lot of kids were clowning on me because it sounded like ass,” said Wei. “In their defense, it kind of did.”

Wei called his teenage self “naïve” to what others were saying about his music, but that naivety put him in the position to keep creating. Looking back on his high school songs now, Wei appreciates the progress he’s made.

“I don’t like deleting stuff because whatever you say is ‘cringe’ or ‘weird’… was who you were at the time. It’s your evolution,” said Wei. “If you don’t have something to compare yourself to, you’ll grow stagnant.”

One listen through Wei’s Spotify page demonstrates the variety of influences that have impacted his sound and the change that has occurred over the years.

A low-fi cover of The Neighbourhood’s “Sweater Weather” with Fruitypoppin is Wei’s oldest and most popular song on the platform. He said the low-fi genre was inspired by what was popular in 2018 and the “softer,” “more sensitive” sound that he felt suited him then.

The singles he has released since pull from other places. His discography moves through styles influenced by hip hop, rap, electronic, anti-pop, and rock.

Wei’s latest release, “Lipstick,” is the creative’s most pop punk-sounding song yet. The track came to fruition with inspiration from across Wei’s life.

His early memories of 2000s pop-punk resurfaced when he first heard Machine Gun Kelly, Travis Barker, and Yungblud’s song, “I Think I’m Okay.” Wei remembers thinking it was “left-field” for Machine Gun Kelly – who was previously known for rap music – to release a pop punk song. That inspired him.

“I like certain MGK songs but it’s not necessarily the artist himself that I look up to, but the concept,” said Wei. “The reason why I like him is because what he did [changing genres] was so different.”

Once again in a rock music phase, Wei was listening to different beats when he remembered a demo he had heard previously. It was an alt-rock and indie-style chorus by Wei’s close friend and fellow musician, Ethan Low. Wei tried recording Low’s chorus over the pop punk beat but did not pursue it any further. It was much later that Wei revisited his demos and found what would soon become “Lipstick.” He asked Low for permission to use the chorus, wrote verses, recorded harsher vocals and harmonies, and reached out to Aleebi through a musicians Discord group for a feature. His first pop punk song was born.

Wei said that he did not realize his music was headed into the alternative direction, until he started hearing it from his peers.

“I didn’t even know my genre was alt-rock until I was releasing [‘Lipstick’] … I didn’t even know what alternative was,” said Wei. “Even my release, ‘Everything is Red,’ was just music to me [until] people started telling me, ‘This is anti-pop, alt-rock, alt-pop.’”

But that doesn’t mean he’s planning to create alternative-inspired music indefinitely into the future.

“I don’t think I’ll ever really find a genre,” said Wei.

The decision to remain genre-less is less of an intentional decision, and more of a product of how Wei works. He calls himself a “sporadic person,” who likes to keep up with new sounds and gets bored of genres quickly. He also enjoys the challenge that comes with making music with different styles and techniques.

“Making music is never more complicated than making what you like making,” he said.

That’s what many of Wei’s pursuits have been like: following whatever he is passionate about. The same goes for the work that he does with LAB0916.

“Extract, experiment, evolve” is the mission behind the company. Wei said that he never sets out to complete definite goals with LAB but is instead, trying new things and learning from them.

According to Wei, LAB is built on “work ethic and Asian excellence.” Though, he only considers the former when hiring colleagues for projects.

“It’s very simple: if you’re good at something, I will try my best to work with you and recognize your talent,” said Wei, about working on a primarily Asian team. “[You] just happen to be Asian.”

Being in Markham, a suburb that is a one-hour drive from Toronto and has a large Asian population, allowed Wei to find a tight-knit community of creatives who come from Asian backgrounds. Naturally, he continued to work with many of them.

“I wouldn’t necessarily use culture to push things,” said Wei. “Your art is number one … So, if you have good music [or work], the culture will speak for itself.”

Despite this, Wei still wants to advocate for Asian excellence in his own life.

“I feel like Asian culture is so conventionally stuck on things that other people have done and found successful,” said Wei.

“I saw a lot of kids in my time get swept into the nine-to-five hustle, which is cool and no problem, but I feel like if there was a role model in the entertainment industry doing cool things, a lot of kids in high school – even kids like me – would be like, ‘Damn, I can do that.’”

Wei said he wants people to avoid boxing themselves in. That’s the personal ethos he lives by.

“I encourage people to be more open minded in terms of what they really want to do because some things don’t even exist yet,” said Wei. “You could very well end up doing it and being the first.”

Alt New Monthly

June 2023’s Alt New Monthly features brand new music from Valley, a recent discovery by Miesha and the Spanks, and a nod to the most fun song on the current Paramore tour setlist.

To find songs previously featured in the Alt New Monthly playlist, check out the Alt New Archives on Spotify.

Thank you for reading the third edition of Alternative Motive. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already and follow Alternative Motive on Instagram and TikTok.

Happy summer,
Kendra