We’re starting 2026 on a high note with new music from Colorado artists some familiar, some newly emerging.
After three decades fronting Denver’s beloved indie-pop band Dressy Bessy, Tammy Ealom steps into a new chapter as The Tammy Shine. Her first self-produced solo album arrives next month, and you’ll hear it here first.
Andy Frasco & the U.N. have long been a blues-rock staple on stages across the country. We’re proud Frasco calls Denver home, and this month we’ll be spinning tracks from the band’s new album, Growing Pains.
Mixing punk urgency with psychedelic edge, Fort Collins band Bitchflower has earned a reputation for unforgettable live shows since forming in 2023. We’re thrilled to highlight their latest release.
January also spotlights two newer projects that took shape in 2025. Espiaille, a symphonic synth-pop duo featuring members of Denver bands The Ephinjis and Flobots, released their first songs last year. We’ll also feature Colorado Springs singer-songwriter Lulu Benning, whose early releases have quickly caught our attention.
Rounding out this month’s featured artists is Animal Electricity, a Denver indie ensemble formed in 2015. They’ll perform a stripped-down set from their new album at this month’s Local 303 Meetup, happening January 26 at Skylark Lounge.
As always, this free event celebrates the month’s musicians and the entire Colorado music community.
We’ll also count down the Top 15 Local 303 Artists of 2025, as voted on by you, with chances to win concert tickets and other door prizes.
The Local 303 Meetup takes place Monday, January 26, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at Skylark Lounge, 140 S. Broadway. Admission is free and 21+. We’ll see you there!
Thanks to our Local 303 Meetup sponsor Cambio Tequila.
Are you a Colorado musician who wants to be featured in the Local 303? Send us your music!
Meet January's picks:
Andy Frasco & the U.N.
Band Lineup:
Andy Frasco - lead vocals, keys
Andee "Beats" Avila - drums
Floyd Kellogg - bass guitar
Sam Kelly - saxophone
Shawn Eckels - lead guitar
Andrew Cooney - guitar, vocals
Colorado Home: Andy lives in Denver
Formed: 2007
Latest Release: Growing Pains out May 23, 2025 | Growing Pains (Deluxe) out January 23, 2026
Upcoming Shows:
January 22nd at The Lariat in Buena Vista
January 23rd at Club Red Telluride in Telluride, CO
January 24th at Animas City Theater in Durango, CO
National tour dates are here: https://www.andyfrasco.com/tour
About: With curly tufts of a recognizable Jewfro peeking out from his omnipresent knit cap, Andy Frasco is a cross between John Belushi’s “Joliet” Jake Blues and Jimmy Buffett. He’s a band-fronting, songwriting party animal who turns into a swirling rock ‘n’ roll Tasmanian Devil onstage leading his U.N., not unlike Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band.
“We’ve dedicated our lives to doing this, so we want to give it 130% of our energy,” says the unapologetic leader of Andy Frasco & The U.N., which has grown from playing bars to touring more than 250 days a year all over the country. “We don’t chase the latest trend down the rabbit hole. This is who we are. You don’t have to be in the cool club to enjoy our music. We’re all in this together.”
Those experiences are summed up on Growing Pains, the group’s landmark 10th studio album (along with two live records), and first full-length effort since 2023’s L’Optimist, which showcases Frasco’s growth as a tunesmith in his own right.
“I wanted to show people how I’ve grown as a songwriter,” said Frasco. “That I wasn’t just a crowd-surfing party guy in a bar band. This record is about finding a balance in both music and life, focusing on the simple pleasures. It’s about living in the present moment and taking nothing for granted because there are no guarantees tomorrow.”
Produced by Frasco himself for the first time, the collection’s centerpiece is the anthemic “Try Not to Die,” a glass half-full anthem to seizing the day that combines country twang with an easy island breeze in its affirmative message (“Enjoy what you got/Forget what you’re not/Remember that love comes first”).
“My goal as a musician and songwriter has always been to get people out of their echo chambers to grow,” says Andy. “You can’t grow unless you hear both sides. My hope is people break out of their depression and think of a different way to live life. I try to write optimistically depressing songs. I’m always looking for silver linings.”
“Life is Easy,” featuring bluegrass superstar Billy Strings, Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country and co-writer/frequent collaborators Steve Poltz (Rugburns, Jewel) and Chris Gelbuda (Meghan Trainor), is a folk protest anthem, with under-the-radar tongue-in-cheek lyrics like “They’re selling us the blood/While they’re all bleeding us.”
“We’re all just consumers being sold something,” he explains. “We don’t see what’s being put in our McDonald’s burgers or our juices. It’s like they want to squeeze the lemon until it’s dry.”
Both “Tears in My Cocaine” and “How to Cure a Heartbreak” deal with addiction and getting sober, the former with great lines like “I’m texting all my exes,” the latter with the admission, “I try to fill my soul with substance/But my bucket’s filled with holes.”
“Why do we put these things in our bodies to cure the stuff that’s in our heads?” wonders Andy. “That’s not going to cure it, it will only suppress it.”
“Swinging for the Fences,” featuring cameos by G. Love and Eric Krasno (Lettuce, Tedeschi Trucks Band Soulive), is a Motown-flavored paean to dating someone out of your league. The playful “They Call Me Hollywood (But I’m from LA),” co-written with frequent partner Kenny Carkeet, features rapper ProbCause, while the title track is a sing-song, hip-hop-influenced rhyme about embracing change and taking it day-to-day. “These thoughts are nothing without action,” sings Frasco.
“Easier” takes a martial beat to an old-school folk anti-war protest sing-along with lines like “Why do we like to fight/When it’s easier to shine some light?” a reaction to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Having bought a home in Denver five years ago, Frasco wrote most of the new album in Nashville with his longtime guitarist Shawn Eckels, and frequent songwriting partners Chris Gelbuda, Steve Poltz, and Andrew Cooney, choosing musicians “for what was right on each song… I’m finally learning how to turn my thoughts into melody. That was the hardest part for me.”
Frasco’s entrepreneurial ability was meant for the music business from the time he was a teenager growing up in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley “stuck between rock ‘n’ roll and ‘Purple Haze,’” a fourth-generation Los Angeleno native poring over attorney Don Passman’s All You Need to Know About the Music Business and Guerilla Marketing. Starting his professional career by DJ’ing at his friends’ bar mitzvahs, Andy started booking and managing bands while still in high school, even going on the road as a tour manager. After stints working at Drive Thru, Capitol and Atlantic Records, Frasco taught himself to play piano, dropped out of college, then used the rest of his bar mitzvah savings to buy a van to tour on his own. He picked up a backing band at each stop in the tradition of Chuck Berry, emulating his own larger-than-life childhood blues heroes BB King, Dr. John and Buddy Guy.
Fifteen years later, Andy Frasco & The U.N. -- Ernie Chang (saxophone), Shawn Eckels (guitar, vocals), Andee "Beats" Avila (drums, vocals), and Floyd Kellogg (bass guitar) – have gone from a bar band to a festival, shed and theater attraction, regularly playing before sold-out crowds with a show that finds them segueing from a world-class soul review to a jam band to blues-busters, hip-hoppers and punk rockers (with covers of My Chemical Romance’s “Teenagers,” Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer/Life During Wartime,” Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” and Clash’s “Train in Vain” peppering the playlist), all in the same set. From switching instruments mid-song to Frasco stagediving into the crowd or kibitzing with them, an Andy Frasco & The U.N. show is a celebration of inclusivity and tolerance where “You do You” and “let us do us.”
“I came into this life wanting to write songs,” said Frasco. “It took 15 years, but I feel I’m starting to get credit for it. My cup is full. I’m really starting to see my dreams come true.”
2026 has arrived, have any reflections or band goals you'd like to share: 2026 comes with the same goals as 2025. Treat people around me with the same love and respect I like to have for myself. I wanna get to know myself a little better and love a little harder. While I do that, Work Hard, play hard baby. Lakers in 5.
Website: https://www.andyfrasco.com/
Get Social: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube
Animal Electricity
Band Lineup:
Chris Carrington (he/him): vocals, guitars, keys, harmonica, whistle, howls
Chip Schoneberg (he/him): guitars, keys
Brian Prendergast (he/him): drums, percussion
Aaron Hilst (he/him): bass, background vocals
Sara Hathaway (she/her): vocals
Megan Murray (she/her): vocals
Colorado Home: Denver metro area
Formed: 2015
Latest Release: “Ghostwrite Your Alibi”, September 26, 2025, self-released
Upcoming Shows:
Monday, January 26, 2026 - Local 303 Meetup at Skylark Lounge - Denver, CO
Thursday, March 19, 2026 - The Sound of Grand County - Winter Park, CO
About: “There’s an imposter/singing/in the choir in my head. And I was waiting/for you to notice/that I have not been my best. And I needed your kindness.” Full of bittersweet lyrics and twinkling guitars, “Ghostwrite Your Alibi”, the newest release from the Denver-based Animal Electricity, finds singer Chris Carrington and company exploring disillusionment, hopefulness, and the passage of time with grace and style.
But for Carrington, writing and singing his own songs was never a part of the plan. After moving to Denver in 2005, he responded to a “musicians wanted” Craigslist ad, and the seeds of Animal Electricity were planted. When the original singer left the band, Carrington happened to be the guy left standing closest to the mic. Though at first he sang, as he recalls, “so quiet that no one could hear me,” songs and confidence eventually followed. Over the next two decades, the band (with various lineups and under multiple names) cut its teeth in Denver’s club scene, opening for artists like Nathaniel Rateliff (before he was that Nathaniel Rateliff), David Wax Museum, Cataldo, and Sarah Jaffe. In 2014, Carrington wrote music for the Colorado PBS documentary “Neal Cassady: The Denver Years,” an opportunity which even led him to play for some of Cassady’s surviving relatives at what had been Cassady and Kerouac's favorite Denver bar. In 2015, Animal Electricity was cemented as the band’s name, and their first release “Unfit for Man or Beast” was released.
Recorded over the course of a year in Denver, Colorado, “Ghostwrite Your Alibi” is Animal Electricity’s fifth full-length album. The band tapped veteran engineer Jeff Kanan (Liz Phair, The Swayback) to record and mix the album at The Keep Recording in Denver.
2026 has arrived, have any reflections or band goals you'd like to share: We’re excited to get back into the studio in early 2026 to record all the new songs we’ve been working on. And hopefully we get to play a bunch more shows.
Website: https://www.animalelectricityband.com/
Get Social: Instagram, LinkedIn, Spotify, Bandcamp
Bitchflower
Band Lineup:
Brooke Van Buiten (She/Her): Vocals
Zack Hill (He/Him): Guitar
Steven Davis (He/Him): Guitar
Miles Mercer (He/Him): Drums/Percussion
Nick Perich (He/Him): Bass
Colorado Home: Fort Collins
Formed: 2023
Latest Release: Our 2nd and latest full length release "Aghast, Aroused, Appalled" was self-release on July 4th, 2025
Upcoming Shows: January 10 - Fox Theater, Boulder
About: Bitchflower creates a blend of punk, psych and rock to produce captivating performances that can be felt as much as they can be seen and heard. Based out of Fort Collins, they have been a band since 2023, bringing a dynamic and unpredictable energy to every performance.
2026 has arrived, have any reflections or band goals you'd like to share: Our goals for 2026 is to continue to grow our network of connections with other musicians, venues and bookers through the shows we play.
We would also love to connect with artist representatives, tour managers and record labels. We hope to expand the reach of our music and perform to new audiences through playing more festivals and get more touring under our belts in 2026.
Along with that we are going to continue writing new music throughout 2026 in preparation for a future release.
Website: Linktree
Get Social: Instagram, Facebook
Espiaille
Band Lineup:
Gwen (she/her) - vocals, violin
Victor (he/him) - vocals, drums, bass, guitar
And perhaps we’ve met before under a different alias…
Colorado Home: Denver
Formed: 2025
Latest Release: "BYTES," August 24, 202 (Self-Released) and "Pomegranate : ARILS," December 22, 2025, (Self-Released)
Upcoming Shows: February 14, 2026 at Lost Lake
About: Shrouded in secrecy, symphonic synth-pop duo Espiaille sits at the rendezvous point of an undercover drummer and an incognito violinist (those privy may recognize them as members of The Ephinjis and Flobots, respectively.) In whispers, dashes & dots, Espiaille sings pomegranate-red transmissions to the world from their underground headquarters. Raise a toast with Gwen and Victor to their curious cocktail of inky calligraphed lyrics, pointillistic pop synthesizers, and Aperol-tinged sunbeams of violin.
2026 has arrived, have any reflections or band goals you'd like to share: We are tremendously proud of the milestones we’ve achieved in the short year since Espiaille launched in January 2025. From performing with Quilter Labs at NAMM and independently engineering, mixing & mastering two full EPs, to touring across seven states and finishing out the year as a Top 11 Finalist in 93.3’s Hometown for the Holidays, this year has been a flood of boundless creativity and excitement.
Betwixt static and sound, watch for Espiaille’s transmissions in 2026. We’re weaving a kinetic tapestry of pixel and parchment to augment upcoming releases and shows…
Website: www.espiaille.com
Get Social: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook
Lulu Benning
Band Lineup: Lulu Benning (she/her) - vocals, guitar, piano
Colorado Home: Colorado Springs
Formed: 2025
Latest Release: “Different Kind of World” single, Dec 3 release, self released
About: Growing up in a house filled with music, 17 year old Lulu Benning is an atmospheric singer/songwriter blending honesty and vulnerability within her music.
Get Social: Instagram, TikTok
The Tammy Shine
Band Lineup: Tammy Ealom
Colorado Home: Denver
Formed: 2017
Latest Release: Ok Shine Ok, due Feb 20, 2026 on Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records
Upcoming Shows: Feb 21, 2026 - Hi Dive - Denver, CO
About: On February 20, 2026, Tammy Ealom, the snarling creative force behind Denver’s legendary Dressy Bessy, presents her debut solo album. The Tammy Shine, Ok Shine Ok, will be released via Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records (HHBTM). This release marks a pivotal moment: for the first time in her three-decade career, Ealom has taken complete command—writing, performing, producing, and engineering the record entirely on her own.
Ealom’s resilience was forged early. Born to young parents, her upbringing as a "military brat" landed her in Hawaii, where she learned to literally fight to survive the rough social climate of high school. This tenacity would later serve her well in the male-dominated music industry. Her sonic DNA is equally eclectic, rooted in her Mod father’s love for the British Invasion bands, her discovery of The McCoys, Michael Jackson, Prince, and later refined by her love of grunge in bands like Nirvana and Hole. Her future husband and musical partner, John Hill (The Apples in Stereo), also introduced her to more hard rock and the punk economy of The Ramones and Buzzcocks.
Tammy’s songwriting career jumpstarted in 1995 with a gift of a guitar and a 4-track recorder; weeks later, she had ten original songs recorded. After twenty-five years of crafting Dressy Bessy’s signature "clutter-punk," Ealom began to form a singular vision. Sparked by a liberating solo set at the 2017 Athens Popfest, Ok Shine Ok is the result of that freedom.
The album highlights Ealom’s evolution from frontwoman to technical architect. Stripping away the democratic process of a band, she displays her prowess as a studio engineer, blending bubblegum hooks with DIY grit without an outside producer or band to interpret her vision.
To support the release, The Tammy Shine will begin touring in February 2026 with bassist Mike King. Ok Shine Ok is a celebration, proving that after thirty years of making noise, Ealom might just be getting started.
(Recommended if you like: The Beths, Alvvays, The Breeders, Veruca Salt, The Pretenders)
Website: thetammyshine.com
Get Social: Facebook
