Indie Rock on the BackStage featuring: Kiss the Tiger; Bad, Bad Hats; and Cosmic Orphan

Tickets | Information

Advance Pricing: $30
Door Pricing: $35

Doors open at 6:30pm | Show starts at 7:00pm

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The Current is pleased to offer a ticket giveaway to this concert. Enter by noon (CDT) on Tuesday, March 26 for a chance to win a pair of passes to this concert. TWO (2) winners will receive two guest list spots to Kiss the Tiger on April 24.

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Kiss the Tiger

At a time when the world seems intent on pushing us further inward and further apart, Kiss the Tiger are here to rattle our bones and bust us out of our cocoons with some good old-fashioned rock and roll.

Fronted by the magnetic and disarming Meghan Kreidler, who draws on her background in theater to break the fourth wall between audience and band with her righteous fist pumps and high kicks, this is a band that doesn’t just play. They combust. And watching them set the stage ablaze, it’s hard not to feel that tension that’s been built up in all of us these past few years slowly release, too, like a collective exhale set to ratcheting guitars, buoyant bass lines and Kreidler’s perfectly pitched screams. Theirs is a clean-burning fire. Hell, you might even call it healing.

“We want to give the audience an experience that is visceral and jolts them awake—creating community in that moment,” Kreidler notes. “I think that’s a really nice gift you can give people: Just let go.”

Over the past few years Kiss the Tiger have set the Twin Cities ablaze, and there’s nary a club, block party, park amphitheater or backyard that they haven’t transformed with their commanding live shows. And their rigorous performance schedule has paid off: The band has never sounded tighter or more certain of its mission. Kreidler is backed on stage by her longtime partner and creative foil, Michael Anderson, on rhythm guitar, plus lead guitarist Bridger Fruth, bassist Paul DeLong, and drummer Jay DeHut.

Their sets are often accompanied by sing-alongs to regional hits like the hard-knocking “Motel Room,” their ode to pandemic loneliness, “I Miss You,” or their pleading anthem “Hold On to Love,” all of which have become instantly recognizable to locals thanks to regular airplay on the tastemaking public radio station 89.3 The Current. (“Hold On to Love,” specifically, spent a whopping nine weeks at No. 1 on The Current’s Chart Show and was inducted into the Chart Show Hall of Fame.)

Their latest album, Vicious Kid, is a tour de force through the band’s increasingly sophisticated songwriting, which is handled jointly by Kreidler and Anderson. There are plenty of moments where they embody the spirit of late ‘70s new wave punk, like in the ridiculously fun “Who Does Her Hair?” But they have started weaving in softer textures, too, like the crooning and feminist alt-country ballad “Grown Ass Woman” or the skeletal and simmering “Out of My Mind.” Unsurprisingly, Vicious Kid was named one of the Best Minnesota Albums of 2021 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune and highlighted as their longtime critic Chris Riemenschneider’s personal favorite that year.

In addition to exploring a wider variety of sounds and genres, Vicious Kid also features some of Kiss the Tiger’s most thought-provoking lyrics to date. In “Grown Ass Woman,” Kreidler pleads, and then demands, that she be allowed to cut her own path in this world—a message that dovetails seamlessly with Kiss the Tiger’s approach to making music. “The angel of death wants me to draw another breath/But angel won’t you leave me alone,” she sings and sighs. “Even near the end not a foe or a friend/Is gonna tell me what to do.”

In addition to headlining their own barn-burning shows, Kiss the Tiger have also been tapped to open for prominent acts like Lake Street Dive, The Suburbs, Ike Reilly, Jackie Venson, Black Joe Lewis, and Daughtry. They have also brought their act on the road to open for Philly’s Low Cut Connie, Austin’s Emily Wolfe, and fellow Minneapolis indie favorites Bad Bad Hats. Given how quickly they’ve won over the Twin Cities, Kiss the Tiger are poised to roar into more markets soon. Their transcendent, heart-forward rock and roll is right on time.

Bad,Bad Hats

The Minneapolis, Minnesota duo Bad Bad Hats are named after a little-known song from “Madeline,” a beloved children’s book series about a mischievous young girl and her yellow-clad classmates. Founded by singer/songwriter Kerry Alexander and guitarist Chris Hoge, the band traffics in similarly playful concepts and warm scenes of youth. Bad Bad Hats are celebrated for crispy, lived-in melodies, big choruses that stick for days, and an easy musicianship that carries across their eclectic, wide-ranging releases.

The band's lead singer Kerry Alexander grew up between Tampa, Florida and Birmingham, Alabama. As a child, she was a student of the glossy MTV pop that defined the early 2000s, as well as the David Bowie and Tom Petty CDs her parents would play while making dinner. Singer-songwriters like Alanis Morissette, Kim Deal, and later, Michelle Branch, were an early inspiration for Kerry: after discovering songwriting as a profession while watching American Idol, the young teenaged Kerry began filling binders with songs, planning to one day write hit records for stars.

As her confidence grew, Kerry began testing her performance chops at open mic nights, and eventually began sharing demos on Myspace, where she first connected with Chris Hoge, a savvy guitarist and classmate at the small liberal arts school Macalester College. The pair’s chemistry was undeniable, sharing common tastes in songwriting and sound, and they flourished creatively--and, soon, as a couple. They refined demos together and gigged around the Twin Cities, where they received consistently strong responses from friends who’d come to their shows. Soon, Kerry and Chris were assembling their first EP, It Hurts, and catching the ear of local indie labels. After fleshing out the line up with bassist Noah Boswell, Bad Bad Hats was officially born.

Psychic Reader, BBH’s debut LP, arrived in 2015. Led by the ebullient single “Midway,” the album highlighted the band’s cinematic sound, punchy rhythm sections, and Kerry’s heart-aching vocals. With Psychic Reader, the band expanded their audience beyond local Twin Cities venues, as their music spread organically via college radio and shared links. New fans seemed to discover the music daily, their growth coincided with a renaissance in young bedroom musicians via streaming through the 2010s. With their follow-up full-length albums Lightning Round (2018) and Walkman (2021), Bad Bad Hats expanded their sound and look, with hilariously DIY music videos that cast the band as ice hockey players, Elvis impersonators, secret agents, and more. In the years since their initial noodling around St. Paul, Bad Bad Hats have toured globally with peers like The Beths and Hippo Campus, and storied acts like The Front Bottoms and the aforementioned Michelle Branch, who picked them up for her 2022 headlining world tour. It was a full-circle moment for Kerry, one that she made clear on stage at each show.

Last January, Kerry, Chris, and longtime bandmate Con Davison cozied up under frigid winter in Chris and Kerry’s Twin Cities home, writing and recording their latest, self-titled LP. Each day for two weeks, Kerry would make sandwiches for lunch (tuna salad on Tuesdays), and the crew would get to work in the basement home studio, stacked to the brim with gear. The group recorded more quickly than usual, and even incorporated a few songwriting prompts sent in directly from their fans as jumping-off points. Where BBH are typically known for big song topics like love and heartache, Kerry took to smaller ideas this go round—included are songs inspired by parking tickets, scorching Tampa grocery store lots she remembered from her youth, and other autobiographical scenes woven into dancefloor-ready numbers.

Today, Bad Bad Hats are back to their founding duo, and their upcoming record is the band’s first time self-producing, with a freewheeling, pristine tone and several unexpectedly funky turns. The new album suggests a band still having deep fun creating and playing, inviting listeners new and old to live life to their heartfelt tunes. Bad Bad Hats will be available on April 12, 2024 via Don Giovanni Records.

Cosmic Orphan

COSMIC ORPHAN is the expansive, cinematic indie-rock vision of husband-wife duo Dan and Stacie Conway. Performing live as a formidable seven-piece band, they move from contemplative minimalism to lush, maximalist soundscapes. Their dynamic sound is influenced by such artists as The Decemberists, Death Cab for Cutie, Phantogram, and The Cure.