Stuck at home in the early years of the pandemic, New Haven’s budding musicians turned boredom into bangers, making their virtual mark on an uncertain future. They became their own producers, recording and releasing music before ever performing the songs live.
I could have predicted the switch to digital. What I didn’t expect was the impact on live music in the years to come. The isolation of the bedroom studio didn’t turn musicians shy; instead, their existing body of work propelled them to greater, more playful heights. In 2025, a new generation of artists unafraid to hit “record” brought their homebrewed skills to New Haven’s public stages.
Take Galianna Erazo-Hernández. I was lucky enough to catch her debut performance at Spruce Coffee back in May. By October she was already in the backyard concert mix.
She seemed experienced for a debut artist, and that’s because she was. She spent her pre-breakout years training diligently, taking recording classes at the University of New Haven and working as an artist development specialist at Norwalk recording studio Factory Underground.
By the time of her first public performance, Erazo-Hernández was able to take her pick from a comprehensive vault of original songs.
Recording music used to be a secondary process, one perfect version to live on forever after a period of experimentation in front of live crowds. When Covid-19 hit New Haven in early 2020, that in-person feedback became impossible.
For emerging musicians, playing around with music became something they could do at home—that they had to do at home, actually. Bands who already jammed pre-pandemic turned to digital sessions, and up-and-coming frontmen supplied their own full bands, lining up layers of electronic instruments on their computers.
R&B singer Justin Esmer had Covid when he wrote one of his most iconic songs, “Deathbed.” When it came time to pair the song with instrumentalists for live shows in 2022, he brought to the stage a blonde guitarist I would later see under her own name as a solo project in 2025.
Faced with a world pandemic, New Haven punk band T!lt switched up their style. “We didn’t have a lot of live things to do, so we started doing electronic-style things,” vocalist Mike Scialla told the Independent’s Brian Slattery.
For artists trying to avoid infection, “electronic” sometimes meant genre, sometimes format, and often both. They mixed and mastered at home, racking up impressive discographies before ever playing their tracks live. Some bands celebrated releases with livestreamed performances audiences could enjoy from a safe distance.
The Indy’s Karen Ponzio wrote about one such virtual experience in 2021, where local band Pond Viewplayed a new single as well as selections from a 2020 album and 2021 EP. She made a future wish, for “a show where she can dance along and get sweaty herself with a few socially distanced friends.” The band made fun of their unconventional circumstances, thanking Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg for hosting the show.
Once recordings became the playground, all forms of digital creation were fair game. T!lt started making mockumentary-style videos and charmingly awkward release announcements on YouTube. Pond View took chances with their music video style, visualizing their 2021 release “What Can I Say” as a surrealist tripfeaturing a lip-syncing puppet and cinematic moving car shots.
Multi-genre musician SB Khi released track after track on Soundcloud, a practice that honed his craft at the production level. When I talked to him on the phone in March to discuss his latest single, he walked me through the mechanics of a key clink sample from a 1992 Zelda game.
As digital endeavors like recording became sites of irreverent fun, artists planted the seeds for a crop of polished live performances in the years to come. It would take a few years for musicians to sharpen their sound at home, and another few years to get their bearings as public venues started opening up. 2025’s soundscape reaped the rewards.
After the announcement of a vaccine and lower rates of illness, live shows started popping up once again. The excitement was real. In December 2021, Slattery called The Problem with Kids Today “one of New Haven’s most beloved new bands to emerge from the pandemic.” They had released their first single earlier that year, recording it with Sam Carlson of Sans Serif studio in downtown New Haven.
I met The Problem with Kids Today’s drummer Reena Yu at Three Sheets in May, while she was playing for her other band VVEBS. She was beyond cool, activating the room with punk rock rhythms before outlining the specific differences between her two bands’ styles to me—punk versus post-punk, power pop versus psychedelic.
By the time Slattery caught up with T!lt for his review of their 2024 album Death Do Us Part, the band had returned to guitar, bass, and drums. It turned out electronic instruments, while convenient at home, were a hassle to take on stage.
Their latest album Terra, which dropped in May, evidences the best of both worlds. Classic rock instruments meet tight production quality and a confident, dance-y new sound. “It’s a sharp record,” Scialla told me when I visited the band’s recording studio in June.
I had seen Pond View at Hamden’s Space Ballroom the day before, though they weren’t on the bill. They were providing instrumental support to local singer (and Esmer’s sometimes-guitarist) Brooke Dougan on guitar, drums, and bass, a role previously filled by T!lt.
The band enveloped the room in glorious rock sound, providing the perfect backdrop for Dougan’s starpower. Unbeknownst to me, when an interviewer asked Dougan about future goals back in 2020, her response was: “Short term? To get an EP out. I’m in the process of pre-recording right now.”
The tangled web of bands and musicians points to a technology more ancient than recording software or MIDI instruments: the power of friendship.
That’s another reason why New Haven’s music scene struck such a chord in 2025. Over the last few years, bands didn’t keep their recording equipment or production chops to themselves; every new skill was a community affair.
“Mike from T!LT helped produce the ‘Achilles Heel‘ track,” Esmer told music blog Your Favorite Groupies in 2024. “He and Luca teamed up to record the whole thing live.”
When Esmer released his single “Heather” in May (a great month for local music), the production was experimental and layered, right from the metallic sound effect kicking off the first few seconds of the track.
Performing artist and mental health therapist Shanell Alyssa has songs dating back nine years, but her releases on YouTube hit a steady pace in early 2020. A few years later, she teamed up with other stars of the Connecticut music scene to form a new band that rehearsed for a full year before their first official performance in late May.
Their debut was so shockingly excellent one audience member dubbed it the “best first gig ever.” People asked around for the six-piece funk outfit’s name, one they would not soon forget: Up on the Downbeat. In the months since, the band has become a regular fixture at Dwight neighborhood sports bar The Cannon.
As we enter a new year full of wonders to come, remember 2025 as the year Galianna and Up on the Downbeat came on the scene. The year T!lt released Terra, Esmer released “Heather,” and bands across New Haven borrowed each other’s talents for the greater listening good. There is always more than meets the ear; thank you punk rockers and readers alike for making me always look forward to the next show.
