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News

Ride The First Wave To Sled Island!

Community News by Jared McKetiak on February 6, 2023

The first wave of Sled Island 2023 artists is here! 

Join­ing Sled Island’s pre­vi­ous­ly announced 2023 guest cura­tor, Bar­tees Strange, are garage rock chameleons Osees, Chica­go-based indie rock three-piece DEHD, Latin folk inno­va­tor Hela­do Negro (select­ed by Bar­tees Strange), Toronto’s viral hip-hop sen­sa­tion Akin­toye, goth­ic folk artist Emma Ruth Run­dle (play­ing a solo piano set at Cen­tral Unit­ed Church), Philadel­phia-based punk rock rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies Man­nequin Pussy, alter­na­tive R&B/hip-hop artist Amin­di, Toron­to-based rap­per and 2019 Polaris Music Prize win­ner Havi­ah Mighty, and indie pop musi­cian SPEL­LLING.

Also includ­ed in the first wave line­up is post-met­al super­group SUMAC, pro­gres­sive black met­al out­fit Litur­gy, exper­i­men­tal elec­tro-pop duo Water From Your Eyes, bossa nova-infused psych-folk artist Ses­sa (for­mer­ly of Yonatan Gat), Brook­lyn-based garage rock trio THICK, Mon­tréal elec­tron­ic punk duo Pela­da, ambi­ent met­al trio BIG|BRAVE, genre-bend­ing death met­al three-piece Suf­fer­ing Hour, and self-pro­claimed ​“pow wow punk rock­ers” 1876.

Each year, Sled Island’s guest cura­tor helps to shape the fes­ti­val’s pro­gram­ming. Bar­tees Strange’s pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned selec­tion, Hela­do Negro, is round­ed out by an incred­i­ble col­lec­tion of tal­ent, includ­ing grunge-meets-indie group Pom Pom Squad, soul­ful singer-song­writer KAINA, Japan­ese jazz rap artist and sax­o­phon­ist Sen Mori­mo­to, math rock-inspired emo out­fit Gulfer, acclaimed avant-garde rap­per Maas­sai, and more still to be announced. 

Sled Island’s com­plete 2023 line­up will be announced in the com­ing months, includ­ing addi­tion­al head­lin­ers, over 150 more bands, as well as com­e­dy, film, visu­al art, spe­cial events and con­fer­ence pro­gram­ming. For now, start check­ing out these new­ly announced artists through our web play­er, or vis­it our Sled Island 2023 Spo­ti­fy playlist!

Sled Island pass­es are cur­rent­ly on sale at SledIs​land​.com, and Lukes Drug Mart (112 4th St. NE). Today is the final day to save 20% on select Sled Island pass­es. Reg­u­lar prices go into effect tomor­row, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2023 at 12:00am MST.

For those who can’t attend the whole fes­ti­val, a lim­it­ed num­ber of sin­gle show tick­ets to select Sled Island 2023 shows will go on sale this Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 at noon MST.

Keep eyes peeled and your ears open — UMFM will once again be pro­vid­ing a whole bunch of Sled relat­ed con­tent — includ­ing pro­gram­mer picks and even some spe­cial live ses­sions with some of the great Win­nipeg bands head­ing West! Plus, as always, we’ll be doing a tick­et giveaway!!