The Nora Kelly Band’s set at Sled Island was stunning. The band was funny, charming, and knew how to take themselves seriously when the music demanded it. They were playing at Pin Bar on 17th Ave in Calgary, a bar with—you guessed it—pinball machines, about eight of them in a small room to the right of the stage. Nora and I agreed to interview after her set, by which point I’d drunk two tall cans of PBR and had grown quite sweaty from all of my head-nodding and slight swaying.

Clay breaks down his Sled Island 2026 experience in the last of the “Debrief” articles we will be delivering.

Chris breaks down his Sled Island 2026 experience in Part 2 of 3 “Debrief” articles we will be delivering.

Jeff breaks down his Sled Island 2026 experience in Part 1 of 3 “Debrief” articles we will be delivering.

Our writers go through some acts they’re looking forward to seeing at Sled Island 2026.

The Cups N Cakes team does their round-up of the best releases of 2026 so far.

“January 23 was a busy evening. I’d agreed to interview both Motherhood and Ribbon Skirt for Edmonton’s Winterruption Festival, and both were scheduled an hour apart in different places. After finishing about 10 minutes late with Ribbon Skirt, I dashed out of the Red Star pub in downtown Edmonton and jogged nearly the whole way to the CKUA building. I begged someone to open the door for me, asked “WHERE ARE THEY?”, and then bolted into the elevator. When the doors opened, I saw them: as I pulled up a chair, I finally registered two other people in the room who immediately began giving me strange looks. About 10 seconds later, I realized I was interrupting an ongoing interview before I politely exited and sat in stone-cold silence in a leather chair outside the office.”

Check out Ned Kroczynski’s conversation with New Brunswick’s Motherhood, from the Winterruption YEG 2026 festival.

“When Tashiina and Billy sat down, they appeared weary, as though they had ridden in on horseback. They had just landed in Edmonton that afternoon, and only two nights before, opened for Shame at Montreal’s Club Soda. After letting them settle in, I made an unfunny joke about how I’m going to give them a rapid-fire round of questioning, they laughed politely, and we began.”

The Cups N Cakes Network’s Ned Kroczynski caught up with Ribbon Skirt before their performance at Winterruption YEG 2026.

The Cups N Cakes Network’s Steve Haley visited Vincent Cacchione of Caged Animals in his home studio on a chilly January day to talk. They dug into his journey from New York to Sackville, anti-folk, the 30 minute play that concludes Make Strange Friends and, of course, the new album itself.

Following Patche from album to album and stage to stage is like witnessing a continuous process of experimentation, mutation, and revelation. Right before their performance at M for Montreal, Cups N Cakes caught up with the minds behind the modular synthesizers, Eliott Durocher Bundock and Jean-Bruno Pinard.

Louise Jaunet sat down with Rose Cormier of the band MULCH at the 2025 edition of M for Montreal.

Pocket Sized is a tight project. Its songs fit together thematically, musically, and everything flows smoothly from one song to the next. The EP is nothing more than it needs to be, but that’s fine; in fact, it’s great.

Our infamous “Most Anticipated” article returns! In it you’ll find 13 premieres, 12 of which are exclusive to our site! So dive in and check out our 26 Most Anticipated Albums of 2026!

Well, today’s the day: the Cups N Cakes team reveals our picks for the best albums of 2025. Each volunteer was asked to pick their five favourite full-length albums of 2025, and write a few words about their picks. For those interested in the final tally, Edmonton’s Smokey nabbed three mentions with his long awaited LP Bleak Heritage, alongside Motherhood’s Thunder Perfect Mind, while Emma Goldman, Penny & the Pits, Ribbon Skirt, and Night Committee all picked up two nods.

Today we reveal our team’s favourite tracks of 2025! We asked each of our writers to pick their top five songs of the year, and write a quick sentence about each. The answers we got were diverse, from country to electro-pop and back again.

Live shows are the heartbeat of the Canadian music scene, and over here at Cups N Cakes, we’re always a little bit sad that we don’t get to do as much coverage of live events as we’d like to. We’ve decided to change that: for the first time, we’re including a “Best Live Show” category in our year-end coverage. We asked our volunteers to pick their top 1-3 live shows of the year, and tell us what made it great.

Our Best of 2025 coverage continues today with a look at our favourite EPs released this year. The team ended up picking 24 different EPs from coast to coast that feature a wide-range sounds and styles. Check em out!

We start our year-end coverage off with a bang, and the best album covers of 2025 as picked by the Cups N Cakes volunteer team.

I danced with the shrimp mascot, did karaoke by the beach, bought oversize glasses at the local antique shop, there was skinny dipping (not me, next time though), drive-In movies, a mineral rich spa and pool, lake floating, and so much more!

Ernest Hemmingway once titled a memoir A Moveable Feast, a description which depicts the vignettes of the parisian lives of young artists from the lost generation moving through a delectable buffet of artistic delicacies and formative struggles. For me, a gentle late-millenial/gen z cusp, it is a description for how I embedded myself into the rush of excitement and the garden of artistic delights that the 2025 Sled Island had to offer.