With performances at up to 100 venues in and around the city of Boise, Treefort Music Festival is a smorgasbord of unique and creative artists coming together in the name of “weird” music.
A communal atmosphere floods the streets, parks and numerous forts as both established and up-and-coming musicians shine.
KHOL will send a small team to cover the event and soak up all of its sounds and spirit. You can discover new music from some of the artists we are excited about at this year’s festival in KHOL’s new “Treefort 2025” Spotify playlist.
Below, you’ll find the entire playlist, along with my thoughts on a few standouts.
Happy listening!
Follow us on Spotify to keep up with our recent favorites.
Listen to KHOL’s Treefort 2025 playlist on the embedded Spotify player above.
Deep Sea Diver – Billboard Heart
Deep Sea Diver’s “Billboard Heart” is the indie darling’s fourth album and first on the mighty Sub Pop record label, which Pitchfork says has brought “the Seattle band’s propulsive, riff-laden indie rock to a new level of yearning intensity.”
Birthed out of resilience during a period of overwhelming self-doubt, “Billboard Heart” shimmers and shines with grit and gusto as frontwoman Jessica Dobson leads the charge on a collection of songs inspired by Tom Petty and Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” that belong on the same shelf as musical peers St. Vincent and TV on the Radio.
The title track, “Billboard Heart,” seduces you initially with its warm synths before howling through a swirling cacophony of guitars driving steadily around Dobson’s rapturous vocals. It stands as a superb introduction to the band’s latest sound, brimming with confidence.
Hailing from Caldicot, South Wales, The Bug Club delivers fast-paced punk with catchy riffs, vocal interplay and wit. Since they began in 2016, they’ve become known for their prolific output, including several singles, EPs, and full albums, not to mention playing 200+ gigs a year. Their third album, “On The Intricate Inner Workings of the System,” released in 2024, features a hyperactive collage of garage rock, punk and classic rock. The songs are dynamic, humorous and irresistible, captivating the listener into needing to know what they will play, say and/or do next.
On the lead single “Quality Pints,” Tilly Harris (bass, vocals) and Sam Willmett (vocals, guitar) throw in their two cents on what makes a touring band tick: quality, quantity and a whole lot of repetition. The song and the entire album successfully capture what a live Bug Club show is all about, with a heavy dose of infectious melodies, tight rhythms and intentionally lo-fi production that infuses it with an incredibly authentic and raw energy.
Adrian Younge – A Música Na Minha Fantasia
Adrian Younge is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist and Emmy Award-winning composer based in Los Angeles who has an undying passion for warm, vintage, analog sound. Seamlessly blending the worlds of soul, funk, and cinematic jazz, Younge composes, orchestrates, and conducts but also captures the essence of his projects through photography and film. He runs a recording studio called Linear Labs and co-operates a successful record label named Jazz Is Dead with Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest. With Jazz Is Dead, the two dive into the essence of collaboration, having produced albums with legends like Roy Ayers, Lonnie Liston Smith, Tony Allen, and Brazilian icons such as João Donato, Marcos Valle, and Azymuth.
His new album, “Something About April III,” completes a trilogy of albums he started making in 2011. It’s fueled by his work with the legendary Brazilian musicians on the Jazz Is Dead series, his synchronicty with Brazil’s vinyl-digging culture and his deep respect for its musical legacy.
“’Something About April III’ is the album I wanted to make when I created the first album in 2011. However, I didn’t have the musical know-how and experience to create the sound that was buried deep in my soul…I hadn’t even been to Brazil!,” he said.
With a strong desire to immerse himself completely in Brazilian culture, Younge spent the past few years visiting the country frequently and studying Portuguese to the point where he felt comfortable penning the album’s lyrics about a young Brazilian couple struggling to preserve their love against all odds. Lush arrangements, fuzzed-out drum breaks, upright bass, analog synthesizers, and timeless vocals recorded to tape in São Paulo help create a sonic landscape on “Something About April III” that’s both vintage and modern at the same time.
The album opener, “A Música Na Minha Fantasia,” is one of the first songs Younge created for the LP, as he intended to start the album strong with a clear tone. Creatively describing the couples’ relationship as “two records spinning at varying RPMs in a place they don’t belong,” the lyrics are sung beautifully in Portuguese and deliver the desired effect of authenticity full of psychedelic soul.
“City of Angels” natives Zac Sokolow (guitar), Jake Faulkner (bass), and Nicholas Baker (drums/percussion) formed the Los Angeles League of Musicians (LA LOM) in 2019 when the band was assembled to play in the lobby of the historic Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. From those humble beginnings of providing background music for hotel guests, the band began experimenting with various genres that reflected the diverse musical diaspora of Angelenos. LA LOM takes listeners on a journey through Colombian cumbia, Mexican bolero, Californian country, Peruvian Chicha and retro-American soul.
With a style channeling classic California sounds of the ‘50s and ‘60s, it’s hard not to reminisce about and soak in that midcentury vibe. Romantically alluring and cinematic, LA LOM’s music compliments the feeling of pining over lost love or excitedly anticipating the embrace of a new partner.
On their debut album, “The Los Angeles League Of Musicians,” the trio delivers 13 nostalgic nuggets perfect for getting you in a good and mellow mood. Stand out “Danza de LA LOM” features guitar licks, propulsive rhythm and bouncy bass lines. It will have you up and moving in no time, ready to cut a rug on a laid-back dance floor.
Brisbane, Australia’s Confidence Man is an electro-pop quartet that has created a one-of-a-kind universe best experienced during one of their energetic live performances, said to be “somewhere between a school play and a rave.” Led by Janet Planet (Grace Stephenson) and Sugar Bones (Aiden Moore) on vocal duties with Same Hales and Lewis Stephenson on production, Confidence Man formed in 2016 when the four musicians from various indie bands had too much fun making sugar-coated dance pop together to ignore the possibilities.
Their third studio album, “3AM (LA LA LA),” harkens back to the ‘90s club scene with exhilarating positive energy featuring elements reminiscent of KLF, Deee-Lite, Underworld and Saint Etienne. Pumping beats coupled with Planet and Bones’ back-and-forth vocal deliveries make the album a non-stop joyride that will have you sweating through your clothes before you can catch your breath. Assigning themselves to the ethos that to make party music, you must be partying, the group preferred to work on the album’s tracks in the wee hours of the night (3 a.m. was the sweet spot).
On the synth-heavy party starter, “SO WHAT,” frontwoman Janet Planet delivers a dazzling vocal performance over top of some incredibly dynamic and high-octane production with various breakdowns and dopamine hits throughout.
“It’s hard. It’s fast. It’s basically Muhammad Ali and your ears are everyone he ever boxed. They say it gets lonely at the top, so we made this banger to share the view,” the band said in a press release.
With a seemingly even more energetic remix version of the album, appropriately titled “4AM (LA LA LA),” staying up late on Saturday night to catch them whip the Treefort crowd into a frenzy with choreography, props, acrobatics and lasers will be well worth the effort.
