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Baking pies with Horse Bitch, Duolingo and a surplus of raspberries

By John Moore July 22, 2025 | updated 7 days ago

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Horse Bitch gets happy

Good-time Denver band Horse Bitch opens for Nether Hour on Aug. 29 at the Fox Theater in Boulder.

JORDAN ALTERGOTT

EDITOR’S NOTE: This weekend, organizers say, brings the 25th and final Underground Music Showcase “in its current form.” To mark the occasion, Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore – who started The UMS in 2001 – is bringing back the poll that started it all.

In 2001, Moore surveyed local music experts about the underground bands and artists they felt were most worthy of more mainstream recognition. The results became the basis for an annual live showcase of local bands that grew into The UMS, which this weekend will feature 200 bands across 12 indoor venues and four outdoor stages along a 1-mile stretch of Broadway in the Baker neighborhood.

Moore stopped conducting the annual poll in 2010. But with the festival now coming to a probable end, here’s one final introduction to 10 local bands and artists our panel of industry insiders recommend you check out. In all, nearly 100 bands received votes. All this week we are counting down the top 10.

5. HORSE BITCH

John Moore Column sig

John Moore Column sig

Every day is St. Patrick’s Day with Horse Bitch. Only most any other band with a Celtic kick doesn’t have songs about DIA, the Taco Bell drive-through, Harry Styles or boinking Ginny from “Harry Potter.” 

Horse Bitch is fun, fierce and frenetic. They’re just not Irish (though, they clearly wish they were). If you have ever heard the Avett Brothers sing “Talk on Indolence,” you have a head start on the HB’s infectious new breakout song “Mountain Climbing.” We’re talking high-energy, witty, stream-of-consciousness lyrics sung at the speed of Stipe.

Horse Bitch is simply one of the most entertaining bands out there right now. Sort of like if Barenaked Ladies hooked up with Of Montreal and (a funny) Conor Oberst, and they all started their day with a little powdered speed on top of their cereal. (If that sounds trippy, it’s supposed to.)   

And they are making their mark. Horse Bitch just came in at No. 5 in The Denver Gazette’s survey of local music experts to determine the 10 underground bands most deserving of more mainstream recognition.    

Midtopia, a Wichita nonprofit that provides services to independednt musicians, praises Horse Bitch for its crazy stage antics, fun gang vocals and glib lyrics. “If you don’t find yourself humming these violin melodies,” it says, “there honestly might be something wrong with you.” 

Like all good bands, Horse Bitch grew out of an ice-cream shop its five members all worked at, and a desire to write about space. In fact, the band guarantees you that if a Horse Bitch concert does not bring you joy, they will buy you an ice cream cone from their shop. They just won’t tell you what shop that is. Only that it is on Lincoln. That’s how underground they are. 

The 5-year-old Denver collective draws from traditional country and honky-tonk music, but still considers itself an emo band – just with steel pedal and a fiddle in the mix. 

“No one moshes to pedal steel unless it is at a Horse Bitch show,” the band wrote for a hilarious self-pushed piece in Voyage Denver. “And this is the truth.”

Horse Bitch Band photo van

Horse Bitch just came in at No. 5 in The Denver Gazette's survey of local music experts to determine the 10 underground bands most deserving of more mainstream recognition.

PATRICK HEATH

Horse Bitch Band photo van

Horse Bitch just came in at No. 5 in The Denver Gazette’s survey of local music experts to determine the 10 underground bands most deserving of more mainstream recognition.    



PATRICK HEATH


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Featured Local Savings

• Web site: instagram.com/horsebitch

• Year started: 2020

• Members: Ashley McKinney (tambourine/vocals), Alec Doniger (drums/vocals), Adam Cabrera (bass/vocals), Caleb Amelunke (pedal steel), Dave Knodle (guitar/vocals), Riley Merino( guitar/vocals); Oliva Shaw (fiddle/vocals)

• What makes you local: We all used to work at the ice-cream shop on Lincoln.

• Seminal single: “Mountain Climbing“

• Describe your music: “It’s kind of an amalgam of a bunch of stuff. There’s a lot of Celtic and honky-tonk influence, but a lot of it is centered in a sort of emo or punk spirit.”

• Musical influences: Bruce Springsteen, The Moldy Peaches, Willi Carlisle, ABBA, Black Country New Road, The Mountain Goats, The Dead Milkmen, Gary Stewart

MIDTOPIA

• Watch it! Live from Midtopia

• One favorite Colorado band: Big Head Todd and the Monsters

• When did you know your band was for real? We started to get paid enough to where we could afford bigger stunts.

• Catch us live: Opening for Nether Hour on Aug. 29 at the Fox Theater in Boulder

• Next music drop: Sometime in the fall.

Our live shows are like “… baking a pie with the person who matters most to you in this world, even though neither of you bake very often and you only did it because you have a surplus of fresh raspberries that keep growing in your backyard (and you certainly didn’t plant them there, you’re just renting this place until you can save up enough money to move to Vienna, which you know deep down is not something that’s going to happen, but you still downloaded Duolingo and practice German on it every day because this is the only thing keeping you going at this point in time), but despite the raspberry overflow situation and the weight of all the things you’ll never do, you still totally blew it in terms of making the lattice pie crust look nice.

John Moore is The Denver Gazette’s senior arts journalist. Email him at john.moore@gazette.com

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Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save EDITOR’S NOTE: This weekend, organizers say, brings the 25th and final Underground Music Showcase “in its current form.” To mark the occasion, Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore – who started The UMS in 2001 – is bringing back the poll that started it all. […]