"You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times."
— Nina Simone
"This track is for real about fuck the cops. Fuck the cops in Lakewood fucking harassing people."
A horn blared outside as a flash of siren lights flooded through the windows of South Bend Commons, a DIY venue and community space tucked away in the Lakewood neighborhood of South Atlanta. We were not far from Cop City, the $109 million police militarization training facility that opened in April 2025. Nearly 200 people were gathered to watch and celebrate local indie rockers Sword II, who'd just put out their sophomore album, Electric Hour (via section1, Nov. 2025). It was a frigid mid-December night, but the room was hot. The music was shimmering with a bit of haywire, holding the space between bliss and chaos, as the room rocked in its incandescence. A fire truck pulled up outside. I glanced out the window, tense for a moment, wondering if the show would be shut down for fire code violations; it wouldn't be the first time the venue would be caught in the crosshairs of state repression and surveillance.
I stood on top of a questionably sturdy 1970s-style diner chair with a metallic frame and glossy cosmic blue seat liner, holding onto a wall ledge, overlooking a sea of heads bobbing in the glare of a red light cast over them. Each new person who joined the spectacle was seamlessly absorbed into the crowd, like the ocean tide absorbing debris on its shore.
Someone popped their head through the front door as people asked what was going on. Vocalist and guitarist Certain Zuko asked what the firemen wanted.
"They want to know who's playing," said the show-goer relaying the news from outside. (Turns out they wanted to flirt with some show-goers outside, according to another attendee.)
"Oh, tell them it's Sword II," Zuko responded.
The crowd's cheers became a celebratory uproar as the band continued into its next song, "Sentry," a song that channels feelings of paranoia, "blurring the line between state surveillance and obsessive love," according to the band. Just one week after getting their record deal, four of the band's friends were raided by the FBI in connection with the Stop Cop City movement. That atmosphere of tension and paranoia, they say, found its way into the songs.
As the firetruck pulled away, vocalist and bassist Mari González sang to the crowd:
"There's a light at the window
But all the curtains are drawn
I really think I can hear you
In the sirens after dark
There's a fear that's growing inside me
I get up to see if you're there
Heart racing out of this home
I know that I'm not alone
I know that I'm not alone"
A perfect song to follow what turned out to be an innocuous brush with the state, but nonetheless triggered by something deeper: the shared understanding that if you live in Atlanta—one of the most surveilled cities in the world—you're never really alone. You are, indeed, always being watched. And in the words of the Atlanta-based punk trio, SMALL, in their 2025 single "Surveillance!": If they're always watching, welcome to the show.
ATL's DIY Scene Defends the Weelaunee Forest
It's been three years since Atlanta police raided the South River Music Fest in Weelaunee Forest, held just over a mile away from the then-construction site for Cop City. Under the light of a waxing gibbous moon, the Atlanta Police Department and Georgia State Patrol's raid caused total chaos: Helicopters droned overhead, invoking feelings of terror among attendees and performers, as police went so far as to point their weapons inside a children's bouncy house. That night, dozens were detained, and 23 people were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism; charges that, to this day, remain untried and not convicted. The festival's lineup was stacked with over 30 bands and artists, including Sword II and Atlanta hardcore outfit Playytime, which formed in 2018.
"South River Music Fest was a huge catalyst for so many things," Playytime guitarist Menene told Scalawag. "Everything after the festival was a marker for a lot of things. Everyone was doing a lot for the first time, and it was all happening quicker than any of us could process … it was hard to separate what was happening above us and what was happening on our level to each other. Things we couldn't protect each other from, specifically that night."
For some artists, expressing themselves politically through their music feels like an awkward song and dance; something that doesn't come naturally. For many musicians in the Atlanta DIY scene, though, it's inherent. Many artists are politicized through the color of their skin, their gender, their sexuality, their political ideologies. Atlanta artists have endured a barrage of political traumas since 2020—ones that some locals feel foreshadowed the horrific atrocities we are seeing repeated now.
While the world grappled with the vicious police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, and the global uprisings spurred in its wake, enraged Atlantans mourned and protested APD's killing of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks in Southwest Atlanta that June. The Rayshard Brooks uprisings and occupation were immediately demonized by legacy media, replaying images of the burning Wendy's where Brooks was killed alongside headlines centering "chaos" stoked by protesters over coverage that challenged state narratives and the police.
In 2021, the people of Atlanta were confronted with the city and the Atlanta Police Foundation's plans to build Cop City. The series of traumatic and oppressive events that followed includes the police killing of Tortuguita in a public park in January 2023, domestic terrorism charges imposed on protesters, the anti-democratic process by which the Cop City deal was passed, the sweeping RICO indictment of 61 individuals for constitutionally-protected protest and political beliefs, and the police raid of the South River Music Festival in March 2023. The Atlanta music community felt the weight of every single one of these events just as it had already been feeling the brunt of the precipitating factors that made Cop City possible.
In a city run by corporate elites and corrupt politicians who use their power to secure sustained investment in police, mass surveillance systems, and gentrification, Atlanta musicians have become accustomed to organizing shows and creating music in a landscape where many of the indie DIY spaces they rely on have shuttered. People have opened up their homes and small businesses to host shows in lieu of traditional venue spaces in the afterlife of Mammal Gallery, The Bakery, Inner Space, Murmur Gallery, Wonderroot, and others' closures. Musicians share all of their resources, including each other, with the complex web of who's-who of Atlanta bands, linked by social threads reminiscent of Alice's infamous L Word chart. Artists play in each other's bands, share practice spaces, and even live together. While this is in response to scarcity and inequality (Atlanta has the biggest racial wealth inequality gap in the U.S., making it difficult for people to find time to play in bands, let alone afford living or expensive rehearsal spaces), it translates into a mass of creative abundance. This care web at the center of the community accommodates the artists who must work around full-time work schedules, financial struggles, and periodic political upheaval.
Playytime and Sword II Sound Off on Solidarity
Playytime began when members Obi, Travis (also in Sword II), Micky, Menene, and Ross decided to form a no-white-people band.
When asked about the origins of the band's name, vocalist Obi reflected, "We said it has to be called something sweet. Playytime came around because my vision for the band was that I wanted to represent fun."
Rather than cloaking themselves in the racialized assumptions expected of them—especially in the era of the George Floyd uprisings wherein journalists would flock to them to essentially ask, "What is it like being Black?" only to quickly disappear—the band has always pushed back against the politicization of their bodies through fun, camaraderie, and making good music together, without carrying the world on their shoulders.
"So much has happened since we've become a band, and we've grown up through it," said Menene, who joined the band in 2019 after playing in another band with Travis and Ross, the now-disbanded TNT. "The band started during such a pivotal time in America. When looking at it through a political timeline, we assert ourselves just as humans first who love making music. Us saying, 'We're more than a Black band' is more a response to the feeling of being pigeonholed into being something political, when we're inherently political because our existence is political."
Playytime, like many others in the Atlanta scene, did begin to find ways to incorporate music into more organized resistance through spreading the message about Cop City while on tour—a task that was vital in the context of the corporatized media landscape that was complicit in the facility's construction (Atlanta's legacy paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is owned by Cox Enterprises. Cox Enterprises CEO Alex Taylor served as the fundraiser for Cop City in 2021).
Sword II also continues to carry the message about the Stop Cop City movement and all its related repression, along with demanding a Free Palestine, an end to ICE, and all other horrors associated with racial capitalism. It was thanks to Sword II, that many Pitchfork readers were possibly exposed to the #StopCopCity for the first time. Their profile, along with other write-ups that reference the band's press kit, which plainly connects the dots between the band's latest album and the Cop City struggle, serves as political education aimed at radicalizing the masses.
"It became something we made a point to talk about whenever we could, especially when we'd play out of town," explained Obi, while reflecting on how the band carried the Cop City story with them, especially before Tortuguita's murder pushed the movement into national and global discourse. "It was really important for me to say something about Cop City, because it seemed people outside our scene didn't understand the gravity of it. The fact that it wasn't on national news or anything like that, it felt like it was a battle the people in Atlanta alone had to fight."
Sword II, Playytime, and MUELAS: An ALT-ATL Sound
Ross compares the living room rehearsal space shared between members of Sword II and Playytime to The Dungeon, an East Point basement recording studio courtesy of Organized Noize's super producer Rico Wade and his mom. The Dungeon, famous for incubating Atlanta's legendary collective, The Dungeon Family's greatest hits. Atlanta music nerds hold that Organized Noize's producing Outkast's Southernplayalisticadalliacmuzik, Goodie Mob's Soul Food, and hits from TLC's CrazySexyCool in The Dungeon is why those projects sound like Atlanta. The DIY nature of Atlanta's music culture shows that where one recording studio door closes, a dingy home studio basement door opens.
Sword II's Electric Hour, was recorded in the band members' home, which is described as a "crumbling rental house on a farm in the city." Members say the house had shoddy electrical wiring, sometimes shocking them, which led to their incorporating more acoustic instrumentation than they'd ever used before on the project. This shift from the physical danger of technology to more analog devices mirrors the way many in the Atlanta community have increasingly moved offline as the techno-fascist surveillance state continues to shock us.
Another band that formed during the 2018 Atlanta DIY era is the indelible punk band Upchuck, now signed to Domino Records. Their latest record, I'm Nice Now, is a story of ever-evolving rage—one that vocalist KT said is inherent and unavoidable as a person of color.
"Being a POC, by default, you're gonna have that rage," said KT in the band's press materials for the album. "You're gonna have that desire for change, and that desire for fuckery to end."
I'm Nice Now, Upchuck's third album, offers listeners a new iteration of the band's sound, now fused with cumbia and Spanish lyrics, displaying full-on rage alongside notes of optimism. Their first album, Sense Yourself (2022), quickly earned Upchuck a cult following in their hometown, as well as recognition from critically acclaimed musician and producer Ty Segall. Segall produced both the band's sophomore album, Bite the Hand That Feeds (2023), and their latest while helping them land opening spots for the acclaimed Atlanta native Faye Webster and Amyl and the Sniffers.
Upchuck continues to tour, having gone as far as Australia and New Zealand this year, carrying the burning flame of Atlanta's scene, struggle, and resounding resistance bright for the world to see. That flame is only likely to grow, with the band's label support paired with stamps of "approval" from punk legends like Iggy Pop and Henry Rollins, who both have played Upchuck tracks on their respective radio shows. When Hayley Williams' current tour stopped through Atlanta, KT was brought on stage on the second night to sing "Parachute" to close out the show.
Nowhere Safe, formed in 2017, has morphed into the new and quickly rising heavy metal-meets-punk-meets-classical influenced project, MUELAS. While MUELAS is technically a new band, its DNA is from Nowhere Safe, which ended in January 2025, situating them in the earlier DIY era as well. MUELAS' first show was on June 15, the day after a protest where band members were tear-gassed. The band released its single "MELT" in October, which has quickly become a "fuck ICE" protest anthem in and outside of the city. Another track, "FYJJ," is about an eight-month-long battle Reyes spearheaded with other community members against developers in Marietta that community organizers won—a much-needed success story, especially for those licking their wounds after the traumas of state repression against Stop Cop City, but it wasn't covered in the news.
The reception of MUELAS since their start has been unique, punctuated with accelerated, rapid-fire ascension already culminating in a burgeoning cult following. Since their first show last June, MUELAS has played nearly a dozen shows, has signed to indie label Second Engine Records, and has been featured in two live in-studio sessions, including Atlanta radio station WREK and the newly launched Standard Selects series which included a full-length film feature premiere (Standard Selects is co-produced by Atlanta-based recording studio Standard Electric Recorders Co. and Mainline, the independent outlet and production company I founded in 2019 and still run).
Serving as the climax of the movie, MUELAS' performance in the film particularly illustrates that MUELAS is making the music that people need in order to build power right now; not just in Atlanta, but beyond. Their shows have become a third space of their own; a modest contribution in an abundant scene that strives to make up for the loss of independent venues and practice spaces due to rampant gentrification.
"I really wanted this band to provide that space," said MUELAS vocalist and violinist Susy, a queer Mexican-American child of immigrants. "Not only for the Atlanta community, but for POC, queer, marginalized people. I wanted them to have that space because it's one of the few spaces we have left."
While their released music scratches the much-needed itch to release internalized rage and necessary resistance anthems, MUELAS' power is delivered tenfold when performing live. At their latest performance at Little Five Points Fest in March, the band connected with the audience of nearly 500 people through laying their experiences bare for all to see. Watching from the back of the stage, I was able to see another sea of people react, through moshing, headbanging, dancing, eyes welled up with tears, some crying, clenching their chests, and singing along. Susy spoke directly to the audience between songs, her words at times engulfed with cheers and righteous screams:
"I need you all to hear me loud and clear: As a queer, Mexican-American child of immigrants, I say it with my fucking chest when I say fuck ICE! ICE does not belong in our community. ICE does not belong in our schools. They don't belong in our places of worship. There is no such thing as an illegal human being on stolen land. Immigrant rights are human rights, trans rights are human rights, women's rights are human rights. People tell me all the time, 'God damn, Susy, you're so mad.' Fuck yeah, I am, look at me! My existence is political! I can't run away from it; I can't turn it off. Chinga la migra!"
In Atlanta, independent music and its DIY scene lives, in spite of its oppressors—and the struggle continues, with a growing soundtrack that will rock the world.
Love MUELAS and the other ALT-Atlanta artists mentioned in this piece? Grab your tickets now for Mainline Fest 2026! Mainline Music Fest has three simple values: PROTECT PRESS FREEDOM! SUPPORT ARTISTS! SUSTAIN HUMANITY!