This article comes to you live from the train to Toronto: Project Nowhere starts tonight! Plucking along Dundas West, the innovative Little Portugal-based festival brings heavy, underground and avant-garde sounds to the forefront for a jam-packed weekend from October 2nd-4th, 2025. To get the party started, we’ve compiled our favourite new releases from ones-to-watch from this year’s lineup. Whether you’re on your way from out of town or down the street, get into the festival spirit and listen to our accompanying playlists below on Spotify.

Tickets

Hailing from Detroit, Michigan, The Armed are an anonymous punk/hardcore collective. Their latest album THE FUTURE IS HERE AND EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED was released earlier this year. Notably featured on the Cyberpunk 2077 Official Playlist, and after completing a trilogy of albums laser-focused on dissecting artistic authenticity in the Information Age, The Armed began working on new material with no premeditated rules or concepts—favouring only raw expression and urgency to herald a new era for the project.

Catch their show at Nineteen Seventy Eight on Friday, October 3rd.

Her New Knife are a gorgeously noisy shoegaze band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their latest singles “vasselera,” and “vasselera - SILICONE VALLEY: re”, lean more electronic and danceably-experimental. The band’s newest offerings were released via Julia’s War, a Philly-based record label that focuses on providing “physical media for bands that rock.”

Her New Knife plays at St. Anne’s Parish Hall on Saturday, October 4th.

New York’s Jamie Krasner, AKA james K, crafts spellbinding dream pop collages on her third album Friend. Friend is a brilliant follow-up to her 2016 release PET, solidifying K’s mastery of illusive, downtempo hypnosis. Written and produced by K, the dewey sonic playground features a close-knit entourage of collaborators, including Montreal’s own Patrick Holland.

james K plays The Garrison on Friday, October 3rd.

Decadent and maximalist, No Joy brandishes shoegaze sublimity on Bugland. The musical moniker of Montreal songwriter and guitarist Jasamine White-Gluz, No Joy marks a grand return with Bugland as her fifth album and first offering since her 2022 record Ghost Blonde. No Joy’s beguiling arrangements conjure hypnotic guitar world-building reminiscent of 90s greats such as My Bloody Valentine, with vocals channeling the energy of Kate Bush (if she fronted a grungy rock band).

No Joy plays The Garrison on Thursday, October 2nd.

London, United Kingdom tricksters Warmduscher recently shared “Yakuza”. The super-charged punk-funk single—originally conceived during the sessions for the band’s 2024 album Too Cold To Hold—is a ballsy, cinematic stand-alone that arrives with two equally electrifying remixes from David Holmes and Sworn Virgins. The perfect curtain-opener for the band’s Toronto stop.

Warmduscher performs at Nineteen Seventy Eight on Saturday, October 4th.

Chicago brewed, Brooklyn-based duo Water From Your Eyes closed off the summer with the unveiling of their new long-player It’s A Beautiful Place. Though the band are now part of the star-studded Matador Records roster, It’s A Beautiful Place nonetheless boasts the band’s forever self-directed unique production—meandering yet straight, cool, but not too cool. It’s A Beautiful Place is a lived-in opus, charting almost-pop to winks of math rock in just under half an hour.

Water From Your Eyes plays St. Anne’s Parish Hall on Saturday, October 4th.