Reserver

If anyone knows how healing music can be, it's Reserver. The Chicago indie rock band makes the kind of loud, cathartic noise you reach for when you want to scream into the void with others who've been through hard times too—filling the room with energy and a little chaos. That catharsis is hard-won. Vocalist/guitarist Chad Preston, bassist Crawfie Ward, and guitarist Adam Penly were all playing in Chicago post-punk mainstay The Laureates back in 2018 when Preston stepped away to care for his wife Kerri, who had been diagnosed with cancer. He wasn't sure he'd ever play again—but quietly, alone, the songs started coming anyway, a way to get through a really heavy time. After Kerri passed in 2022, Ward encouraged Preston to record the songs he'd been holding onto, and the project slowly grew into a full band with the addition of drummer Dan Wendt. Something shifted in the process: the songs stopped being only about sadness and became louder, more alive—a way, as Preston puts it, of using rock 'n' roll to push back against what the universe had taken away. You can hear it in their noisy psych rock and shoegaze, full of '90s nods to Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and Pavement. "Once the band came together, it became something bigger," he says, "a way to turn a really heavy experience into something loud, communal, and alive." That, more than anything, is what Reserver is about: finding a way to change course from heartbreak, to survive the unthinkable and come out stronger for it.