[DID NOT ATTEND: July 26, 2026] Finn Wolfhard / Sleeper’s Bell
Just how many of the cast from Stranger Things are also musicians? Well, just about all of them, it seems.
And so here comes Finn Wolfhard. He played The Foundry a couple of years back and here he’s at Union Transfer. I have no idea how well the show sold, and I didn’t have any intention of going, but I’m fascinated by the whole thing.
I checked out his solo stuff and its kind of fun–I imagine he’s a great frontman. But I didn’t care enough to look into it any further. But in fairness, his sound is good–a Pavement-adjacent sonic palette with hints of other genres poking in. And his songs are really short.
Okay, so this review from Get Alternative says
The show was nearly sold out and super packed, a line around the block snaked down the street, to get inside the venue. Finn Wolfhard, a Canadian actor/musician … is 23. He released his second solo album on July 10th. He had a full band backing him up and their scrappy indie rock was fun and energetic. The lighting was excellent, mostly blue with bits of yellow shining through, and candelabras spread throughout the stage as a backdrop. This was a memorable show and an exciting night of music.
The review also mentions Sleeper’s Bell, who I didn’t know.
Opening up the show was Sleeper’s Bell, a band from Chicago who are in their mid twenties. They play indie folk and are fronted by vocalist Blaine Teppema and guitarist Evan Green, and played with a drummer and bassist as well for this tour. They seemed grateful for the opportunity to open for Finn and played a few songs from their latest album ‘Clover’ from 2025, as well as a smattering of new and unreleased songs. They had a quieter vibe to them and Blaine’s pretty voice shone through the instrumentation. A highlight of the set was the song ‘Corner’ a single from 2024. They finished up the set by playing ‘Hey Blue’ the final track from Clover.
They are definitely too quiet for me.
Since I mentioned Stranger Things, and music, here’s some fun info about the Stranger Things musicians from The Indie Scene.co.uk
Finn Wolfhard (aka Mike Wheeler)
He has close links to bands like Weezer (he was in their music video for that cover of Take On Me) and has even performed with Mac DeMarco. It was next to impossible not to have heard of Calpurnia in 2018. If you scrolled for a few minutes on any app, you were sure to come across a plethora of teenagers sharing videos of the band. I first watched Stranger Things in the summer of 2021, and yet I had already been inundated with random information about the young actor without so much as watching a second of him on screen. If you’re in a TV show this huge, it’s to be expected. Creating the band a year into his newfound fame as Nancy Wheeler’s (Natalia Dyer) adventurous younger brother, their first offering was a cover of Wanted You by Twin Peaks. Amongst the songs they released during their time together, they covered numerous edgy white boy classics: from Mac DeMarco’s My Kind of Woman to Pixies’ Where Is My Mind?. But, despite going on tour together and being signed to Transgressive (Foals, Hippo Campus, Alvvays), the band decided they wanted to go on and do different things, so they naturally announced their split in 2019, when Finn was only seventeen. [Then] he joined forces with fellow Calpurnia member, drummer Malcolm Craig, to form the indie-pop duo The Aubreys. On Valentines Day of 2021, the duo released Sand in My Bed, a testament to youth and a strikingly unforgiving song with boisterous vocals from the energetic frontman. And now he has a solo career.
Gaten Matarazzo (aka Dustin Henderson)
Shortly after the release of Calpurnia’s debut, Gaten’s band Work in Progress (consisting of a real family affair) shared their debut tracks Dream Eater and Waste My Time. Although they haven’t released music since then, the promise of a debut EP seems alien, and the band haven’t made a peep since 2019. Notably, Gaten is a trained singer, with experience on Broadway in productions such as Les Misérables and Sweeney Todd.Caleb McLaughlin (aka Lucas Sinclair)
Teasing music in 2021 and releasing Neighborhood in November of that year, Caleb is one of the last of his castmates to branch out into music. The late start means that his second single, Soul Travel, was released in early 2022.Charlie Heaton (aka Jonathan Byers)
At 16, he moved from Leeds to London with the goal of pursuing a career in music. He joined noise-rock band Comanechi as their drummer and played alongside them for over a year, including a world tour. On Instagram, he briefly mentioned he had previously played in Half Loon, a psychedelic-rock band, but now tends to stick to jamming sessions. Whether that’s solo or with a band, we’re excited to see if he decides to get back to playing shows in between filming. He’s mostly known in the music-verse for being a drummer, and has lent his talents to bands like Comedown and Luxury Apartments. In 2025, he hopped on co-star Joe Keery’s tracks Gap Tooth Smile and Charlie’s Garden, with the latter a spoken word contribution in the form of a voicemail.Maya Hawke (aka Robin Buckley)
The daughter of iconic actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, Maya is taking the route of actor-cum-musician, while leaving her famous father to be the author of the family, and her younger brother, Levon, to follow her path as an actor. Two years after accepting her first role in the BBC adaptation of Little Women, she shared two songs: To Love a Boy and Stay Open. In March of 2020, she announced her debut album, Blush, with the lead track By Myself, and a music video directed by her father. Since the release of her debut album, Maya has shared second album, MOSS (2022), and third album, Chaos Angel, in 2024, with hits Big Idea and Missing Out on the tracklisting. Her last release was the Clipped Wings EP in October of 2024. There’s no surprise she hasn’t released anything in 2025, considering the two-year gap between releases, and her roles in Inside Out 2, Asteroid City, The Kill Room and the upcoming The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, due for release on 20th November 2026. Maya states folk music and Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, and Joni Mitchell as her inspirations.Joe Keery (aka Steve Harrington)
He started releasing music under the pseudonym Cool Cool Cool before playing the guitar in psychedelic-rock band Post Animal. Although he lent his vocals to their second album a year after he left to focus on a solo career, and his new role in Stranger Things, which forced him to relocate to Atlanta, Georgia, away from Chicago and the band. After leaving, he self-released his debut single, Roddy, under new pseudonym Djo, graduating to a psych-pop sound. That same year (2019), he released his debut album — the same album he’d written while working at a restaurant before securing the coveted role of Steve Harrington in 2015. Since the release of his debut album, Joe Keery has seriously left his mark on the music industry, with his third album, The Crux, with a headline tour under his belt and a deluxe version of The Crux released in September with twelve new songs, it can only get better as we move into the New Year.Jamie Campbell Bower (aka Henry Creel / One / Vecna)
The British actor was one of the last to join the cast, with his first appearance in Season 4 gaining him critical acclaim. JCB makes covering essentially what is three roles in one huge TV show look like child’s play. Jamie started as the drummer for a band called William K, then became the lead singer of The Darling Buds (they dissolved in 2015), before becoming the frontman and singer of COUNTERFEIT., who would go on to release their debut album in 2017 and tour the USA.
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