Inside the sweaty, fragile, and fiercely communal world of New Paltz DIY music scene.
By Kyra Higbie
Back to the Basement: How New Paltz’s DIY Shows Kick Off the School Year
On a warm Friday night in New Paltz a small crowd forms on the block, not for a bar or club, but for the front door of a sagging colonial where the bass is already rattling the basement windows. Inside Nebraska, the living room has been stripped of valuables, tucked away behind locked doors, Christmas lights sag across the ceiling, and the air is thick with sweat and anticipation. The crowd– students, locals, alumni off from their day jobs– presses shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the first chord to rip through the basement floorboards
These are not just concerts; they’re gatherings of people hungry for something uncurated, unpolished, alive. In New Paltz, where the music scene has long been defined by its DIY spirit, these houses have become both venues and sanctuaries — places where young bands cut their teeth and communities form in the crush of noise and heat.
For many, this is the real start of the semester. Classes and orientations mark the calendar, but it’s the first basement show that signals New Paltz is awake again. The bands know it too.
“It builds community, it brings in a large audience, it’s just as much the people coming putting the passion in as the artists and to have so many people who have love for one thing coming together builds it” says Seamus Greene, a fourth year SUNY New Paltz student who’s been coming to house shows since last year. “It’s a tradition, and I hope it continues”.
The Bands
Tonight the lineup is a tapestry of bands and artists; Sad Matt, Grupo Nossa and The Schwegs. It’s a crash course in the New Paltz scene –emo pop, Latin pop/R&B in the vein of Selena, and alternative-indie but all deeply personal.
The opener, Matt Marino a.k.a Sad Matt who is a veteran on the scene –playing since 14 now 25 – sweaty before the first chorus, he rips through songs that are equal parts raw and charmingly off-kilter. His gear is mostly borrowed from the other bands, his set is short, but the chords have ignited the crowd. Before Matt’s set he was shy, but once that first lyric hit, he metamorphosed into an artist truly worthy of a stage beyond the four concrete walls of this basement. The house transforms with him. The floor thrums with bass, the walls sweat condensation, and strangers who would never exchange a word on the street are screaming lyrics side by side.
Later, Grupo Nossa makes their debut– a seven-piece Latin outfit that features saxophone; drums; bongos; guitars, both electric and acoustic and dual vocalists Francesca Vetrano and Anabella Perez-Salvi, who sang with an effortless power yet warm intimate tone, truly showcasing the versatility of the fledgling group.
“My friend Anabella sang for Grupo Nossa — that’s why I came in the first place I wanted to see her,” says Oliver Trzcinski, a 20-year-old Mechanical Engineering major. “I loved it, she really knows how to sing.”
Closing the night are The Schwegs, a dynamic scrappy band that’s been carving out a space since 2021. Guitarist Charles Apollo, a fourth year music major, says house shows beat bar gigs every time. “At a bar, people are there for drinks. Here, people are here for the music, and they go wild. They’re the best crowds to play for.” His favorite part of the house show scene was the “energy of a live performance” evident in the sweaty, explosive thrums reverberating throughout the band’s set.
The draw for bands didn’t end with community, these spaces also serve as an opportunity to test out grassroots songs born in bedrooms and scribbled on scraps of paper in class.
“DIY venues have the most energy and I get the most connection from the people that support us” says Schwegs vocalist Emma Montenegro. In the no frills basement there’s no stage, no barrier, just the band and the people.
For new band Mommyz, Nebraska serves a greater purpose with a lower threshold to entry and less judgement. As Julie Brown, vocalist for Mommyz said “from the artist perspective basement shows are more accessible than getting booked anywhere else, because a basement is literally the lowest level you can play physically and metaphorically. If you know a guy, then you’re in. If you suck at the bar, you get told Never again, if you suck at the basement show, you blame it on the basement.”
The Audience
What makes the scene thrive, though, isn’t just the bands — it’s the people who show up. The audience is a shifting mix of SUNY students and townies who’ve heard about the shows through word of mouth. Flyers taped to lampposts and Instagram stories help, but the real advertising happens in conversations: a classmate telling another “There’s a show tonight” or a roommate dragging someone down the block.
“I came to support my Roommate Anabella (of Grupo Nossa), ” says Simone Fowline a General Studies major and black studies minor at SUNY New Paltz. While she explained she isn’t a common consumer of loud noises and therefore house shows are outside her comfort zone. She finds them “a good way to find inspiration, new experiences and meet new people.”
Kat Walker of Mommyz band, both a musician and attendee said of house shows. “For me it feels like a tighter knit community. When you go to the bar, there’s a bunch of random people who are not there for the music, but when you’re here you know everybody’s here for the music.”
As students settle into the semester — juggling classes, jobs, and late nights at the library — the basements hum with another kind of learning: how to build a community, how to sustain art on your own terms, how to keep the music alive even when the walls shake and the future is uncertain.
