MUSIC
Here are four local bands to watch in 2026
Kevin J. Elliott
Columbus Monthly
Jan. 19, 2026, 6:01 a.m. ET
The Columbus music scene is experiencing a shift following the pandemic, with artists finding new ways to gain exposure.
These artists span genres from indie rock and hip-hop to dream-pop and experimental jazz.
Many of these musicians released new albums in 2025, showcasing the current creative energy in Columbus.

It’s long been a hope among fans to crown Columbus as a “music city.” It’s a challenging exercise.

The city and its enclaves are in constant flux, and in the years since a pandemic muffled the scene, lots of things have changed – venues have shuttered, alt-weeklies have ceased publication, shows now start earlier, and artists have been forced to find alternatives to the traditional ways of finding exposure and an audience.

“Being a band in Columbus, you have to make your own fun. There aren't a million bands to see every night, or a million bands to play with,” Xenia Shuman said of indie rock band Golomb.

“It’s very uncool to put on (an extravagant) thing here. We’re a big city, but a very small town.”

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Indeed, without the usual outlets in place to discover what’s happening on the stages of Columbus, finding the pulse of the music scene is a bit of a scavenger hunt.

For those unable to frequent local music havens Café Bourbon Street, Dick’s Den and Ace of Cups nightly, or who haven’t encountered their favorite band at an arts space, record store or community festival, we bring you four acts – Golomb, Gault, Mukiss and PeaceofMND – who are shaking the Columbus music scene out of complacency.
The band Golomb from left: Hawken Holm, Xenia and Mickey Shuman
Golomb

The survival of an indie rock band trying to make a living in the fickle age of streaming and clicks relies on touring. It’s something the power trio Golomb stitched together pretty regularly in 2025, playing in New York and Chicago multiple times, as well as a celebrated three-week tour of Europe in November culminating in a set at the Pitchfork Music Festival in London.

Husband and wife Mickey and Xenia Shuman formed Golomb – named for Mickey's mother's last name – out of creative desperation during the pandemic, and since, they’ve shared stages with a healthy scene of young, hungry bands who have crafted a burgeoning renaissance of punk in Old North Columbus clubs.

Golomb’s second album, 2025’s "The Beat Goes On," is a scruffy, resilient guitar record that doesn’t skimp on indelible melodies and overall groove. Released by the acclaimed No Quarter record label based in Erdenheim, Pennsylvania, the album exudes an old-school, homespun charm countered by a lucid modern urgency.

It’s simple and dynamic throughout, where the artists bend current trends to their will and recognize their roots – Xenia and her brother, drummer Hawken Holm’s parents are veterans of the local scene.
Producer Brandon Williams and musician artist De'Mani Moore colloborated on the latest PeaceofMND release, photographed at Rich Street Records in Franklinton.
PeaceofMND

"Collaged all my thoughts and compressed them into sound.”

In less than 90 seconds, the song "Soulfood," from PeaceofMND’s 2023 release "Look Down Below!," encapsulates De’Mani Moore’s vibrant aesthetic. He’s a visual artist at heart, and that hands-on approach leaves fingerprints on his nostalgic earworms.

After moving to Columbus from Sandusky, graduating from the Columbus College of Art & Design and dabbling with beat production, PeaceofMND, which is named after a short film Moore wrote in 2016, became an official music project in 2019.
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But it was 2025’s "LIGHT!" where Moore concentrated his efforts. He tapped friend Brandon Williams to help engineer and expand the vision, added vocalist Madison Gibbs on a track and crafted an ecstatic half-hour of feel-good hip-hop.

It would be a disservice to label "LIGHT!" and Moore’s positivity as “conscious rap,” because it can also be fun. The record is akin to spinning the radio dial in a cloud of ’90s R&B, ’80s electro, and vaporwave.

“Joy is the resistance. I was going through some tragedy when making this, so the goal was to stay upbeat,” Moore said. “We dance and we laugh to keep from crying, right? Because in this day and age, you need that.”

Though Moore brought PeaceofMND to the Columbus hip-hop showcase Beat Bazaar and threw a celebratory release party for "LIGHT!" at Rich Street Records, playing live hasn’t been the priority.

But the goal is to keep the momentum of the album going through 2026 and to bring the music to crowds. Moore said he’s a “young soul making feel-good music for the souls. Heads held high.”
Caeleigh Featherstone is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist that performs as Mukiss, photographed in Kate Sweeney's photo studio.
Mukiss

Caeleigh Featherstone graduated from the fabled Recording Workshop in Chillicothe with the skill set she needed to forge a full-time career in music. Whether it’s as an active player in Saintseneca, her time as a founding member of WV White or touring as a sound engineer for national acts Lucy and Cavetown, her true passion was to break out on her own and record her own songs.

From that urge came Mukiss, the name inspired by the way Featherstone pronounced "music" as a child. Her 2025 debut album, "Everything That Shakes is Changing," is an exercise in contrasts; it’s at once expansive dream-pop and stark, insular folk.

It’s Featherstone capturing the stillness of the natural world and then trying to make sense of the ever-shifting chaos of our quotidian realities.

“I think that change is a constant and is also something that we as humans try to build institutions and protections against because we fear the unknown and don't want to feel uncomfortable,” Featherstone said. “But without change, we can't get to the other side of our natural cycles where we would hopefully find growth and renewal, some brief relief.”

For Featherstone, that relief was Mukiss being something she made completely with her own hands. But you can also feel rooms full of friends who pitch in on a drum or guitar part, bright melodies and sonic baubles carrying the proceedings, and a sense that this is music that acts as a salve.
Gault members, from left: Billy Wolfe, Alex Burgoyne, Caleb Miller, Trent Sampson and Seth Daily in Miller's basement rehearsal space.
Gault

Gault’s members call themselves a band. Like planting a flag on the moon, jazz musicians acting as a “band” is pioneering.

Columbus has a thriving jazz community, but it’s made up of individuals; players congregate at Dick’s Den throughout the week to jam in a trio or quartet, improvising on standards or crafting nightly compositions.

The members of Gault always have been “jazz-adjacent,” said Caleb Miller, the keyboardist and lodestar, and they’ve had to navigate their way through Columbus’ mostly rock music landscape.

“You have to live and die by a code. And as jazz is something perpetually fluid… it’s a place where I can concentrate all of my eccentricities into a routine,” Miller said. (It was, when developing an exercise routine that Miller came up with the name for the band, as he looked up at the Gault Street sign during a run.)

The common language shared by the group – now featuring Billy Wolfe and Alex Burgoyne on horns, Trent Sampson on bass and Seth Daily on drums – translates as especially stentorian on 2025’s stunning and experimental "If the Heavens Came Down." Here, the group goes beyond following the jazz playbook. It fights against traditions.

Among the post-rock collisions in their recordings, they find seams in the tumult to project various shades of jazz; from smooth to modal, hard-bop and fusion. How they spin those planets throughout their universe is the thrill of listening to Gault. Now, if only there were more live shows.

This story appeared in the January 2026 issue of Columbus Monthly. Subscribe here.

There will always be another song to be written. Someone will write it. Why not you? www.garyeandrews.com