Biitchseat / Empty Heaven / Molly O'Malley

Unabashedly poppy and shimmery, Biitchseat was formed in Cleveland in 2017 by best friends and guitar players Talor Smith (she/they) and Kristin Schmit (she/her). The pop sensibility and sparkle in their music is only matched by their live performances, which are always energetic and, at times, captivating and vulnerable.

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Empty Heaven is a project that asks you to get lost in it. Between the cavalcade of releases from the year 2025 (6 albums), the performances that are never the same twice, and a very broad emotional bandwidth, it’s Anthony’s internal world made manifest.

Sometimes, it’s the 6-piece band version of Empty Heaven creating a dizzying sonic atmosphere, or it’s Anthony solo at the piano doing an interactive, freewheeling show. Either way, EH puts on a show to be remembered and mulled over.

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Whenever generations look back on the downward trends and jostled psyches of the post-lockdown 2020s, they might do so while revisiting a cavernous, inactive shopping mall. Once titans of monoculture, then obliterated by two-day timelines, these ransacked husks are reminders of the shuttering divide between commerce, community, and the grey areas that rest between those two nebulous, often opposing ideas.

Like all of us stuck indoors ruminating on every data point beamed into our brains, Cleveland songwriter Molly O’Malley alternated between honing another batch of hooky, textured arrangements and finding eurekas in those liminal betweens.