Geese: The Brooklyn band putting rock back in the mainstream
Written by Mia Samson
If you, like me, are chronically online and chronically tapped into the current indie scene – chances are you've heard someone say the words: “Geese might be the most exciting band in America right now.”
Geese have taken the music scene by storm | Credit: Lewis Evans
Now I, like many English people, enjoy and agree with the argument that English music triumphs America’s even on a bad day. However, this huge statement that circulates the group of 20-somethings from Brooklyn does not feel exaggerated anymore. Geese have become a modern day phenomenon.
Over the last few years, the five-piece have gone from DIY garage gigs to becoming one of the most talked about indie rock bands of the moment. Depending on who you ask, they’re either fronting and actively changing guitar music, a rare triumph of the streaming era or the only young rock band currently making unpredictable music.
All three descriptions fit.
Geese formed in 2016 in Brooklyn and consisted of frontman Cameron Winter, guitarist Emily Green, bassist Dominic Digesu and drummer Max Bassin. They spent their early years rehearsing and experimenting with sounds that were far bigger than the venues they played.
Even in the early days, Geese were not trying to pigeon hole themselves into one scene, as their music pulled from post-punk, classic rock, noise music and art-rock all at once. Critics quickly, and typically, started comparing their sound to Talking Heads, Radiohead and The Velvet Underground, but Geese always sounded a bit too special to be put into one category and compared to bands of the past – a new sound was emerging.
In 2021 the band's debut album Projector came out and immediately turned heads.
Primarily recorded in Bassin’s basement, the record was quickly labelled in the ‘post-punk’ genre. It introduced listeners to Gesse’s strange musical chemistry of jagged guitars, shifting song structures and Winter’s theatrical vocals.
At its core and time of release, projector felt to be the start of an exciting young indie band.
And then came 3D Country.
With its 2023 release, this album completely reshaped the conversation around the band. Instead of doubling-down and comparing the band again to other seminal post-punk bands, Geese swerved their sound into an Americana, southern-rock swagger creating music so raw and real that it was most likely stitched together in an all-night jam session.
Critics loved it, fans preached evangelically about it and live shows just got bigger and bigger.
Suddenly, Geese were not a jangly, art, indie band but the rock band that everyone was talking about.
The fascination comes from how they have come up. Not from magazines and touring but via TikTok and online discourse – I mean that's how I heard about them, a girl had raved about one of their live performances and I felt I needed to make an opinion about it myself.
One week, my feed was full of fans raving about their sound and live performances like they were sacred texts and the next all I could see was ‘industry plant’ this and ‘artificially amplified’ that.
The accusations were inevitable, anyone that becomes famous in music now, off of their own back, have to face bitter, pessimistic accusations from critics who are sure that their word is God.
Alas, Geese survived it. Plenty of bands go viral, but very few inspire the obsession that Geese do.
The real reason people connect with them becomes obvious the moment you watch them live.
They perform with a rare reckless intensity not found in bands today. Their songs stretch unpredictably, Winter throws himself around like a man gone mad and the band plays with a loose confidence driven from chaos rather than precision.
That chaos and unpredictability is exactly why they matter.
For too long rock music has been stuck. Stuck between nostalgia and reinvention. I’m not going to name names but so many bands today – specifically coming out of the UK – are trying to revive old sounds and provide no originality to these sounds at all. Few have managed to take these sounds and make it feel alive, fresh and new in the present tense. Geese do.
Their music understands the sounds in which it is rooted, but is not trapped by it.
And the freedom that they evoke in their live sets has given young audiences something to latch onto and feel hopeful about.
In a musical landscape that feels polished, Geese come across as gloriously unstable.
Now, Geese occupy a rare space. With the album ‘Getting Killed’ released in late 2025, they are big enough, in my opinion, to headline major festivals, but too strange to appeal to the masses.
Whether they become a generation defining band or a cult classic doesn't matter to me and it shouldn’t matter to you. They’ve made rock music exciting again!