Pillow Fite is Halifax, Nova Scotia’s most exciting new musical duo. Pairing tender, heart-on-your-sleeve lyrics with catchy alt-rock instrumentals and folky ballads, the genre lines get blurred in a way that keeps the project dynamic and binge-worthy while giving listeners all of the feels.

Sincerity is forefront on record and in Pillow Fite’s live performances. Whether paired down on acoustic guitars, or backed by a full band, their live shows are as heartfelt and genuine as the songs themselves. And it shows. Pillow Fite has been building an eager fan base from their home region in Atlantic Canada, playing notable local festivals and venues, and cutting their teeth live despite the times.

Says singer Art Ross of the EP’s focus track, “Napanee”:

While traveling to Napanee from Halifax to meet a partners’ family for the first time, a tragedy happened. The song depicts the hurt of caring for a grieving loved one and, in turn, grieving too. The simple chorus is audible frustration at the inability to take your loved one’s sadness away. 

After looking at it from all angles, we decided to keep the song simple. The kick drum and acoustic guitar mimicking an anxious heartbeat, trying to stay calm. The vocal and guitar melding together on the mournful hook. The synth, trying to bust through the storm clouds.

Art Ross (they/them) and Aaron Green (he/him) come from disparate backgrounds and musical forms, meeting in the middle to comprise a band that’s tender and fierce, exuberant and gentle. Green—a veteran of the Halifax rock scene, the guitar anchor of Floodland and Hello Delaware—and Ross—a trans songwriter with an acoustic guitar—started writing songs together over text, by accident. Pillow Fite emerged publicly at the start of 2021 with its non-binary gender-subverting aesthetics already in place and a languid lead single in “Playing the Fool.” Halifax, a town built on and stuck in rock music made by men, responded with supportive fervour, selling out back-to-back shows that saw the duo expand its sound with help from the scene’s most in-demand players.