We interrupt this cold snap… with a music festival

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/01/2026 (200 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fuelled by year-round Slurpees and a lifetime supply of undergraduate angst, Winnipeg quintet Synthetic Friend released its debut EP Catching the Outlines on Friday, just in time for the group’s first headlining gig of 2026 — a coveted Saturday-night slot during Winterruption.

While Manitoba boasts one of the richest, most eclectic summer festival ecosystems in the country, Winterruption — co-produced by Real Love Winnipeg and the West End Cultural Centre — has become a frozen tentpole event for music fans in Winnipeg.

The festival, which runs Tuesday to Saturday and features more than 50 acts, matches the brightest Prairie artists with national and international counterparts at seven venues across the city: Public Domain, the Park Theatre, the Handsome Daughter, Sidestage, the WECC, Park Alleys and Shorty’s Pizza.

This year, the crop of local talent includes Synthetic Friend, featuring vocalist Emma Stevens, bassist Kaity Cummings, drummer Tomi Lawrie and guitarists Aaron Simard and Ashton Fontaine.

Formed in 2023, the band has opened for Winnipeg artists including Lev Snowe, Amos the Kid and Boniface, but the Winterruption gig at the Handsome Daughter will mark the first time it has headlined a show in support of its own indie release.

Recorded and produced by Winnipeg’s House of Wonders label, Catching the Outlines showcases the band’s capacity for restraint and explosion across four tracks, including lead singles Potion Seller and Nanaimo.

Inspired by relationships of all sorts — mutualistic, parasitic, loving and lost — the EP fits right into a local indie pop lineage that includes groups such as Mulligrub, Boniface and Virgo Rising, whose guitarist Jenna Wittmann provides guitar work throughout the record.

Stevens, the group’s lead lyricist, calls the EP an expression of vulnerability and a reflection on the confusion that comes from being a growing organism — not just as individuals, but as a group. On the song Renovations, inspired by a remodelling of the band’s basement jam space, the band reckons with disarray that’s beyond its control.

Though it just wrapped up releasing its first EP, Lawrie says that if it’s financially feasible, the band hopes to record more material before 2026 is over. The band’s short-term goals also include playing outside Manitoba.

“That’s the biggest goal for us,” Lawrie says.

Synthetic Friend takes the stage at 11:15 p.m. on Saturday at the Handsome Daughter, along with openers Sophie Stevens (Emma’s sweet-singing sister) and Jupiter Meltdown.

In addition to ticketed shows, five artists are performing free, 40-minute sets at The Forks on Saturday (Earth Angel, Lady of the Red, the Ranger System, Kolakolapop and Len Bowen) and Sunday (Flora Luna, Shawn Pallister, Orvis, Latin Voyage and Alex Maher) between noon and 4 p.m. in the second-floor lounge.

See below for a few more highlights from this year’s Winterruption festival. A full schedule, along with ticketing information, is available at winterruptionwpg.ca.

Thursday

Boniface (10:15 p.m.), Mart Avi (9 p.m.), Quincy Telus (8 p.m.)
Public Domain (633 Portage Ave.)
Tickets: $24

Quincy Telus and Boniface, two dynamic performers from Winnipeg, are the reliably tasteful bread and Estonia’s Mart Avi — self-described as “the twilight samurai of alternative pop” — is the unpredictable filling.

In a dispatch from Tallinn Music Week in 2018, indie culture site the Quietus had a good deal of fun in describing Avi. “His very otherness suggests he is a character in a Hayao Miyazaki film or a zombie from Call of Duty.”

With Boniface and Telus opening and closing, it’s certainly worth taking a flier on Thursday night.

Friday

Jane Inc. (midnight), Sean Nicholas Savage (11 p.m.), French Class (10 p.m.)
Handsome Daughter (61 Sherbrook St.)
Tickets: $24

It’s been nearly two years since the Good Will Social Club’s final Saturday, a Winterruption triple-bill that opened with sets by Julien’s Daughter and Michele Visser of Boniface and closed with a jaw-dropping hour from Carlyn Bezic of Jane Inc., who abandoned the stage to take her rightful place in the heart of the crowd.

On Friday, Toronto’s Bezic returns to Winnipeg on the strength of A Rupture a Canyon a Birth, a life-affirming album released last year as the dust settled on an era that called for sudden reinvention: a semi-truck colliding with her tour van while her band opened for U.S. Girls in 2023, followed by surgery to treat early stage vocal cord cancer.

With Edmonton alt-pop star Sean Nicholas Savage and local dance stalwarts French Class opening, the energy — and emotions — will surely run high.

Open Mike Eagle (10:45 p.m.), Crabskull & E.GG (9:45 p.m.), and Gully (9 p.m.)
Sidestage (700 Osborne St.)
Tickets: $27

Called “the king of heartfelt, surrealist rap” by the Washington Post, Open Mike Eagle is also one of the genre’s most prolific and quietly influential artists, having collaborated with Danny Brown, MF Doom, Paul White, Serengeti and Gold Panda.

If an artist has been referred to as an outsider, a weirdo, a student of hip-hop history, or all three, there’s a good chance the Chicago-raised Eagle is one of their guiding lights.

Alongside Eagle, Winnipeg ex-pat E.GG of the great local crew 3Peat, plays Sidestage for a rare local performance, collaborating with Winnipeg electronic artist Crabskull. Lytics alumnus Gully rounds out a stacked bill.

Saturday

Annie-Claude Deschênes (midnight), Discovery Zone (10:50 p.m.), Ayozak (10 p.m.), with DJ sets by sarastcyr
Sidestage (700 Osborne St.)
Tickets: $27

Flying into town from Berlin for the annual Chip’s Vintage anniversary bash is Discovery Zone, a futuristic artist whose work bridges the gap between the digital and the spiritual components of electro-pop.

The ever-shifting project of JJ Weihl, Discovery Zone’s music is a companion piece to the act’s hypnotic onstage projections: it’s easy to lose yourself in the waves.

Local multi-hyphenate Ayozak opens, with Montreal synth-pop artist Annie-Claude Deschênes (Duchess Says) bringing their “dystopic discoteque” soundscape to Sidestage at midnight.

Rising local DJ sarastcyr — one third, with Dray Unger and Rachel Uminga, of the all-femme turntable collective baddievision — keeps the music going with 20-minute tweener sets.

Sunday

Hiss Golden Messenger (8:30 p.m.) with Christine Fellows (7:30 p.m.)
WECC (586 Ellice Ave.)
Tickets: $40 to $45

“In a nutshell: winter was hard on everyone.” Christine Fellows wrote that to introduce her 2011 album Burning Daylight, but isn’t it an eternal statement?

Any opportunity to see the local songwriter and poet perform is worth taking, but it’s an especially appealing option in the thick of another Winnipeg cold snap.

On Sunday at the WECC, in what should be a signature show for the Ellice Avenue landmark, Fellows shares the bill with North Carolina’s Hiss Golden Messenger, another artist whose music sounds right at home under an early Prairie moonrise.

winnipegfreepress.com/benwaldman

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