Geese planned to split after high school, then record labels came calling
A handful of New York teenagers recorded songs in a Fort Greene basement and fully intended to go their separate ways after graduating in 2020, with some members bound for Oberlin and Berklee. Then their homemade demos drew interest from labels like Sub Pop and 4AD, and Geese kept going.
The group formed in 2016 among students at Brooklyn Friends School and Little Red School House. The first song they played together was Tame Impala's Mind Mischief, and they took their name from Goose, the nickname of guitarist Emily Green. Drummer Max Bassin's basement served as rehearsal room and studio. Their early self-released EPs and a 2018 album have since been pulled from streaming services.
After signing with Partisan Records, they released Projector in October 2021, still recorded in that basement. Singer Cameron Winter described the moment they finally got their live setup working, buying extra microphones so they could all play at once instead of overdubbing, as a transcendental moment. Guitarist Foster Hudson, who joined in 2019, left at the end of 2023 to concentrate on his studies, and the band carried on as a four-piece.
Their sound mixes indie rock, art rock, post-punk and experimental rock, with influences ranging from the Velvet Underground and Television to Radiohead and Funkadelic. Critics single out Winter's voice. A Rolling Stone review said he could leap into a falsetto, adopt a posh pout or bellow, sometimes all within one three-minute song.
Winter's acclaimed solo album Heavy Metal, released in December 2024, raised the band's profile sharply. Their fourth album, Getting Killed, arrived on 26 September 2025 and was named the best album of the year by both Stereogum and The New Yorker. In January 2026 they played Saturday Night Live, followed by a festival run that took in Coachella and Lollapalooza.
Source: Geese (band)
