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Concerts

New York's New Colossus Festival Adds Canadian Acts OBGMs, Casper Skulls to 2025 Lineup

They join previously announced artists like Montreal's Bibi Club and Toronto's Skye Wallace at the music discovery festival which hosts 100+ emerging artists in downtown Manhattan every year, with many stopping in the city on their way to SXSW.

The OBGMs

The OBGMs

Cassandra Popescu

Canadian artists will be heading south come March 2025 to play New York City's New Colossus Festival.

Just announced acts include Toronto rockers The OBGMs, indie rock group Casper Skulls, folk singer Braden Lam, and Montreal jangle pop group Prism Shores. They join a host of previously announced Canadian acts for the 2025 edition, like Polaris long-listers Bibi Club, rising Montreal grunge group Knitting, Toronto singer-songwriter Skye Wallace, and off-kilter pop act Cootie Catcher — who just opened for Alvvays in Toronto.


Launched in 2019, New Colossus has built a reputation as a vibrant music discovery festival in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Its model is focused exclusively on emerging artists — the festival has no headliners — and it operates out of independent venues packed close together, giving the festival a truly buzzy feel for attendees.

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Part of the impetus behind the festival was to create a stopover for artists on their way down to SXSW in Austin. (OBGMs and Knitting are both heading down to Texas after their Manhattan gigs.) Thanks in part to its proximity to the Canadian border, though, the festival has become a key play for Canadian acts in its own right. For many, it's their first American gig, and entry point into an important market.

The festival is also growing its industry component: partnerships this year include festivals like M for Montreal, Focus Wales, and Iceland Airwaves, as well as booking agency Anniversary Group, Born Losers Records, and promotion company Planetary Group.

Check out the lineup-to-date below. The New Colossus Festival takes place March 4-9, 2025. Festival badges are on sale here.

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Jason Derulo and Nora Fatehi
Mohamed Saad

Jason Derulo and Nora Fatehi

Pop

Nora Fatehi and Jason Derulo Join Forces for ‘Snake’: Inside the Globe-Spanning Collaboration

Fatehi, a Canadian-Moroccan Bollywood superstar, hopes the new single "introduces me to the international market in a very unique way," while Derulo preps new music of his own.

Nora Fatehi and Jason Derulo have kicked off 2025 with a single designed to combine cultures. On Thursday (Jan. 16), the Bollywood superstar and veteran hitmaker unveiled “Snake,” a thumping dance collaboration that joins East Asian melodies with American dance-pop production, creating a sensual duet with global aspirations.

Fatehi tells Billboard that the track came courtesy of a discussion with producer Tommy Brown (Ariana Grande, Victoria Monét) about finding a sound that could unite audiences in different regions of the world. “My main word was ‘exotic,’ and I wanted to make sure that it was dance-oriented — that whoever heard the song would want to move,” she recalls. “And after finishing the song, we were thinking about which artist would really be a good collaborator, and Jason’s name came up. And I’ve been a fan, and someone who’s really appreciated his journey, for a very long time.”

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