Cameron Winter

Cameron Winter first drew notice as the wiry-voiced frontman of Brooklyn art-rock band Geese, formed with high school classmates in 2016 and signed to a label before any of them had graduated. His 2024 solo debut, Heavy Metal, arrived with almost no promotional push and still landed on year-end lists from major music outlets, a stripped-down turn built around piano, a foghorn baritone, and lyrics that swing between confession and tall tale. Nick Cave singled out the record's writing as startling; Winter, for his part, has claimed the album was cut partly with musicians found on Craigslist and gear borrowed from a big-box guitar store, a story that shifts depending on who's asking. He has since become one of the youngest artists to headline Carnegie Hall as a solo act, a show captured on film by Paul Thomas Anderson. Winter names Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan as his primary touchstones, though critics have reached for comparisons as varied as Tom Waits and Thom Yorke to describe a voice built for both crooning and howling.