Ann Arbor, MI · indie rock · collective

Racing Mount Pleasant

2 festivals played ↓

Sprawling Michigan collective — horn-swelling, patient indie rock that earned an instant cult, chamber-band arrangements with real payoff.

Racing Mount Pleasant began as Kingfisher, formed in Ann Arbor after members Callum Roberts, Connor Hoyt and Sam DuBose decided to start a band within minutes of meeting at the University of Michigan. Early lineups included visual artists and photographers alongside the musicians, all of them students. The group settled on its current name in 2025, taking it from a highway exit sign that read "Racine Mount Pleasant."

The band's sound sits between chamber pop and Midwest emo, mixing horns, strings and guitars into arrangements that move from folk-quiet passages to shoegaze-scale swells. Writers have pointed to the detail of electronic music and the structure of jazz and classical crossover in how the parts fit together. Comparisons drawn include Bon Iver, Lord Huron, Black Country, New Road and Explosions in the Sky.

Their debut album, Grip Your Fist, I'm Heaven Bound, appeared in November 2022, recorded when the group numbered eight musicians plus additional visual collaborators. A second, self-titled record followed in August 2025 on the label R&R, put together over three years across more than six different studios and rehearsal spaces.

By the time of the second album the touring band had narrowed to seven members. Live sets are built around each venue, with projections timed to the music and audiences sometimes asked to sit rather than stand. Racing Mount Pleasant opened shows for Cameron Winter and for Geese in 2025, and have said they already have five more songs finished, with an eventual film score in mind.

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