Chicago, IL · indie rock

Ratboys

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Chicago indie rock at its warmest — twangy, generous, quietly great, a band critics keep discovering all over again.

Ratboys began in 2010 when Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan met at freshman orientation at the University of Notre Dame. The pair started writing and recording together as students, and later added drummer Marcus Nuccio and bassist Sean Neumann, both of whom had toured with the band before officially joining in 2020. The group relocated to Sagan's hometown of Chicago in 2015.

The band has described their music as "post-country," pairing indie rock arrangements with country and folk phrasing. Steiner's songwriting favors specific, detailed storytelling, drawn from family history, offbeat news items or remembered places, delivered in a plain, unaffected voice.

The band's debut album, AOID, arrived in 2015 on Topshelf Records. Its follow-up, GN, released in 2017, brought wider recognition, with Rolling Stone naming it one of the best overlooked albums of that year. Printer's Devil, released in 2020, drew even stronger reviews, with MTV calling it the best work of their career and Pitchfork praising its emotional depth.

Happy Birthday, Ratboy followed in 2021, marking the band's tenth anniversary and featuring "Go Outside," a song later used in a Walmart ad campaign. Their 2023 album The Window, recorded in Seattle with producer Chris Walla, formerly of Death Cab for Cutie, drew the widest critical attention of their career. A sixth album, Singin' to an Empty Chair, followed in 2026.

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indie rock