Latest Posts

The Ten Best Songs from Rochester in 2025

January 16, 2026

2025 felt like a landmark year for Rochester indie music, rivaling any era since buffaBLOG’s inception. We’ve dug through hundreds of songs to hand-pick our absolute favorites of the year. Did we miss that critically acclaimed jam band album or a classical musician’s final bow? Probably. But that’s not really our bag. We chose to focus on the tracks our team truly championed and debated the ones that came out on top. Here is a Spotify playlist we made with all of our picks. Without further ado, here are our favorite ten songs from Rochester in 2025.     10. Harmonica Lewinski – “Rat Race”    Rochester creepsters Harmonica Lewinski started off the year right with their beachy, 60s-era single “Rat Race,” which showcased the band’s punchbowl of surfy guitar riffs, jungle beats, and signature oddness. For a band that’s been around nearly fifteen years, Harmonica Lewinski still has got[...]

Must See Shows (12/17/25-12/23/15)

December 18, 2025

Saturday, December 20th @ 7pm buffaBLOG Holiday Show @ Milkies   Since the blog has re-emerged in fall 2024, we have re-worked many of our operations to better fit the music landscape in 2025. One tradition we needed to continue was our annual holiday party, where we feature some of our favorite local/regional bands emerging from the scene and showcase them on one bill. We like to market this as a catch-all for all for some of the best bands in the scene currently and local scene supports to attend and semi-curious home-for-the-holidays Buffalonians to get a sense of what the Western NY indie scene is all about.   The holiday party’s past lineups had always tried to feature one out-of-town regional band, and this year’s performer comes by way of Rochester slacker-rock outfit kitchen. The band emerged into the blogosphere in 2025 with their highly acclaimed album Blue Heeler[...]

Kitchen – Blue Heeler in Ugly Snowlight, Grey on Gray on Gray on White

April 10, 2025

Since 2016, James Keegan’s buzzing musical project, Kitchen, has steadily carved out a distinct space in Rochester with its consistent output of introspective lo-fi folk. Now, Kitchen delivers its most substantial chapter yet with the arrival of Blue Heeler in Ugly Snowlight, Grey on Gray on Gray on White, the recording project’s sixth full-length album, comfortably venturing into double album territory across 20 diverse tracks. The sprawling and remarkably cohesive collection explores the corners of Keegan’s sonic range and unique songwriting styles.   The album primarily operates within a spectrum bookended by hushed, intimate acoustic pieces and more fleshed-out, full-band indie rock arrangements. The lo-fi aesthetic, a hallmark of Kitchen’s work, remains central, lending an air of closeness and immediacy to the recordings. Whether it’s a solitary acoustic guitar and Keegan’s refreshingly unvarnished vocals or a more layered composition, the production often feels like a private performance. This intimacy gets[...]