Good Shows has lined up one of the summer’s more compelling indie bills for La Sala Rossa on Thursday, July 30. Nap Eyes, Ribbon Skirt and Packs share the stage, with Montreal’s Fireball Kid on DJ duties to open the night.
The bill spans the country. Ribbon Skirt and Fireball Kid are Montreal acts, Nap Eyes formed in Halifax before its members scattered across Canada, and Packs are from Toronto. What ties them together is a shared strain of smart, guitar-forward indie rock.
Nap Eyes
Nap Eyes started in Halifax around vocalist Nigel Chapman, whose plain-spoken, slightly wry delivery has drawn steady comparisons to Bob Dylan and Jens Lekman across a decade of records. The band, rounded out by guitarist Brad Loughead (also of Homeshake), bassist Josh Salter and drummer Seamus Dalton, released its fifth album The Neon Gate in October 2024 on Paradise of Bachelors. It is their most adventurous set yet, built up from loop-based demos into songs like Dark Mystery Enigma Bird and Passageway that wander somewhere between folk-rock and something stranger. Live, they tend to loosen the studio’s edges and lean into the interplay between Chapman’s voice and Loughead’s guitar.
Ribbon Skirt
If you follow the Polaris Music Prize, this name will be familiar. Ribbon Skirt is the Montreal project led by Anishinaabe musician Tashiina Buswa with guitarist Billy Riley. Their debut album Bite Down arrived in April 2025 on Mint Records, produced by Scott Munro of Preoccupations and mixed by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, and it landed on the 2025 Polaris shortlist. It is a darker, post-punk-leaning record that sits with grief and memory while celebrating Buswa’s Indigenous identity on her own terms. A follow-up EP, PENSACOLA, came in October 2025.
Packs
Toronto’s Packs revolve around songwriter Madeline Link, whose loose, jangling songs earned early attention from Royal Mountain and Brooklyn’s Fire Talk. After the debut Take the Cake (2021) and Crispy Crunchy Nothing (2023), the band recorded Melt the Honey in a rural Quebec cabin, using the sauna as a vocal booth, and released it in January 2024. Their sound splits the difference between laid-back and sharp, with Link’s eye for the small, telling detail doing much of the work. This is a band worth arriving early for.
Fireball Kid
Opening on the decks, Fireball Kid is the Montreal project of Maritime transplants whose records move from party-pop through synth-pop to, most recently, a folkier acoustic register on Deer Path Turn to a Shortcut (May 2026, Born Losers Records).
The details
Nap Eyes, Ribbon Skirt, Packs and Fireball Kid play La Sala Rossa (4848 boulevard Saint-Laurent) on Thursday, July 30. Doors at 7 p.m., 18+.
Tickets available HERE.
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