Been Stellar Comes Home: Two Nights Opening for Wunderhorse at Warsaw

Here is a sentence that should make any Brooklyn guitar-rock partisan sit up straight: one of the most hyped young bands in Britain is spending two nights in a converted Polish social hall in Greenpoint, and the band warming the room for them is ours.

Wunderhorse — the project built around British songwriter Jacob Slater — plays a two-night stand at Warsaw this week. Slater is a genuinely strange success story: before Wunderhorse he fronted the short-lived London punk band Dead Pretties, then landed the role of Sid Vicious in Danny Boyle's 2022 miniseries Pistol. He turned that momentum into a band whose reputation rests less on the studio than on the stage — Wunderhorse shows have become the kind of word-of-mouth events people describe with their hands. On record, the story is two albums deep: the ragged, Neil Young–indebted debut Cub (2022) and the heavier, bigger-swinging Midas (2024).

But this is Brooklyn Beat, so let's talk about the opener, because the opener is the whole point.

Been Stellar are a New York band in the way that matters most — not by accident of address but by design. The group's core songwriting pair, vocalist Sam Slocum and guitarist Skyler Knapp, were childhood friends from Michigan who moved to the city and built the band here. What came out the other side sounds like a love letter to a specific lineage of downtown noise: the tension of Interpol, the scrape of Sonic Youth, the nervous cool of the Strokes-era Lower East Side. They didn't inherit that sound so much as move into the neighborhood and learn it by ear.

The rise has been quick and, notably, transatlantic. Been Stellar signed to Dirty Hit — the London label that houses the 1975, Wolf Alice, and beabadoobee — and released their debut full-length, Scream from New York, NY, in 2024. The title is not subtle, and it isn't meant to be. It's a record that treats the city as both subject and antagonist, all overheard sidewalk dread and blown-out romance. That Dirty Hit connection also explains the international company they keep: the band has spent real time supporting bigger acts on tour.

Which brings us to why this booking matters. There is a particular flavor of hometown show — the local band that broke out abroad, coming back to open in a room smaller than the ones they now headline overseas. It's a victory lap disguised as a support slot. For a Greenpoint crowd, watching Been Stellar plug in at Warsaw is watching the scene's export return in person, still close enough to touch, still cheaper than the eventual Terminal 5 tickets.

Warsaw itself is part of the pleasure. The Polish National Home at 261 Driggs Ave. remains one of the last great rooms in the borough where the pierogi window and the pit coexist, where the sound is loud, the ceiling is low, and the beer is served by people who have seen everything. Pair a British band chasing catharsis with a Brooklyn band chasing the ghost of its own city, and you have the rare double bill where the undercard argument is genuinely up for debate.

Go early. Openers are supposed to be an afterthought. This one is the reason to show up.

Sources: Warsaw gigography — Songkick