The Jellybricks Made the Valley's Album of the Year — 25 Years Into the Job
Power pop is a genre of unfair math: bottomless craft, minuscule fame. Which makes it deeply satisfying to report that Harrisburg's The Jellybricks — a band that has been perfecting hooks in relative regional quiet for roughly two decades — walked out of the American Music Theatre in March with the biggest local trophy going. Their LP Dreaming in Stereo won Album of the Year at the 2026 Central Pennsylvania Music Awards.
The record earned it. Released Feb. 7, 2025, on Little Steven Van Zandt's power-pop label Wicked Cool Records, Dreaming in Stereo is 12 rounds of ringing guitars, stacked harmonies, and choruses engineered to lodge in your skull for a week. It opens on the pop-punk snap of "Age of Stupid," rides the sparkling title track, softens into the pure-pop "Monday's Never," and lands on the jangly closer "Crazy Weather." One national outlet, Power Pop News, called it "perhaps one of the best power pop albums of the year so far" — and in a genre this crowded with true believers, that's not faint praise.
The lineup is a study in continuity: Larry Kennedy (guitar, vocals), Garrick Chow (bass, vocals), Bryce Connor (guitar, vocals), and Tom Kristich (drums, vocals) — everybody sings, which is exactly why the harmonies hit like they do. The album was produced by Geoff Sanoff, and it carries a wink of indie-rock lineage in guest guitar work from Doug Gillard of Guided by Voices on select tracks. The lead single, "Devil's a Day Away," did the advance work of announcing that this was a band still sharpening, not coasting.
Why does a 25-year-old band winning a regional award matter more than the usual congratulations? Because it corrects a lie the industry tells about places like Harrisburg — that the talent here is a farm system, a waystation you graduate from on the road to somewhere with a skyline. The Jellybricks never left, never stopped, and made a record good enough that the region's own musicians and fans handed them Album of the Year over everyone chasing the trend. Longevity, it turns out, is its own form of ambition.
There's a broader signal in the win, too. The CPMAs have grown into a real barometer of a real ecosystem — an awards night with genre categories deep enough to honor blues, metal, jam, and R&B in the same breath. When that ecosystem's top album prize goes to a veteran power-pop band from the state capital, it tells you the valley rewards craft over hype. That's rare, and worth protecting.
Dreaming in Stereo is out now on CD via Wicked Cool Records and streaming on the usual platforms.
Twenty-five years in, the hooks still land, the trophy's finally on the shelf, and the correct response is not surprise. It's respect.
Sources: The Jellybricks – Dreaming in Stereo (Power Pop News); 2026 Central Pennsylvania Music Awards winners