of Montreal at WAVE Tonight: The Weirdest, Warmest Ticket in Town

Here is a sentence we did not expect to type in 2026: the can't-miss indie show of the week is happening on a stage in Wichita, and it belongs to a band that has been reliably strange for a quarter-century. of Montreal plays WAVE tonight, Thursday, July 23, and if you've never seen Kevin Barnes turn a rock concert into a fever dream, this is the room to do it in.

Start with the pedigree. of Montreal was born in mid-'90s Athens, Georgia, as part of the Elephant 6 collective — the same fizzy, lo-fi, harmony-drunk scene that gave us Neutral Milk Hotel and The Apples in Stereo. Over three decades, Barnes (who uses he/she/they) steered the project from twee bedroom pop into glam, funk, prog, and full-blown psychedelic art-rock, amassing what Polyvinyl fairly calls one of indie's "most sprawling and fascinating" catalogs. The live show became legend along the way: costume changes, theatrical vignettes, props, confetti, and a general refusal to let a song just sit there when it could instead be dressed as a horse.

The occasion tonight is aethermead, released June 5 on Polyvinyl — the band's 20th studio album. It's a breakup record, and an unusually plainspoken one for an artist who built a reputation on baroque obfuscation. Barnes wrote it in the wreckage of an ended engagement and a departure from an isolated Vermont life for New York, and the songs reflect that clarity. "I think it might just be more direct, more obvious, not as abstract," Barnes told Magnet Magazine in June. Elsewhere in that conversation: "I was using songwriting as a form of therapy, laying it out in front of my mind so I couldn't pretend it wasn't happening." For a catalog famous for hiding pain inside kaleidoscopic arrangements, that's a notable turn toward the window.

The touring band behind Barnes is a tight one — drummer Clayton Rychlik, keyboardist Jojo Glidewell, and bassist Ross Brand — and the 2026 run has stretched across the summer through venues large and small. Which is exactly why WAVE is the right kind of wrong for this. of Montreal is a band that has played Webster Hall and The Sinclair on this cycle; catching that spectacle in a hybrid indoor-outdoor Wichita room that tops out in the hundreds indoors is the sort of intimacy that big-market fans would trade a kidney for.

That's the pitch, really. This isn't a heritage act coasting on "Gronlandic Edit" and "Suffer for Fashion" — though, yes, play those, please. It's a working band in a genuinely fertile late chapter, touring an album with something to say, into a room small enough that you'll feel the confetti land. The theatrics will be there. The catalog will be there. And Barnes, newly direct, has arguably never had more to be direct about.

Why does it matter that this lands in Wichita on a Thursday? Because these are the shows that make a scene feel plugged into the wider indie world rather than adjacent to it. Big country tours will always find INTRUST. It's the of Montreals — the acts that could route around a mid-size market entirely — that tell you a city's rooms are worth a band's night off. WAVE keeps making that argument. Tonight it makes it in sequins.

Doors are early; the outdoor bar is stocked; wear something you don't mind getting glitter on. This is the fun one.

Sources: of Montreal's aethermead out now (Polyvinyl); A Conversation With Kevin Barnes (Magnet Magazine); of Montreal announce new album and tour (Under the Radar); WAVE, Wichita concert setlists (setlist.fm)