Kestrels

This is a killer review of Better Wonder from The Big Takeover! Check it out. Close listening ally! Jack Rabid also listed us as one of the top 100 LPs of 2025. Link in comments. Check it out!

Kestrels - Better Wonder (Darla Records) On ‘Better Wonder,’ Kestrels sound like a band finally trusting the strange weather systems they’ve always circled. The album doesn’t just lean into shoegaze’s familiar pleasures of volume and blur; it uses them as tools to map a restless inner life. This is music that feels lived in after...

Our cover of Wham’s “Last Christmas” is once again seasonally appropriate! Recorded mostly out at my house in the country with some re-recorded drums in Toronto, this fuzzy ode to weird Christmas feelings is ready for your playlist. Find it wherever you stream music. I had fun doing 60s style guitar->fuzz->straight into the preamp during the outro. Masterfully mixed by at and masterfully mastered at . Find it wherever you stream or grab the download in your preferred format from Darla.com.

Happy Friday!

It’s a good day to grab Better Wonder on LP/CD/Dig from kestrels.bandcamp.com. Every day is a good day to do the same from Darla.com!

Some recording and mixing artifacts from the archives for you ⚡️

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Hello good people!

Halifax show is imminent. November 8 at the Dartmouth Woodside Tavern with Ronny Howl (EP release on Noyes Records) and Everyone in Cars. Tickets available in the link! Fresh batch of shirts and vinyl ready to go. I even found some old sealed CDs if that’s your thing. See ya there!

Ronny Howl *EP Release* w/Kestrels and Everyone in Cars — Side Door Join Ronny Howl for the release of their new EP Hard to Please with special guests Kestrels and Everyone in Cars. Location: Woodside Tavern, 209 Pleasant St, Dartmouth Ronny Howl - https://ronnyhowl.bandcamp.com/ Kestrels - https://kestrels.bandcamp.com/ Everyone in Cars - https://everyoneincars.b

We are playing at the on August 8th (this Friday!) as part of the very cool .us series alongside .band (fresh off Music Nova Scotia Awards nominations! — I produced and mixed their debut record so it’ll be good to finally share a stage). Tickets are $10 and are available at the door only. Doors at 8:30.

I haven’t played a full band Kestrels show in Truro since around 2011 when we played at the Douglas Street school, but we used to play Truro all of the time when we started. Our first 7” called Seaside was mostly recorded at this legendary apartment on King Street (some crucial production work and mixing by ), just a few blocks away from the Marigold. It had a huge, beautiful open concept top floor which was home to several bands. The apartment stayed in our friend group at the time and if memory serves correctly the rent was $350 a month. I wouldn’t exactly call them halcyon days, but I’ve been thinking about those early TAAC grounds basement shows and American Apparel hoodies and black rimmed glasses quite a bit. (Still half-committed to black rimmed glasses, by the way.) My goal was to have a 7” out before we played our first show but it didn’t quite happen. I think we sold posters with a download code on our first “tour” (Halifax, Truro, and a pizza place in Sydney) because the shipment was delayed. I ended up cutting and folding 200 sleeves for that 7” back in Lornevale back in my childhood bedroom. Punishing! Somehow Grant Lawrence heard that single and put it on his top songs of 2008 for CBC which seemed like magic at the time. That single is pretty cool; hopefully I’ll get it online at some point.

Anyway — that’s how this whole thing started.

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

It’s going to be a fun night and I hope you can make it out. I’ve got a fresh shipment of our new record on LP and CD as well as a bunch of shirt designs and other fun stuff. I even unearthed a few LP copies of A Ghost History and that aforementioned Seaside 7” (no sleeves, unfortunately). See you there!

Sick poster by

Biiiiiiiig day and night in Toronto! A visit to to plan out some future activities and a fantastic show with , .to, and at . Last show of this run tonight at !

Great night at the . Onward to the tonight, checking out on the way…

Fun night at in Hamilton. Thanks for the great pics and videos as always! See you tonight at

Great tour opener in Windsor! Thanks for coming out and going wild at the merch table. ripped it up. This tour is going to rule. On to Hamilton at tonight.