April + VISTA

April + VISTA is the musical project of the Virginia-raised singer/composer April George and the Maryland-raised composer/producer Matthew Thompson. In a decade-plus of activity, the duo garnered international acclaim with an oeuvre both deeply invested in excavating the impacts of human existence and unbound by the trappings of simple classification.

Their first major break came with 2018’s You Are Here, earning them a COLORS session for “FOMO,” praise from the likes of BBC Radio 1Xtra and The FADER, and a direct-support slot on Little Simz's North American and European tours for the Mercury Prize-nominated album GREY Area. Their 2021 follow-up Pit of My Dreams channeled the duo’s internal and external frustrations into a snapshot of the ripples of burnout, pushing their experimentation to its roughest and darkest edges. 2023 brought April + VISTA one of their biggest crossover moments to date: Slipping Into Color - a collaborative EP with Little Dragon, made on a trip to Gothenburg, Sweden - released on Ninja Tune. Little Dragon’s North American and European tours soon followed, with April + VISTA as direct support.

Traditional Noise, the duo's debut album, was released on April 22, 2026 via Third & Hayden. It’s the duo’s exploration of the formative music of their youth, twisting deeply familiar sounds into strange new territory and guiding their listeners into the comforts of a sweet unknown. In an effort to upend the notion of popular music, April + VISTA focused on unlocking the feelings and noises of their nostalgia to address this life’s persisting anxieties. The album plays like frayed memories, drawing from people and places of note to preserve what’s useful and release what no longer serves. Is tradition a refuge or a cage? Does the past condemn the spirit to repetition of its traumas? What is healing? Why leave music behind to begin with?

To bear such spiritual weight, the duo relied on their comfort zones, recording and playing the majority of the record themselves in a home studio or a friend’s warehouse. April learned viola, wrote string sections, and arranged a choir of friends for the first time. VISTA focused more on the textures of guitars and live drums, calling on longtime collaborators like producer Tony Kill and drummer Bradley “Foots” McDonald. Featuring a stereo mix by Pat Dicenso, and Immersive mixing by Christopher Willits and Ryan Kleeman, the music of Traditional Noise remains as slippery as its creators: it’s rock, soul, electronic, R&B, all it wants to be. Having the range is April + VISTA’s primary mode; their songs are calls to the beyond, operating as an archive of past selves and survival guides for pressing times and uncertain futures.