Keegan Powell

Keegan Powell is a Toronto-based songwriter and performing artist combining elements of psychedelic rock, with alternative folk, brit pop, and shoe gaze, to create something completely his own. Powell started his journey writing and recording in Toronto rock band Teenage Kicks (Resolution/EMI) as guitarist on their debut album 'Spoils of Youth' recorded with Alain Johannes (Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures). Powell went on to compose songs for Chastity (Dine Alone/Captured Tracks), on their debut LP Death Lust (2018), Home Made Satan (2019), and Suffer Summer (2022). In 2020, Powell joined studio project Darling Congress alongside Peter Van Helvoort and Brett Emmons of The Glorious Sons as lead guitarist.

Released in 2022, his debut album PREVIOUS PAIN garnered 5 singles across college and satellite radio. The album is co-produced by Dylan Frankland of the band Tallies (Bella Union Records) and features drummer Phil Jones, who played most famously on Tom Petty's 'Full Moon Fever'. In 2023, Powell released FEAR BE GONE, which came from the marriage of two unlikely, yet related places which inspired Powell to approach songwriting from a new perspective. The marrying of the literary and the lyrical derived from a book he started writing called Scatterings; part allegorical, one part poetry, one part short stories. As the poetic parts of the book started to form, Keegan realized the poems could potentially build some of the narrative for an album he was writing serendipitously.

The soothing acoustic howls that made Powell’s sophomore record FEAR BE GONE a college radio staple across North America proves something very clear-Powell has never stayed in one spot artistically. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he is incapable of it. If evidence of this is his past work, 2024's ALIEN RADIO was the sentencing in which nailed his hand to the coffin.

Imbued with infectious hooks and ferocious energy, ALIEN RADIO is a compilation album composed of tracks previously released and unreleased from Powell’s archive, spanning across several separate recordings from the years 2016-2019. The tracks are a glimpse into an artist trying to overreach his ability and achieving it, only to forget about it altogether. Unearthed years later, what remains is an ultimate companion piece to his current released work. The results are crystal clear pop songs in the guise of quarter life angst that make for some of the most exciting rock music heard this decade.

In 2026, Powell returns with his new album BETWEEN THE HALLS an unusually high voltage burst of high octane rock and sugary sweet pop melodies. Although at times it seems the album is sourcing dark energy simply as a way of taunting nature, that duality, where intimacy and unease relate seemlessly is not only Powell’s lyrical trademark but his overall sonic and potential life thesis. Surrounded by abstract insights and a mood that never seems to resolve between brooding and transcendent, each song reveals another secret with its narrative refusing completion, instead pushing towards the unscratchable question that is ultimate mystery.