Learn more about who is coming to ArtsWells 2026…
Alexandria Maillot
Vancouver based artist, songwriter, and producer Alexandria Maillot, pairs poignant lyricism with genre-bending soundscapes with a sound that fuses indietronica and ambient pop with elements of R&B and psychedelia. Known for their gritted, nuanced vocals reminiscent of a jazz-tinged Angel Olsen, Maillot’s work has received national radio attention and critical acclaim, including notable features on SiriusXM’s “The Verge” and CBC Q with Tom Power, alongside a 2020 Western Canadian Music Award nomination for Breakout Artist of the Year. With sonic influences like Radiohead, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and Juana Molina, Maillot is gearing up for releasing their third full-length album, Cryptomnesia.
Black Pace w/ Shael Wrinch
Mwayi Mphande better known by their stage name Black Pace, is a passionate Malawian-African women’s rights campaigner, life skills coach, business student and celebrity Hip-hop artist. She was born and raised in Malawi, South Eastern Africa and currently resides on Bowen Island.
Charlotte Cornfield
We’re beyond elated to welcome Charlotte Cornfield to Wells for the 2026 ArtsWells Festival.
Hailed by Rolling Stone magazine as “Canada’s best-kept secret,” Charlotte’s songwriting is concise and cathartic, with the uncanny ability to evoke emotions that you didn’t yet know you were capable of feeling.
Her 6th studio album, Hurts like Hell, is the most open-hearted, full-voiced album of her career and the first she’s recorded since the birth of her daughter in 2023. Decamping to Philip Weinrobe’s Sugar Mountain studio in Brooklyn, New York in January 2025, Cornfield was joined by Palehound’s El Kempner (guitar/vocals), Lake Street Drive’s Bridget Kearney (bass/vocals), Adam Brisbin (guitar/pedal steel), and Sean Mullins (drums). She and Weinrobe then recruited Feist, Buck Meek, Christian Lee Hutson and Maia Friedman to sing on the album. “Every musician involved was a dream collaborator,” Cornfield says. These ten songs are at once a reaffirmation of Cornfield standing among the great singer-songwriters of her generation and the first articulation of her future, whatever uncertainty and love it may bring.
Checkdown Charlie
Checkdown Charlie pulls heartstrings, not punches. Their melodies make for a
good time, while their lyrics paint a picture of community, nature, and
connection.
It’s not all roses: gritty and uncompromising, Checkdown Charlie
invites you to get curious and dig in.
Cryptozoologists
Since 2016, Cryptozoologists have been creating scrappy art rock in Whitehorse, Yukon, with acclaim and without. The band’s music carries a spirit of raw and unapologetic political directness, while their distinct, literary songwriting and style channel Indie surrealism at its best. The band consists of songwriter Zach McCann-Armitage and Dawson Beaulieu,Fabian Brook, and Josh MacNeil.
Backwater Station, their latest album, is the band at their most honed and confident, a culmination of a decade of irreverent and angst-fueled songwriting in Whitehorse’s fast-changing social landscape. As contrast to the romanticization of Whitehorse as the unblemished, so-called “wilderness city,” the album’s nine songs centre elements of the left-behind, the unremarkable, and the undesired of the gentrifying urban public sphere – the city’s undeveloped gravel lots, its puke averted on the sidewalk, and the route of its human waste to the municipal sewage lagoon.
DAYSHADE
DAYSHADE is the collaborative ensemble of Vancouver and Montreal based musicians and friends. Their homelands span Mexico, Guyana, the UK, and Canada. Singing in English, French and Spanish, DAYSHADE’s vocally-driven, original compositions explore themes of connection, beauty, grief, and belonging. Their lyricism, harmonies, and fusion rhythms will transport you to the bottom of the ocean, the comfort of home, and into the light and shadow of our inner and outer worlds.
Empanadas Ilegales
Empanadas Ilegales is a six-piece tropical psychedelic music ensemble based in Vancouver, Canada, formed in 2017 by a group of Latin American and Canadian musicians navigating the distance between diaspora and homeland. Born out of Vancouver’s university circuit (UBC and Emily Carr), the band emerged as a heartfelt response to cultural disconnection—an intentional return to the roots that raised them, and a refusal to dilute their identity for mainstream expectations. Rather than treating performers and audiences as separate, Empanadas Ilegales approach music as a shared ritual: call-and-response energy where everyone becomes part of the groove. Musically, the band merges traditional Latin American rhythms (cumbia, salsa, Afro-Caribbean percussion and folkloric motifs) with West Coast psychedelia, surf rock, free jazz, and experimental improvisation, creating an emblematic sound that is both ancestral and futurist. Their compositions are rhythm-forward, hypnotic, and designed for movement—music for the dancefloor that also carries memory, migration, and history inside it.
Improv Shmimprov
Improv Shmimprov is the premier improv group in Prince George. We bring laughter and joy through our diverse range of improvisational performances. Our talented team is dedicated to creating unforgettable experiences for our audience, ensuring every show is unique and engaging.
In My Bones
In My Bones are a duo from the wilds of Bella Coola, BC—either by design or because they
never quite left. Buddy Thatcher and Rose Clark write songs about the beautiful messes
most people avoid admitting to. Their latest single, Firecracker, is loud and unapologetic.
With five singles, including Allan (a CBC Searchlight semi-finalist), they’ve played across BC and into Europe. Their loyal fans, the Bone Heads, keep showing up. After a short break
(Rose raising humans, Bud “retired”), they’re back—honest, a little unruly, and still very much
in their bones.
Lucy Jeffery
Lucy Jeffery (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist who is honoured to call both Wells
(traditional use areas of the Xatśūll, and Lhtako Dene Nations) and Vancouver (traditional lands
of the xwməθkwəyə̓ m (Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and s ̱ əlilwəta㶶 (Tsleil-Waututh)
Nations) their home.
Lucy started writing songs at a young age through the Youth Songwriting
Workshop hosted by Arts Wells, and ran by Corwin Fox and Kia Kadiri. They have always
dreamed of playing a set at this festival, and are incredibly excited to share their music with
you. They would like to thank Elyssia Sasaki for keeping the arts alive, and Corwin Fox for
inspiring them to write music in the first place!
Mother Sun
Mother Sun create melodic and adventurous rock n roll from the interior desert of Kamloops BC
Canada. The three piece has shaped their sound around songs that burrow in realms of dreamy
psych, folk rock, power pop and jazz. The band released their fourth LP ‘Meadow 6’ via Earth
Libraries and Divine Bovine Records in October 2024.
The band has toured western Canada consistently since 2018, appearing at numerous festivals
such as Khatsalano, Between the Peaks, Starbelly Jam and internationally at Treefort Fest in
Boise, Idaho. The band has also had several songs appear on Showtime TV series Shameless
and have shared stages with Dead Ghosts, Vinyl Williams, the Sadies, the Breathing Effect and
Ghostwoman.
The Misery Mountain Boys
You might hear the tunes of the Misery Mountain Boys drifting from behind a rotating bookcase of a 1930’s speakeasy. Harkening back to a simpler time, the MMB’s create a soundscape infused with tongue in cheek wit, playfulness, and nostalgia. The band’s performance delivers as both classic and fresh, offering a generous variety of sweaty jazz numbers, velvety love songs, and swingin’ jump-blues.
Stephen Hamm Theremin Man
Stephen Hamm, a legendary figure in Vancouver’s music and arts scene for over thirty years, is
best known today as Theremin Man—a fearless explorer of sound whose performances center
on the theremin, the rare electronic instrument played without touch.
Having cut his teeth in iconic Canadian bands like Slow, Canned Hamm, and Nardwuar and the
Evaporators, Hamm has since carved out a singular path as a solo artist. His shows fuse
theremin, synthesizer, and growling vocals into a genre-defying mix of electropop, space rock,
and experimental soundscapes.
With decades of innovation behind him and a relentless drive to push music forward, Stephen
Hamm: Theremin Man invites listeners to step into the future of sound.
Van Lefan
Van Lefan (樂凡) is a Taiwanese interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, BC, creating immersive works that weave sound, movement, and visual art into socially engaged performances. Blending voice, guitar, flute, and live electronics, her ethereal sound lives between experimental folk and art-pop—offering sonic rituals for reflection, grief, healing, and collective dreaming.
Inspired by protest folk of the 60s and 70s and contemporary genre-blending artists such as Aurora and Sufjan Stevens, Lefan’s work is a space of enchantment and resistance, rooted in ancestral memory, ecological connection, and hope as an active practice.
Image by @shelflife.creative
And more to come…
Next round of announcements are the First Week of May!