Are there any music lovers out there who did not dream of hosting their own festival at some point? The members of the Kraków-based .WAVS band are professionals, which is why they didn’t stop at just making plans. They use the term ‘heavy pop’ to describe their blend of raw guitar sound and catchy melodies. They also adopted it as the name of the mini-festival, and invited young Polish artists associated with the worlds of ‘heavy’ and ‘pop’ music to take part. The quotation marks emphasise that these categories are, after all, rather arbitrary and broad, and that the music is supposed to bring us together, not divide us.
In the second edition of the initiative, the hosts will be joined by some good friends from the Kraków scene – the proto-metal band Taraban, whose line-up is shrouded in mystery. The capital of Małopolska will also welcome guests from Warsaw, who are no strangers to the art of self-promotion. Metro is “the perfect fit for alternative fans and features just the right amount of alternative for mainstream fans”; Mlecze play songs in which “spring meets autumn, and the boundaries between pop and rock blur into a harmonious indie/bedroom pop”, whilst the band Toń boasts “a funeral director, an energy sector lawyer, a singing teacher, an MTV translator and the dad of a Polish stoner play music that straddles the line between good vibes and a bad trip”. (Karnet 9/2026)
