This feels like it has been in the making for a while; at least those who have been aware of the New York indie scene have felt like it was bound to happen at some point. 3D Country was a huge hit among indieheads, but with Cameron Winter’s widely acclaimed solo album “Heavy Metal” and their latest album “Getting Killed,” which has been hailed by many as one of the best albums of 2025, Geese are more popular and beloved than ever.
With all the momentum and universal praise, Geese were destined to win their first award. Who would’ve thought it would be a BRIT Award? The Brooklyn indie rockers won International Group Of The Year tonight, and drummer Max Bassin accepted the award at Manchester’s Co-op Live, saying, “Free Palestine, f*ck ICE, go Geese!”
Censuraron el speech de Max de Geese en los Brit Awards por decir "Free Palestine and Fuck ICE" ‼️ pic.twitter.com/tKxpLaZg1C
— merytheroadie (@mariaroad_) February 28, 2026
It’s been a remarkable turnaround for a band that at this time last year was recording what became its breakthrough album under a cloud of professional and artistic uncertainty.
Formed in 2016, when the members were music-obsessed prep school students—this period culminated with maybe the most accomplished teenaged prog-rock album I have ever heard—Geese eventually signed with the indie label Partisan Records and put out its official debut, Projector, in 2021. It was just OK.
Music critics noted its musical resemblance to NYC bands of the past: the Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, Talking Heads, all the usual suspects. And they wrote “just OK” reviews. (Pitchfork gave it a 6.6, neither good nor bad enough for most readers to notice.)
Geese’s next record, 2023’s 3D Country, was a shockingly bold and frequently exhilarating swing for the fences, the kind of record where the time signatures change dramatically and a wild conga solo might suddenly appear out of nowhere. But the star of the show was unquestionably Cameron Winter, the singer-songwriter, whose fearless vocal style veered from a choked low-end warble (like Leonard Cohen playing on a disintegrating cassette tape) to a swashbuckling sex-god howl (akin to Mick Jagger in Some Girls mode) and immediately distinguished him as a uniquely charismatic frontman.
But even fewer people cared about 3D Country. When Winter decided to funnel his latest batch of songs toward a solo record, which he called Heavy Metal, his label opted to put it out in early December 2024, the height of year-end list season, presumably because it thought critics weren’t going to care anyway. They were wrong.
The oddly stirring ballads of Heavy Metal—which toned down the musical fireworks of Geese while amping up the ecstatic psycho-spiritual intensity—became a left-field critical hit and then a word-of-mouth sensation.
By September 2025, upon the release of Geese’s third album, Getting Killed, Winter and his band were among the only indie phenoms to break containment this decade. That Getting Killed managed to combine the best of 3D Country (meaty classic-rock guitars forming a powerful fist with a muscular rhythm section) with the strengths of Heavy Metal (the marriage of Winter’s eccentric voice and the assured, heartrending classicism of his songwriting) signaled the arrival of a band fully prepared to meet its moment.
Geese were up against HAIM, HUNTR/X, Tame Impala, and Turnstile. Geese just completed a Japan run where Cameron Winter and Mac DeMarco visited city pop legend Haruomi Hosono and also sang his song at karaoke. They also dropped their live album, Geese: Live At Third Man Records, yesterday. And, as you probably already know, they did a Tiny Desk Concert earlier this month.