Sub-Radio

Tonight at 7 p.m., the six-piece indie pop/rock band Sub-Radio will take the stage in Wilson Hall before Smallpools. The Sterling, Virginia-based outfit includes two JMU sixth-year seniors — Matt Prodanovich on guitar and back-up vocals and Mike Chinen on rhythm guitar and vocals — as well as 2014 alumnus John Fengya, who plays the guitar and keyboard. The band has seen Smallpools live twice, and in addition to considering them one of their primary influences, Prodanovich and Chinen see Thursday’s show as their most important gig yet. - The Breeze

The band’s style can only be described as the type of music you’d jam to on the way to the beach in the heat of summer. The pop rock energy of the songs kept the audience’s attention throughout the entirety of the performance. The band has recently debuted its first album “Same Train // Different Station.” The songs are sure to energize the audience just as their performance did. - The Breeze

Sub-Radio. Really, they were almost our favorite show of the day. Despite being so early and at the tiny North Hub stage, their energy was incredible. The “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” cover was amazing, and showed that they absolutely deserved to be in the festival. They are pretty much unknowns now, but we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them blow up–they’re too talented not to. And, since they’re releasing a single a month for the rest of the year, they have plenty of new stuff coming. - The Festival Beat

DC pop-rock act Sub-Radio debuted their dance-ready new song “What Are We,” taken from their upcoming EP Headfirst, due out April. - Alternative Press

The title track from Virginia/DC-based sextet Sub-Radio, "What Are We?" asks one of the more pertinent questions in anyone's romantic life: Is it just sex? Is it something like love? Is it fleeting or something more sustainable? The collective can't answer the question definitively but asking it in the most infectious of ways for nearly four minutes may prove a better strategy. The hook is heavy and immediate and makes you wish that your volume knob could stretch a few dozen notches higher.

With contemporary dating nomenclature evolving and the means of communication coming in forms that the originators of love could not have comprehended, basic ideas become complex. Discussing the single, Sub-Radio offered this: "We looked around at our friends and peers and this struggle they're all having with having to put labels on their relationships," the band wrote. "Everybody's 'talking' but nobody knows what 'talking' means. Maybe for some people that works but some of us are too neurotic for that kind of uncertainty. And sometimes even young people just want to lay their damn cards on the table. We wanted to write the soundtrack to that moment."

And, maybe, get us to think more about what we're saying while we're "talking". - PopMatters