By: Anand Harsh

In these uncertain, and frankly, and little scary times, I'm glad to be delivering a bit of good news this week. Our latest edition of The Untz Challenge has come to a close, and two winners have been selected.

As some of our festival partners have made moves with their dates to work around the nationwide event lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we will hope all the craziness settles down soon and these acts can claim their hard-won slots on five festivals this year: Summer Camp, The Untz Festival, SONIC BLOOM, Electric Forest, and Imagine. After the 2020 we've all experienced, we're gonna need the release of lights, lasers, and plenty of bass out under the stars.

Austin Jones from the Ozarks made an impression on us. We're thrilled to be sending Kadela as a representative of The Untz to these five festivals. Jones has made some moves on his own over the years securing major releases and scoring support slots for huge acts over his career. His soulful, yet groovy “A Mindful Git Down” is a little grittier and a little funkier than his previous tunes, but he sure got The Untz staff's card with that combination.

And for the billionth year in a row, somehow we picked another Michigan act to head off to a slew of festivals this year. WokeZan, comprised of guitarists Dirk Phelps and Connor Wilson figured out the right formula with “CodeBreaker,” and will be going coast-to-coast with us this year as a major shot in the arm of their career.

As always we were inundated with so many selections from talented acts, and the process of landing on the final two artists to win the competition was an arduous one. Believe me when I say I wish we had ten slots at each of these festivals, because each year we're blown away by the talent that comes in. Dark times call for a silver lining, and we know that today the lives of these two acts are changed forever, and we hope to continue boosting careers for years to come.