Footballhead

Chicago’s Footballhead revives the jagged riffs and gleaming hooks that defined the late-’90s and early-2000s overlap between alt-rock and emo, crafting songs suited to a day spent at the skate park. What began as frontman Ryan Nolen’s private outlet has drawn wider attention once a tight live unit expanded his early home recordings, culminating in the 2024 debut album Overthinking Everything on the independent Tiny Engines imprint.

Nolen spent his early years in the Chicago suburbs before relocating as a teenager to Palm Springs, California, where his admiration for blink-182 and Third Eye Blind deepened. At San Diego State University he began assembling his own pop-punk material, yet he waited until returning to Chicago to treat music seriously; there he started performing and, in 2019, launched the space-rock group Kirby Grip.

Footballhead initially served as a repository for songs Nolen felt were too pop-driven for Kirby Grip. The first of those tracks surfaced on the 2022 EP Kitchen Fly, which gained percussion when local emo singer/songwriter snow ellet contributed sampled live drums at the last minute. The release stirred enough interest to support live performances, prompting Nolen and ellet to recruit guitarist Liam Burns, drummer Robby Kuntz, and bassist Adam Siska—founding member of The Academy Is…—to complete the lineup.

The five-piece entered the studio in 2023 and self-released their first full-length, Overthinking Everything. Within months the band withdrew the album from streaming platforms after Tiny Engines, home to Mannequin Pussy and Adult Mom, offered a deal. Following a 2024 remaster and reissue, listeners gravitated toward the buoyant singles “Tightrope” and “Rug.” Only five months later Footballhead returned with the aggressive EP Before I Die, highlighted by “Your Ghost” and “Stupefied.”