Passafire

Unlike many reggae-rock ensembles that lean into mellow atmospheres and an endless-holiday ethos, the Savannah, Georgia quartet Passafire cultivates a harder-edged, punk-inflected, and forward-thinking strain of the hybrid. The group came together in 2003 while its members were based at the Savannah College of Art and Design, quickly building momentum through nonstop live dates and a self-released, self-titled debut that surfaced in 2006. In 2008 they joined the roster of LAW—the boutique label operated by fellow reggae-rock outfit Pepper—and issued their second album, Submersible, with the follow-up Everyone on Everynight arriving on the same imprint the next year. Under LAW’s mentorship they established their own Flame Guy Records and, in 2011, delivered the Paul Leary-produced Start from Scratch as their fourth full-length. Independence proved short-lived: Easy Star Records picked them up in 2012, and the resulting album Vines reached stores a year later, entering the Billboard Reggae Chart at number one. An EP titled Interval appeared in 2015, and the band’s sixth studio album, Longshot, followed in 2017.