Ever since they were an adolescent, Mischa Dempsey has been eager to rock, cutting their teeth as a bassist and songwriter in bands from eastern Canada’s resolute DIY scene of the 2010s. It was through this wider scene that Dempsey first met future collaborators Andy Mulcair and Sarah Harris–playing a show with Mulcair in a Beatles-themed BnB venue in rural Nova Scotia, and Harris at a music festival in St. John’s, NL. When lockdown put touring life on hold, Dempsey took the time to develop their once-confrontational songwriting style into something that balanced subtlety and storminess. With a throwaway Bandcamp upload that Dempsey thought would only be heard by a few friends, knitting announced itself to the world with a seven-song self-titled mini-album whose candor and homespun sound spoke to a nagging malaise plaguing listeners all over.
Dempsey didn’t keep knitting a solo project for very long. The band started off as a four-piece that assembled member by member. Today, knitting has three central members: Dempsey, drummer Andy Mulcair (Andy and the Dannys, Lovelet), and guitarist-engineer Sarah Harris (Ultra Far). As a four-piece rock band, the bedroom sound of the self-titled evolved into a slacker-grunge hybrid that is pummeling and oppressive when called for, but has room for some lighthearted fun. They cemented their sound on their debut album, Some Kind of Heaven, their debut full-length, which dropped on September 6th, 2024 on Mint. Some Kind of Heaven’s brooding guitars and plainspoken lyrics speak to the variety of questions Dempsey was tackling in the early years of knitting. “Green” offers some lyrical continuity with the self-titled while getting more explicit about Dempsey’s evolving trepidations as an out non-binary trans person. “Spirit Gum” narrates the closing of a friendship as a loss of home, portrayed on video by puppets trying to house-hunt in an increasingly unaffordable city. Every song has roots in Dempsey’s everyday experiences, tied together with precise sonic coherence. Even “College Rock Song #1” feels laser engineered to win the hearts and minds of young rock fiends, swimming in something groovy and nostalgic but cut with something edgier. It’s a smart debut album designed to make a strong aesthetic thesis statement.
That statement resonated with audiences across the globe, leading to invitations to perform in festivals across the U.S. and Canada, including SXSW, New Colossus, Sled Island, Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival, Shivering Songs, and more. They headlined tours that hopped across the Canadian-American border, playing with other rising cult guitar-music favorites like Bugcatcher, Ribbon Skirt, and Fib. Dempsey, Mulcair, and Harris have each built strong networks in North America’s guitar alternative underbelly over the last decade, contributing to the band’s sonic maturity and welcome presence across the continent’s most illustrious DIY venues. The band even crossed the Atlantic, headlining several EU and UK shows before linking up with Preoccupations to support the legendary Canadian post-punk band, falling in love with their duelling guitars all over again.
Somehow, between these performances, knitting found time to write, record, and produce their sophomore album, Souvenir, splitting their sessions between Montreal and St. John’s as they took Dempsey’s quickly penned musings and grew them into a proper album. Coming out June 26th, 2026 via Mint Records, Souvenir is an introspective, at-times deeply existential album that arose in between-tour writing marathons that Dempsey initiated while in the throes of Montreal winter blues. With only loose concepts plotted, the band began the studio process, finishing the writing and composition of each song while building in plenty of time for iteration, with each new version getting more polished with additions of the occasional synthesizer, guitar lead, or cataclysmic drum fill. The album’s diverse sounds are a nod to Montreal’s buzzing DIY scene, sprouting new and innovative bands at a frightening pace throughout this decade. Harris helmed the album’s engineering, drawing on years of experience collaborating as a core member of knitting to guide the album’s production toward its one-of-a-kind sound. Souvenir has the benefit of sonic variation with zeroed-in focus on Dempsey’s existential reflections, each dressed up slightly differently but with the same recognizable guitar licks and drum hits that made Some Kind of Heaven unforgettable.
RIYL: Pavement, Sonic Youth, Breeders, Momma