Young Medicine

Creating a bold mixture of metalcore guitar and drums, dance pop melodies, and boy band harmonies, Young Medicine are a group who purposefully blur the lines between pop and rock. Sounding impressively big and enthusiastically over the top, they sound glossy enough to please the average dance pop fan while adding in enough muscular rock firepower to move their sound into unexpected territory. Young Medicine first broke through with their rocked-up cover of *NSYNC's "Tearin' Up My Heart" in 2018, and the following year offered a solid dose of their own songcraft on their first full-length album, Interlinked. Young Medicine were formed in Kansas City, Kansas by Bret Liber on keyboard and vocals, and Josh Hurst on guitar and vocals. The two originally worked together in a metalcore band called Bella Muerte, who were formed in 2008 and made their recording debut with a 2010 three song EP titled 'Bout Damn Time, and a five-song release, Better Than Nothing, following in April 2012. They released five more digital tracks between December 2012 and November 2013 before Bella Muerte faded out, and in 2014, Liber and Hurst began exploring a different sound. Recruiting bassist Peter Romano and holding on to Bella Muerte drummer Mace May, Young Medicine began playing out that same year, and they made enough of an impression that they were named Best Alternative Band of 2015 by the Kansas City entertainment journal Project Backstage. In 2014, the group began releasing a handful of digital singles, including the originals "She Makes Me Do Dirty Things" and "Oh! The Horror," as well as a cover of "You Are the One" by Shiny Toy Guns and a reworking of an old Bella Muerte track, "Guilty Pleasures, Desperate Measures." The group embraced the D.I.Y. philosophy, recording and releasing their own music, producing their own videos, and touring frequently, and in 2018 their profile rose when they released a muscular but tuneful cover of *NSYNC's "Tearin' Up My Heart" that earned significant attention through streaming services. (By the time that track was released, Michael McEvoy had replaced Mace May on drums.) In August 2019, Young Medicine brought out their first full-length album, Interlinked, which included the fan favorites "Shinjū," "Not Human," and "Living Fiction." The album fared well enough to make the Heatseekers chart for up and coming artists, peaking at number 22, and an instrumental version of Interlinked was issued in November 2019. ~ Mark Deming