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Rabbit Rabbit Radio is the song-a-month art-pop duo of Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi, both formerly of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Founded in February 2012, the project releases a new song to Bandcamp subscribers on the first day of every month, collecting them into yearly volume albums. Drawing on art song, folk song, industrial and improvised music and heart-wrenching balladry, their songs are described as raw, beautiful, sparse and rich. The core duo is expanded in performance and recording by Jeremy Flower and Jon Evans.

2 Foot Yard was a San Francisco/Oakland-based chamber-rock trio led by violinist-vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, alongside cellist-vocalist Marika Hughes and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily (drums, guitar). Functioning as a songwriting collective, the group blended chamber-music intimacy with rock and avant-pop, occupying "the fertile cracks between art song and pop song." It grew out of a solo album Kihlstedt released on Tzadik and released two records: the self-titled "2 Foot Yard" (Tzadik, 2003) and "Borrowed Arms" (self-released, 2008).

Empalot were a French experimental band formed in the Landes in 1998 by Gojira's Joe and Mario Duplantier with friends from Joe's high-school thrash band. Self-described as "terroir metal," they welded alternative metal, jazz fusion, funk rock and avant-garde noise to burlesque, self-deprecating theatre, with members costumed as axes, clouds and flowers on stage. Conceived as the festive antithesis of Gojira, the group toured France between 1999 and 2004 and released a single studio album, Tous aux Cèpes (2002), before going on hiatus. The Duplantier brothers performed under the aliases Vensceslas Podoldo and Daniel Pestous.

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SNAILFORCE! is the genre-hopping instrumental project of Greg Eldridge and Adam Stacey, based in Portland, Oregon, blending metal, Balkan, prog and other styles into what the band calls a "musical slime project." Adam Stacey is also known for recording with Estradasphere, Atomic Ape, Secret Chiefs 3, High Castle Teleorkestra and Igorrr. The band's debut, the two-track EP "Greg and Adam's Wilderness Adventure," was released on May 24, 2024, mixed and mastered by Justin Phelps at The Hallowed Halls, with a rotating cast of guest players on strings, horns, shamisen and more.

Negative Øhio is a noise/experimental duo of Gigakoops (Ohio) and Nightmare Lyre (Norway), begun in 2016. Self-tagged across an eclectic sprawl — jazz fusion, industrial, dark ambient, digital hardcore, queercore, dada, and avant-garde metal — the project favors abrasive, self-consciously limitless production married to absurdist, Dada-inflected humor.

Faun Fables is an American avant-folk / dark-folk band based in Oakland, California, formed in the late 1990s by Spokane-raised singer, dancer and songwriter Dawn McCarthy. Known for a theatrical "songtelling" style, the band blends British, Scandinavian, Appalachian and Eastern European folk traditions with art rock and performance art. McCarthy's principal collaborator is Nils Frykdahl of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, whom she married; the two build the project around McCarthy's voice and Frykdahl's multi-instrumental work.

Nucleus Torn was a Swiss avant-folk/progressive-metal project founded in 1997 by multi-instrumentalist Fredy Schnyder, expanding into a chamber-metal ensemble with cello, violin, flute, and an array of folk instruments (hammered dulcimer, bouzouki, oud, bagpipes). Signed to Prophecy Productions from 2006, the band moved between folk-rock, 1970s progressive-rock homage, and extreme metal across a decade-plus discography, including a conceptual Nihil/Knell/Andromeda Awaiting trilogy. Active until 2015, the later lineup included Eluveitie's Anna Murphy.

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God of Shamisen is a Santa Cruz, California band formed in late 2004 and led by Tsugaru-shamisen player Kevin Kmetz, billed as the world's first rock band to combine metal, funk, and progressive rock with the Tsugaru-shamisen, a fretless lute from Northern Japan. Its lineup features Kevin Kmetz (shamisen), Lee Smith (drums), Karl Schnaitter (guitar), and Mark Thornton (bass). The band shares members with experimental band Estradasphere: drummer Lee Smith moved to Santa Cruz in 2004 to join Estradasphere as their permanent drummer, and Kmetz also worked with the group. Their second album, Smoke Monster Attack (2010), was produced by Billy Anderson and Mark Thornton.

The Book of Knots is a Brooklyn experimental art rock studio collective formed in the spring of 2003 at Joel Hamilton and Tony Maimone's Studio G, with Matthias Bossi and Carla Kihlstedt completing the core quartet. The group built a trilogy of themed concept albums: the self-titled debut (Arclight, 2004) about failed sea voyages, Traineater (Anti-, 2007) about crumbling Midwestern rust belt towns, and Garden of Fainting Stars (Ipecac Recordings, 2011) about flight and space travel. Their records feature a rotating cast of guest vocalists and musicians including Tom Waits, Mike Watt, Mike Patton, David Thomas, Blixa Bargeld, and Jon Langford.

Polkadot Cadaver is an American avant-garde/alternative metal band formed in Rockville, Maryland in 2007 by ex-members of Dog Fashion Disco, and stylistically a close continuation of that band. Their 'schizophrenic musical madness' shape-shifts between thrashing metal, folk-pop, experimental rock and darkly comedic theatricality across albums like Purgatory Dance Party, Sex Offender and Echoes Across the Hellscape. Clutch's Neil Fallon guested on their 2013 record.