School Fair (Findlay Buchanan, Semisi Ma’ia’i, Hamish Morgan, De Stevens and Rose Pickernell) make music embedded in the human experience.  It’s a product of the band’s native New Zealand, a place that remains intimate and remote, where emotion is magnified over both distance and familiarity.  The five band members began the project renting out a factory-sized, sub-zero degree Celsius room normally operated by construction workers in the industrial area of Ōtepoti, Dunedin, New Zealand in 2021, recording music on the 4-track tape recorder that would become debut Gorse on a Hill.  The album remained the only trace of the band online for a few years, an artifact for those who know where to look.  School Fair’s music has this sense of self-discovery when you find it, a sound that feels both recognizable and like the vacant expanse of a country whirring by on a train.  Still with little to no self-promotion, the appearance of sophomore effort Bird the Kid online in early 2025 was a new portal to their world of melodic and intricate indie music that retains a kind of atmospheric beauty.