THE AVETT BROTHERS made mainstream waves with their 2009 major label debut, I and Love and You, landing at #16 on the Billboard Top 200 and garnering critical acclaim from Rolling Stone, Paste, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Time. 2012 saw The Carpenter hit #4 on the Billboard Top 200, while People, USA Today, and American Songwriter lauded the album. The group appeared on Jimmy Kimmel LIVE! twice in a few months' time. During their second performance, the Brooklyn Philharmonic joined to pay homage to Brooklyn with "I and Love and You" at Mr. Kimmel's request. Their eighth studio album, Magpie and the Dandelion, debuted at #5 on the Billboard Top 200. They performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show with David Letterman, and accompanied Chris Cornell for a Pearl Jam tribute on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The band supported The Rolling Stones in Raleigh during 2015's Zip Code Tour.

True Sadness achieves THE AVETT BROTHERS highest career debut to date and dominates multiple charts. The Rick Rubin produced album hit #1 on Billboard’s Top Albums Chart, #1 Top Rock Albums Chart, #1 Digital Albums Chart, #3 on the Billboard Top 200 and scored two Grammy nominations. THE AVETT BROTHERS were inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2016 and continue to be revered as one of the top folk-rock acts in the country.

A layered wordsmith, Queens rapper Homeboy Sandman was born to a boxing father who emigrated from the Dominican Republic to New York and fought on the heavyweight circuit. Retiring undefeated, Sandman's dad then went to law school to become a community lawyer, a path the son would follow for three years before dropping out. At first, it was to become a teacher, but just moonlighting as an MC wasn't enough, so with the 2007 release of his debut EP, Nourishment, he went with hip-hop full-time. After Nourishment 2 (Second Helpings) expanded the EP to album length, his official debut album, Actual Factual Pterodactyl, followed in 2008. DJ Spinna and Ski Beats would both lend a hand to his 2010 album, The Good Son, released the same year that Sandman would be featured as an aspiring rapper's mentor on the MTV reality television series Made. In 2011 he signed with Stones Throw and released the Subject: Matter EP. His first full-length for the label, 2012's First of a Living Breed, featured production from the likes of Oh No, rthentic RTNC, Oddisee, and Jonwayne.