Dowsing

For someone who spent the majority of his college years putting on basement shows and immersing himself in the D.I.Y. punk scene in New Jersey, it was inevitable that Erik Czaja would end up fronting a band of his own. Dowsing was formed in a Chicago pizzeria in 2010 with Gooey Fame on bass, Delia Hornik on organ, and Marcus Nuccio on drums, and quickly became a fixture in Chicago's underground punk scene. At the beginning of 2011, the quartet entered the studio to record their first EP. The self-released All I Could Find Was You appeared in May and saw the band delivering six tracks of emo-infused indie rock. Catching the attention of Michigan label Count Your Lucky Stars, which quickly signed the group, the EP was reissued a few months later. The band followed it up in 2012 with a split single with labelmates and touring partners Parker, and Dowsing's debut album, It's Still Pretty Terrible, came a month later. The band continued to tour for the rest of the year and into 2013, and eventually expanded into a five-piece, drafting Mikey Crotty on extra guitars before recording their sophomore album, I Don't Care Anymore. Released in August on Count Your Lucky Stars, Czaja announced that Hornik and Nuccio had been asked to leave the band. With Czaja focusing time on his other bands, Pet Symmetry and Kittyhawk, Dowsing wouldn't return to the live scene until mid-2014, when they toured the U.S. with the Sidekicks. A newly reinvigorated Dowsing -- which saw Czaja and Crotty joined by Michael Politowicz on bass and William Lange on drums -- released a demo track a year later as they put the upheaval of the past two years behind them. 2016 saw the four-piece signing to Mike Park's legendary Asian Man Records, and releasing their more aggressive-sounding third album, Okay, which appeared in April. The band headed out on tour in support of the release, with dates across Europe and the U.S. with fellow Chicagoans Ratboys, which also resulted in a split-single with the band on Massachusetts-based label Topshelf Recordings. ~ Rich Wilson