Homecoming: Wildermiss is the band to see at Outside Days

No matter where Wildermiss roams, Colorado is always home.

The Denver-born indie trio moved to Nashville nearly five years ago in search of a new frontiers. But vocalist-synth player Emma Cole, guitarist Joshua Hester and drummer Caleb Thoemke still stay true to their roots, and with an upcoming sophomore album in the works, the group is again returning to the Rockies to share its latest with the hometown crowd first.

“It feels right doing it Denver, like, we got new music, let’s play them in Denver, why not,” Hester says.

“Denver’s home,” Cole adds, “so it’s exciting to share that.”

Wildermiss dropped a new single, “Kiss The Weeds,” in April and is playing Outside Days this weekend, kicking off the fest on Friday, May 29, at the Auraria Campus. Japanese Breakfast, Goth Babe and Death Cab For Cutie are also on the day’s slate.

“Half of our set will be music that no one’s ever heard,” Cole says. “We’ve been keeping our cards close. It’s been nice. We might as well do it at Outside Days, like, ‘Here they are.’”

Known for being footloose, often touring across the country since 2016, the trio took some downtime last year to focus on its first record in three years, following the success of 2023’s “Levitate,” which included hit “W.I.F.I” — the band’s second song to hit more than one million streams, behind 2020 single “Supermagical” and its nearly 1.2 million streams to date.

“We’re ramping things back up again. It was kind of nice, we took some time last year to recalibrate and reconnect, and we wrote and recorded a lot of music,” Cole explains. “Honestly, it was so nice not to be on the road for a second because we’ve been a band that’s been on the road a lot the past ten years.

“At one point, we were only home 100 days out of the year,” she continues. “It was nice in 2025 to take a step back and breathe for a minute and readjust, and out of that came a lot of really exciting music. It feels good to be getting that train going again.”

Fans can expect that signature synth-pop sound, captured in the bandmates’ home studio, on which Wildermiss built its loyal local following, regularly packing out shows and landing opening spots for such headliners as Nathanial Rateliff and The Oh Hellos over the years.

“It was the energy we wanted to bring into the record. I feel like whenever we’re having a good time in the studio and not stressed out about the part or getting the perfect take, the energy in the room for us will innately go into the song,” Thoemke explains. “I think the biggest thing we’ve learned over the years is just keeping the excitement alive in the studio and just explore, explore, explore.

“You can always go back and edit, but just chase the magic in the room because that’s the thing you can’t make out of nothing,” he continues. “When it comes, you got to just run with it.”

The ethos of Outside Days, now in its third year, seems to fit the approach and new music, too.

“The world and how it’s been shifting and changing and where things are at,” Cole says. “It felt really good to write more airy and organic and dreamy. Overall, it has more of a hopeful tone, which is cool.”

In addition to Wildermiss, Outside Days is full of local flavor, including mainstage performers The Mañanas, Brothers of Brass and N3ptune. But new this year is the Discovery Acts initiative, a partnership with the Denver nonprofit Youth on Record that highlights nine more Denver-based musicians and acts set to play throughout the festival grounds all weekend.

“Those local acts are hugely important to us,” says Outside Chief Brand Officer Christopher Jerard, adding that the music is interweaved into the event’s celebration of the outdoor lifestyle, too.

“The event is more than music. The music has always been the thing that we knew would work to gather people around us leading outdoor culture,” he concludes. “Creativity is something I think is baked into the Colorado DNA, and in particular, music. People want to be outside and dance and come together. That’s what the whole idea here was.”

Wildermiss plays Outside Days, Friday, May 29, Auraria Campus. Get tickets at the festival website.