Under an LA Sky
By Amelie Melsness
USC Thornton Music Industry major-run Sonder Music Group emerges as a power player in LA’s live music scene.
It was only mid-October, but dusk had already begun to shroud languid evenings, the overbearing Los Angeles sun giving way to Californian fall and the sense of possibility it inspires. And when porch lights flick on, so do amps and mics—at least, in the streets circumjacent to USC’s campus.
Drift House is similar to the numerous house venues on these humble boulevards (Bounce House and Flea House, among others). However, this particular venue lends itself to concerts due to two unique features: a thicket of towering bamboo along the front gate providing both privacy and a natural stage backdrop, and a second story patio overlooking sound check, accessible through a worn wooden staircase.
Headliner Garret Elias’ management reached out to Sonder Music Group, a concert promotion company founded by USC Thornton Music Industry students, to plan a concert. They’d heard Sonder was throwing house shows through the grapevine from Brooklyn and wanted to partner with the collective for the newly-incepted band’s first tour.
The opening acts, on the other hand, were billed via existing relationships. Sonder’s General Manager Stella Badrutt-Baer also manages folk artist and Thornton Popular Music Performance Major Isaac Soren. The band she and Director of A&R, Thornton Music Industry student Corbin Berghoff are a part of, Small Talk, had befriended UTA-represented thebandfriday while playing USC Springfest together the semester prior. Berghoff would play as part of thebandfriday’s set.
Besides the typical house show spread sold from the bombarded fold-out table inside, this concert was free of cost upon request by Garrett Elias’ team. Sonder had taken the time to promote the event on various socials over the course of weeks to fill around 600 out of 500 initial slots on the invitation app Partiful, using scarcity tactics and candid flash photography from previous shows, led by General Coordinator Ruby Block and Marketing Lead Cora Reardon.
Sonder’s concert-planning savvy wasn’t born overnight, nor would it cap there. The music group didn’t even start out with concert promotion to begin with.
In January of 2025, a group of freshman Thornton Music Industry majors decided to meet up once a week. They wanted to siphon the tips and tricks on artist management they shared in casual conversation—information gathered from classes and managing their individual artists—into a designated day and time, practically becoming a management company. Their collective roster was entirely made up of Thornton students, save for LA alternative artist Spiritwell Art House.
Eventually, they ran into the issue of securing shows for their talent.
“I remember Ruby had said something about, ‘How do I book my artist shows?’” Badrutt-Baer recalls. “And so we were like, ‘Why don’t we just book them ourselves, start making shows for the artists that we manage?’”
Meanwhile, Badrutt-Baer’s roommate was in a pickle. The USC School of Cinematic Arts major required additional financing to produce her latest project, so she asked her roomie Stella to throw a fundraiser for it. While she was presumably enlisted for her experience throwing a few house shows with student group Hershel Presents, Badrutt-Baer was tuckered out from the same-old. She agreed on the condition of trying something new: securing a bonafide, non USC-affiliated venue to platform Sonder’s artists. They soon booked the Moroccan Lounge, a popular club known for breaking emerging bands just north of downtown LA’s arts district.
Berghoff and Badrutt-Baer asked their professor Bobby Borg—informally known as “Coach” by his students—if they could use an artist from their Moroccan Lounge lineup for their final as a two-for-one. The project required the class to form their own makeshift mini PR companies for working independent artists to create functionable materials like bios, contact databases and press releases.
Coach obliged. He also obliged to the advice the pair asked of him.
“They asked me, “How can we get more people there?” Or [said] “Here’s the pricing strategy we’re using. […] I gotta give it to them: they didn’t require much motivation at all. They were already fired up.”
Upon attending the show, Professor Borg was “really impressed.”
“They were really good with walking around and talking to people. The vibe was cool. The bands they chose were cool.”
Coach wasn’t the only instructor there; Music Technology professor Christian Amonson and Music Industry chair Michael “Mike” Garcia also showed up to see Megan Windsor, Small Talk and Ayla Claire. Badrutt-Baer sees this all-encompassing support from professors as a vital part of Thornton’s education.
“Having that personal connection with a professor—that they’d be willing to support your adventures and excursions outside of the classroom—is really important in this industry, and feeling like somebody has your back and cares about what you’re doing is really great.”
Sonder has had several meetings with Garcia for guidance in the company’s development, not to mention the casual 1-on-1 advice between members and their instructors.
“I’ve asked Jane Davidson about legal questions before,” Director of Operations Omeed Nowroozi recalled. “I’ve asked Amy Blackman not about management, but questions about the shows that we’re throwing.”
Not about management indeed. After subsequent shows headlining acts that were decidedly not a part of any of their rosters, the company soon needed to clarify the responsibilities and services amongst all the members. They didn’t even have designated positions at the time.
“We’re all friends, and it became a little tricky to manage people all together,” said Badrutt-Baer.
So, they decided to choose one main thing to focus on.
“We boiled it down to what we were doing that was the most fun for us, which was the booking and throwing of shows.”
It was that simple. They pivoted, donning titles for the roles they’d naturally carved out for themselves over time.
Soren sang in soulful baritone while strumming an acoustic guitar. thebandfriday performed originals and classic indie covers. Garret Elias jumped offstage and moshed with newfound fans, hitting it off with the indie rock singles the band had started releasing only three and a half months prior. The crowd was left zippy, the energy of the final act having nowhere to go.
Around the same time, late at night, USC’s college radio KXSC’s house show was unexpectedly displaced from their original venue on W. 35th after the first few songs. So, the nomads took up their artists and their crowd, trudged down to the corner of S. Cornelia, took a left and arrived at the next block over.
The KXSC clan flooded the gates. Drift House was suddenly jam-packed. As it turned out, the concert’s end was but a brief intermission.
That lively autumnal night is emblematic of USC’s house show culture and the student-led ecosystem that cultivates it. Its musicians, show promotors, venue managers and artist managers operate as a self-sustaining subset of Los Angeles’ music industry at large, Sonder Music Group only being one of the latest stars of a brilliant constellation. It’s been a fervent couple of years; a 2023 pre-celebrity Chappell Roan headlining USC’s FemFest gives a bit of a clue.
However, an unexpected addition to a KXSC lineup this past April shook up the scene on a national level. Many students were doubtful that the All-American Rejects were actually headlining, but it turned out to be true. The band was tired of the bureaucratic coldness of LA’s live music culture and the industry’s ticketing practices, so they turned to a one-story on W. 25th to perform for those who cared the most at $5 a pop. It would be the first show of their cross-country House Party Tour. Front man Tyson Ritter later described the experience as “cinematic.” More acts followed their footsteps thereafter, passing on established venues for DIY concerts.
Sonder has seen this shift first-hand. After a TikTok advertising their services went semi-viral, they received requests from managers to include their clients in Sonder’s sets, a notable shift from the group’s previous PR efforts. That’s how the shows headlining PEOPLE R UGLY, Leyla Ebrahimi, Jade Street, and People I’ve Met came to be.
Although the artists Sonder platforms are now predominantly derived from such outreach, their sets have continued a unique synergy.
“Sonder’s shows in general have a real aim of putting together intentional lineups, not just whoever wants to play,” Soren said. “They really have a good ear and selection around something more indie, leaning somewhat experimental, just people trying things that are a little left of center, which is harder to find, but really cool when it’s found and collected like they do.”
Sonder helped Soren do just that for the show he headlined on January 17, 2026. Soren contacted a “bunch of [his] closest friends who are [also] all incredible musicians” so the music group could tie everything together for a roster-oriented concert they aim to throw once a semester. The set was in conversation with its cozy crowd on Drift House’s balcony, one that wasn’t afraid of pauses to retune and artists’ personal anecdotes.
“I’ve never been part of a show or a lineup that felt so cohesive, and frankly, with people I love and respect so much,” Soren mused.
The deck was draped in layered blankets, persian rugs, pillows and floor cushions. Indoor lamps and candles snuck into atypical places to complete a softly lit mis en scène that has become an unofficial marker of a Sonder show. This setting isn’t a rule per se, but it’s a habit pedestaling a brand strategically antithetical to the raucous college house show stereotype, all by Experience Coordinator Stella Witz’s hand.
This iconic setting resurfaced yet again February 20th on West 24th. String lights traveled along the brush behind the pebbled back lot to find a leafy tree, while a tangle of wires snaked along patterned carpeting to meet onstage electronica. Opener American Fraternity was interrupted by a short film fundraiser for DKA a ways away, something a bit more hardcore. It was no matter; USC Thornton Music Production Major Henry Dearborn simply pumped up the volume on the sound board he held mid-crowd.
Headliner Camille Blackman, an emerging indie pop star, asked her audience to clap along to her 2025 single “mouse.” They took it a step further, singing along to its nostalgic mantra.
“See saw/up, down/in, out/deep down”
Nowroozi captured the scene with his Sony Alpha 7C II. He loves to take advantage of the proximity he can get at Sonder shows to bolster his concert photography portfolio. Taking pictures isn’t in his role description, but Sonder has historically blurred the lines a little anyway.
In the same boundary-defying spirit, Nowroozi doesn’t see his Operations title as directing the show logistics broadly carried out by Operations Lead Alex Gold; it also includes spotting initiatives beyond Sonder’s concert-throwing knack. The now nine-pointed star is guided by principle and mission, the methodology of which can take forms only limited by Sonder’s own imagination.
There’s typically two categories of learning referred to in regards to the college experience: in-class instruction and “the real world,” theory vs. practice, book smarts vs. street smarts. It’s a false dichotomy, and USC Thornton—and USC at large—determinedly exists in the broad, shared space of their overlap. “Out there” is simply here.
“Thornton is just as much about what’s going on in the classroom as what you’re doing outside. Sonder is a direct example of that,” Badrutt-Baer notes. “What we have learned in our classes have directly impacted how we’ve grown our company and done all of the small tasks that come with it.”
USC Thornton’s curricula catalyzes tangible, kinetic careers in the now.
“It might not always show up in the most obvious ways in our shows, how it has impacted us. But I guarantee you,” Badrutt-Baer asserts, “if you told me to throw one of the shows we’re throwing now before I came to Thornton, I would have had no idea how to do it.”
Sonder stays in motion, finding a way to further brighten a metropolitan sky.
Written by Amelie Melsness, senior USC public relations and advertising major at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and cinematic arts minor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Featured photo by Micah Bierman.
