Last year, Loyola’s WLOY radio station successfully hosted its inaugural “Winterpalooza” event, marking the start of the holiday season. Continuing the tradition this year, the celebration took place on Friday, Dec. 8, from 7-10 p.m. in McGuire Hall.
“For this year’s Winterpalooza, we had three live bands, all local artists, which is a little different this year. One of them is Crown Me King, the Battle of the Bands 2022 winners who performed at Loyolapalooza last spring. The others are Natural Velvet and Super City,” Analia Cortez ‘25 said, General Manager at WLOY.
Natural Velvet, a post-punk quartet from Baltimore, showcased their unique sound of droning guitars and bass lines at Winterpalooza. Described on their website as moving between gazey indie pop and guttural noise rock, Natural Velvet’s performance added a distinctive flavor to the event.
Super City, blending heavy rock elements with a danceable pop sound, brought their expertise to McGuire Hall. The band, known for crafting guitar and synth ear worms, demonstrated creative tension between bombastic rock and stylized movements, ensuring an engaging musical experience.
Apart from live music, Winterpalooza offered additional attractions.
“We had a hot chocolate bar throughout the event, and in between bands, we held the ugly sweater contest. Anyone in an ugly sweater could participate, and we had a prize for the winner!” Analia Cortez said.
Registration wasn’t required for Winterpalooza 2023; students could drop by McGuire Hall anytime between 7-10 p.m. to enjoy the live music, sweater contest, and hot cocoa.
For those not interested in live music, there are alternative ways to stay connected with WLOY. Cortez highlighted the simplicity of tuning in—visiting their website at wloy.org and selecting the “listen here” option, Apple Music users could find the live radio stream by searching for WLOY, and Alexa users could seamlessly connect to the station’s tunes with a simple command to play WLOY.
To stay updated on WLOY’s activities, students were encouraged to follow WLOY on Instagram and keep an eye out for upcoming events.
