Hayden Pedigo

Hayden Pedigo: man, myth, master of disguise; un-picker, finger-picker, absurdist, perfectionist. The unorthodox contender for Amarillo City Council, subject of the film Kid Candidate, and creator of the acclaimed albums for Mexican Summer: Letting Go (2021), The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored (2023), and his latest release, I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away (2025). 

He’s an innovator of the instrumental genre. A challenger of the stereotypical, son of a truck-stop preacher, he backs up a cherry red Silverado under his own smiling, Brylcreemed and Nudie-Suited billboard. His foot hesitates above the gas pedal as a cloud of dust rises. Where between beaming advert and disillusioned entertainer might his truest self lie?  I’ll Be Waving…his intentionally maximalist, genre-resistant work of warped instrumental Americana – is an exclamation point at the end of an accidental trilogy of records. The album was selected for “Best Albums of 2025” lists from All Music, Nialler9, No Ripcord, PASTE, and Pitchfork. The latter says of the record in its “Best New Music” review, “On his most majestic and sincere record yet, the Texas guitarist plays with grace and power, evoking the gentle emptiness of the American West.”

2025 also saw the release of In The Earth Again, the well-received collaborative album with Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile, released on the Computer Students label. That album also saw year-end praise from the likes of Beats Per Minute, The Needle Drop, Treble Zine, and Stereogum, who called the album “…the two acts find a cohesive middle ground in this brutally dystopian guitar music, with Pedigo’s fingerpicking contrasting Raygun Busch’s seared vocals. The result almost feels like a southern gothic novel: devastating, vast, yet oddly warm all the same.”