Stomp-clap-hey: Why folk-pop music is having a comeback
Natalie Harmsen | CBC Music | Posted: January 7, 2025 2:00 PM | Last Updated: 23 hours ago
Wild Rivers, Shawn Mendes and more are putting their unique spins on the folk sound
The crowd at Osheaga was a sweaty sea of singing bodies. Thousands stood shoulder to sunscreened shoulder and belted the words to Noah Kahan's bright hits "She Calls Me Back" and "Stick Season" during the folk-pop singer's headline set at the Montreal music festival, clapping along and bobbing their heads. The popularity of Kahan's songs, which combine confessional lyrics, cheerful melodies and a lot of acoustic guitar, signalled that a revival of a certain kind of folk music, stomp-clap-hey, was underway.
Stomp-clap-hey music is a type of folk-pop where songs begin slowly with minimal instrumentation, then build into an upbeat rhythm. They are often (but not always) punctuated by literal clapping and stomping and "tied to [an] indie-rock, folk, Americana trend for white men to speak of heartache and social strife [to] an upbeat tempo, so as to perhaps keep people listening," explained Jada Watson, an associate professor in digital humanities at the University of Ottawa and the principal investigator of the SongData project, which analyzes the development and evolution of popular music genres.
This music "lyrically allows us to have our feelings, but melodically and rhythmically, allows us to be upbeat," she added.
WATCH | 'Ho Hey' by the Lumineers is considered a staple of stomp-clap-hey music:
The genre exploded in the 2010s with the success of bands including Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers, and now it's having a resurgence thanks not only to Kahan — who is selling out arenas, earned his first Billboard top 10 single with "Stick Season" in 2024, and recently nabbed a Grammy nod for best country duo/group performance — but also to the Strumbellas, Shawn Mendes and Wild Rivers, the platinum Canadian artists who are successfully putting their own evolved spins on the folk-pop sound.
'People are craving that sort of authenticity in music right now'
"It seemed like originally this folk-pop, folk-rock moment had its moment between 2014 and 2019, and then maybe it was sort of over," said the Strumbellas' violinist, Isabel "Izzy" Ritchie. "And to see it come back, it's great for me as a fan of that type of music but also as a band, a lot of our music fits in that genre."
The Strumbellas blew up with the hit "Spirits," a folk-rock number that won a Juno Award for single of the year in 2017. (Coincidentally, Kahan was their opening act the same year.) In 2024, the Strumbellas toured and released Part Time Believer, their fifth album, sharpening their rootsy, clap-fuelled sound on tracks such as "Great Unknown."
LISTEN | The official audio of 'Great Unknown' by the Strumbellas:
Ritchie said that song shows how "[folk] just lends itself more to those really personal stories," and added: "I think people are craving that sort of authenticity in music right now."
Wild Rivers vocalist Devan Glover agrees, explaining that "as the world becomes more automated and electronic and robotic, people crave humanity, they crave things that sound like people made them."
"I think [within] music over the last 40 years, every 10 years [it] kind of swings back and forth between being kind of produced, polished electronic stuff, and then people get kind of tired of that," said Wild Rivers guitarist Andrew Oliver. "And it becomes a unique thing when they hear somebody playing a guitar and they know that's real."
The Juno-nominated band — whose first album, 2016's Wild Rivers, glinted with the influence of the Lumineers and Mumford & Sons on tracks such as "Wandering Child" and "Blue June" — opened for Kahan on his 2024 European tour, embarked on a tour of its own and released two albums that same year.
WATCH | The official visualizer for 'Never Better' by Wild Rivers:
While Wild Rivers are a product of the stomp-clap-hey era — Glover says the band has never stomped while recording in the studio, but "we have clapped" — on the luminous Never Better and heartfelt Better Now, the group cracked open a more expansive sound by infusing splashes of bluesy soul into tracks such as "Anyways, I Love You," and fortifying pop-leaning songs like "Never Better" with synths. The new material highlighted the band's aptitude for penning tender love songs with soaring harmonies and sincere lyricism — a staple in contemporary folk-pop.
"It's always a process individually and between [the band] to [see] if there's a simpler, more honest way to say something or play something — then we always try to chase that," said Wild Rivers guitarist/vocalist Khalid Yassein.
"I feel like a lot of the music we love is just people being open and honest, and that encourages us to do the same," added Oliver.
This authenticity is also why folk-pop in general is resonating with audiences right now: Yassein says listeners "like the celebrity of music" and use curiosity about singer-songwriters' personal lives to "draw a straight line from the human to their music."
A 'musical language of vulnerability for men'
Shawn Mendes, the Pickering, Ontario-born pop singer who pivoted to folk with his most recent album, 2024's Shawn, knows a thing or two about fanfare over intimate lyrics about his private life. On the album's stomp-clap-hey single "Why Why Why," Mendes sparked headlines after sprinkling in diaristic anecdotes about his breakups: "I thought I was about to be a father/ shook me to the core, I'm still a kid," he sings.
WATCH | The official music video for 'Why Why Why' by Shawn Mendes:
"[Shawn's] always struck me as one of the few male pop artists who has been publicly vulnerable and maybe too accessible to individuals, and so I would see his turn to [folk] as maturing maybe," said Watson. "I don't see him as that dissimilar from the Mumfords and the Avett [Brothers] and the Lumineers and the Shaboozeys and all of them. It's like this is a musical language of vulnerability for men."
WATCH | Shawn Mendes performs 'Stick Season' with Noah Kahan in Toronto:
Feelings also fuel Wild Rivers' songwriting: "That's always the compass that we're [following] when we're trying to make something," Yassein said. "When does it hit you in the gut, or when does it make you laugh or [feel] something that's just a real emotion?"
"We're just emotional people," added Glover.
Because Wild Rivers and the Strumbellas have built on the original stomp-clap-hey foundation by creating music that stretches beyond folk-pop, they don't fit neatly into the genre's box. On TikTok, when using #folkpop #indiefolk hashtags on posts, Ritchie said her band is told that "we're sometimes not folk enough" by commenters.
"I think what that [stomp-clap-hey] genre means to people is different," she said. "Some of it is really that stomping, old-timey, clap thing. Sometimes that feels like a positive thing, sometimes it feels like a negative thing when people use that term, so I think how people are defining that genre is definitely changing, too."
The Strumbellas, Wild Rivers and Mendes will all continue touring in 2025, hitting spots in Australia, South America and North America between the three of them, indicating that the appetite for folk-pop won't be satiated anytime soon.
Canadians have a long history of leading the way in folk music: from the success of artists such as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Willie Dunn during the folk revival in the '60s, to bands including Great Big Sea and the Rankin Family gaining popularity for their Celtic folk songs in the '80s and '90s, it's not surprising to Watson that Canadian musicians are driving this stomp-clap-hey evolution.
"Canadians have always been cutting edge in music," she said. "We've just never applauded them or celebrated them for their cutting edge-ness."