Fishers, IN

The Crane Wives with Brye

Act III Tour

August 24, 2026

Some bands play songs; others build a small world around them.

On a warm summer night at the Nickel Plate District Amphitheater in Fishers, Indiana, The Crane Wives did the latter. The Grand Rapids, Michigan, quartet brought its Act III tour to a close with a performance that was equal parts indie-rock fever dream, Appalachian ghost story, and communal singalong, turning a MOKB Presents and Fishers Parks show into something considerably more intimate.

For a band built around the voices of Emilee Petersmark and Kate Pillsbury, alongside Dan Rickabus and Ben Zito, The Crane Wives have an unusually rich musical vocabulary. Their three-part harmonies can sound delicate one moment and downright feral the next.

Chicago indie-pop artist Brye opened the evening, bringing a distinctly different flavor to the stage. Known for her 2020 single “LEMONS,” a sharply observed song about toxic relationships, Brye occupied the space between bedroom pop intimacy and full-scale indie performance. Her songwriting has a willingness to confront emotional messiness head-on.

Then came The Crane Wives.

The opening notes of “Ribs” immediately established the evening’s mood. No grand theatrical entrance was necessary. The band stepped onto the stage and let the songs do the heavy lifting. 

What makes The Crane Wives particularly compelling live is the way their vocal arrangements become an instrument of their own. Harmonies don’t merely decorate the songs; they give them architecture. Voices overlap, separate and return, creating the sensation of several conversations happening at once. When it works—and on this night, it worked often—the songs become larger than their individual parts.

The Act III tour may have reached its final stop in Fishers, but the performance didn’t feel like a farewell so much as a punctuation mark. The band has spent years refining a sound that refuses to sit comfortably inside a single genre. There is indie rock here, certainly, but also folk, Americana, pop, and the theatrical instincts of a band that understands the power of a well-placed harmony.

By the end of the night, the Nickel Plate Amphitheater had become a space where four musicians from Grand Rapids could turn songs about complicated lives into something that the audience could share while standing together under the Indiana sky.

The Crane Wives came to close a tour, and they left behind a memory.

The Crane Wives Setlist

1. Ribs
2. Queen of Nothing
3. Bitter Medicine
4. Allies or Enemies
5. Nobody
6. Steady Steady
7. Metaphor
8. Higher Ground
9. The Moon Will Sing
10. Black Hole Fantasy
11. Never Love an Anchor
12. Arcturus Beaming
13. Sleeping Giants
14. Curses

Encore:
15. October
16. The Hand That Feeds
17. Tongues & Teeth