\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Indie](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/indie-power-players-intro-2026-bb5-billboard-1800.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\tCo-founded in 2007 by Tim Putnam and Ian Wheeler, Partisan featured in its early years a modest roster led by indie-rock bands, most notably Deer Tick, and the catalog of the late Afrobeat great Fela Kuti. But in the last decade, under the guidance of Putnam, now its president, and White, its small-but-mighty roster has become one of the most lauded in indie music. Partisan is responsible for launching next-gen rock heavyweights Fontaines D.C. and IDLES, home to critical darlings including Blondshell and Laura Marling, steward of catalogs for the legends Cymande and DJ Rashad \u2014 and behind the biggest indie-rock breakout in recent memory, Geese.<\/p>\n
\n\tPutnam and White have carefully built Partisan into a powerhouse, reinvesting the fruits of the label\u2019s success with Cigarettes After Sex \u2014 and, soon after, Fontaines and IDLES \u2014 to help it grow. Their savvy business approach, though, has gone hand in hand with an ear for singular, left-of-center musicians and a willingness to support them as they build sustainable careers.<\/p>\n
\n\tPutnam, 52, understands what an unsustainable music career looks like. After college, in the early 2000s, he ended up in the Portland, Ore., area, working for Hollywood Video, and joined a band that cycled through labels, managers and agents. \u201cI was obsessed with music,\u201d he says, \u201calthough the idea of making a living from it felt like someone else\u2019s reality.\u201d Putnam eventually moved to New York in 2004, getting a job as the night manager at the Knitting Factory club in downtown Manhattan. Wheeler, a journalist who liked Putnam\u2019s band, approached Putnam wanting to write a piece about it; when Putnam told him that they were between labels, Wheeler suggested they start their own \u2014 \u201cwhich I thought was a pragmatically terrible but exciting idea at that time,\u201d Putnam says.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Tim](\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-billboard-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tPutnam<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJasmine Archie<\/p>\n
\n\tThey began working the label, Partisan, out of Putnam\u2019s apartment, and when Putnam heard Deer Tick play at Knitting Factory, he sensed \u201cthe label would have a purpose\u201d if it could work with the band. After learning that the label that had released Deer Tick\u2019s debut wasn\u2019t paying royalties, he helped the group exit its deal and they \u201cbegan a partnership that became the foundation of the first 10 years of Partisan Records.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tConcurrently, Knitting Factory investor Stephen Hendel was producing the Tony Award-winning Fela! jukebox musical and had acquired the rights to Kuti\u2019s recording catalog. Hendel needed a label on which to release Kuti\u2019s music, and Knitting Factory CEO Morgan Margolis approached Putnam and Wheeler about reviving the dormant Knitting Factory Records to release Kuti\u2019s music, in exchange for an investment in Partisan. \u201cThis was how we learned to run a record label,\u201d Putnam says. \u201cThere would absolutely be no Partisan Records without Fela Kuti.\u201d (Putnam and Partisan worked Kuti\u2019s catalog through a strategic partnership with Knitting Factory Records before that label formally merged with Partisan in 2014.)<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd, Putnam adds, \u201cPartisan in its current form wouldn\u2019t be here without Cigarettes After Sex. Their success came at a turning point for the label, subsequently allowing us to grow in ways we otherwise could not have.\u201d Enter White: Of Scottish heritage but born south of the border, she grew up in the remote town of Penrith, England, where she immersed herself in MTV and Napster but \u201cwas desperate to be near live music.\u201d As a college student in Bristol, she started working for a promoter, going into artist management after leaving school before landing at The Other Hand, which did European label management for American indies including Stones Throw and Daptone.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tWhite<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJasmine Archie<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2014, Partisan linked with The Other Hand because it wanted help growing Cigarettes After Sex, which, several years after forming in 2008, only had music on YouTube but had sold out a European tour on the strength of its virality on the platform. White had already been eyeing a professional change, and as the release of the band\u2019s debut neared \u2014 undergirded by The Other Hand\u2019s savvy assistance \u2014 she asked the label\u2019s GM what was next for Partisan and what it needed. Putnam needed to return to his A&R roots, he told her, so someone else would need to run Partisan\u2019s business.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI was a Napster kid in my teenage years\u00a0\u2026 I never thought I\u2019d work at a record label, because everyone was leaving record labels,\u201d White says. \u201cBut working in label services, I learned more about business models in general and particularly building value.\u201d White, who had earned a master\u2019s degree in entertainment law while at The Other Hand, pitched herself to lead Partisan\u2019s operations and landed the gig.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cTim and Zena have created a truly special label with Partisan,\u201d says Cigarettes After Sex\u2019s Greg Gonzalez. \u201cIt\u2019s been a beautiful thing to be such a deep part of each other\u2019s stories for the last while, and even sweeter as friends to say how excited I am to see everything flourishing for them in such a wonderful way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Greg Gonzalez, White, Putnam and Blondshell.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJasmine Archie<\/p>\n
\n\tThe successful pre-pandemic triumvirate of Cigarettes After Sex, Fontaines and IDLES allowed Partisan, White says, \u201cto reinvest in being able to do a better job for the artists that we work with \u2014 and it also allowed us to attract other artists.\u201d (Fontaines was signed to Partisan until 2024; Cigarettes After Sex and IDLES remain on the label.)<\/p>\n
\n\tThe most significant of those new signings began to take shape in April 2020, when the attorney for a band of Brooklyn high schoolers sent Partisan the rough mix of what would become Projector, Geese\u2019s 2021 debut. Putnam and White immediately clocked the potential, but as Partisan navigated the upheaval to its release calendar caused by the pandemic, they questioned whether the label had the bandwidth to take on Geese and properly support it. When [PIAS], which at that point distributed Partisan through its Integral division, suggested that Partisan and [PIAS] label Play It Again Sam jointly sign Geese, however, Partisan was in.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cBeyond their talent at such a young age, the songs had something uniquely special,\u201d Putnam says. \u201cI spent a lot of the pandemic driving around, listening to their music.\u201d After a Zoom meeting, Geese inked a deal with Partisan and Play It Again Sam. (As for how he pitched Geese on joining Partisan, Putnam says, \u201cif I had given them something which overly felt like [a pitch], we probably wouldn\u2019t be having this conversation\u00a0\u2026 They\u2019re New Yorkers.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tBlondshell<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJasmine Archie<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIn many ways, because of the circumstances of the pandemic, Projector was a bit more like an EP campaign,\u201d White explains. But the band quickly began to make waves with the set\u2019s nervy rock music and its undeniable Big Apple chic; \u201cNew York Has a New Band of Buzzy Post-Punk Teens: Geese\u201d a New York Times headline<\/a> read the week Projector came out. Two years later, Geese blew up its sound \u2014 and earned a cult following \u2014 with the concept album 3D\u00a0Country, a wild fusion of blues, punk and art-rock that frontman Cameron Winter described at the time as a story \u201cabout a cowboy who does psychedelics in the wild west and fries his brain forever\u00a0\u2026 Ultimately he finds himself in the end and it turns celebratory.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAll this is why both Putnam and White shrug off the notion that Geese arrived out of nowhere with Winter\u2019s late-2024 solo debut, Heavy Metal, a wrenching set of idiosyncratic piano ballads that had surprising traction on TikTok, and Geese\u2019s fall 2025 opus, Getting Killed, which immediately took the indie-rock world by storm and launched the band to the tops of year-end lists and festival bills, as well as Saturday Night Live. \u201cIt was more of a relief than a surprise,\u201d Putnam says. \u201cIt didn\u2019t catch us off guard because internally, Geese\u2019s rise wasn\u2019t fast\u00a0\u2026 When Getting Killed was delivered, we knew the band had made something special. Also, the success of Heavy Metal primed the pump and extended into the release of Getting Killed. One fed into the other, and now both are feeding each other.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve been in a Geese and Cameron Winter campaign,\u201d White concurs, \u201cand that has been building since 3D Country.\u201d Partisan was \u201calmost entirely prepared\u201d for Getting Killed\u2019s release, she adds, although that \u201calmost\u201d was significant: Even when Partisan cautioned physical retailers that demand for Getting Killed would likely dwarf interest in 3D\u00a0Country, many insisted on using the prior album\u2019s sales as a reference. The day Getting Killed dropped, Partisan completely sold out of the vinyl album; the set subsequently topped Billboard\u2019s Indie Store Album Sales<\/a> chart for three nonconsecutive weeks, and its jangly single \u201cCobra\u201d reached No.\u00a021 on Alternative Airplay<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tFor White, \u201cthe way that [Geese and Winter] caught fire and caught people\u2019s ears honestly gives me hope for the musical era that we\u2019re in. People are rejecting the algorithm. They want to think and feel. They don\u2019t want to be fed things.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tCigarettes After Sex\u2019s Gonzalez<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJasmine Archie<\/p>\n \n\tAnd as Putnam, White and the label\u2019s London-based global vp, Jeff Bell, continue to cement Partisan\u2019s status as one of the era\u2019s foremost indie labels, that\u2019s something of a mission statement. When PJ Harvey sought a new label home for the first time since 1993, she turned to Partisan \u2014 which helped her release 2023\u2019s Grammy Award-nominated I\u00a0Inside the Old Year Dying, a record White neatly sums up as \u201can electronic folk album in partially Dorset dialect.\u201d After a career spent mainly on Matador, Interpol recently signed with Partisan, because it \u201cwanted to do something different,\u201d White says. (\u201cVeteran artists can still be developing artists,\u201d she adds.)\u00a0 Elsewhere, Partisan is hard at work breaking Ezra Collective in America (the British jazz quintet received the 2023 Mercury Music Prize, and a Barack Obama cosign shortly thereafter), and the label remains a champion of local New York talent, by way of Julia Cumming, the Sunflower Bean frontwoman who released her solo debut in April, and genre-bending electro-punk act Lip Critic, which dropped its wild sophomore album in early May. (For its part, Cigarettes After Sex\u2019s profile also keeps growing: During Karol\u00a0G\u2019s headlining set at the first weekend of Coachella, she brought out Gonzalez to debut a new collaboration, \u201cDespu\u00e9s de ti,\u201d that they officially released later in April.)<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhat strikes me about Tim and Zena, and what drew me to Partisan in the first place, is their decency,\u201d says Sabrina Teitelbaum, who as Blondshell has put out two acclaimed albums on Partisan since 2023 and will release new music this year. \u201cThey respect art and understand what a big responsibility it is to put records out. Artists work so hard on songs about the most private details of our lives and it\u2019s not easy to find people to handle them with the care they deserve. Tim and Zena are extremely capable in terms of their business, but as people they are just so solid and always working to support the visions of their artists.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnd even as Partisan makes major business moves \u2014 in 2024, it inked a global distribution deal with Virgin; it added a publishing division, Left Music, in 2020; and it recently launched the electronic-oriented Select Discs, which joins the section1 imprint it started in 2021 \u2014 Putnam is committed to retaining the spark that made him launch the label in the first place.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019d like us to have more fun,\u201d he says when musing about the future. \u201cAll work and no play makes Partisan a dull label.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThis story appears in the May 9, 2026, issue of\u00a0Billboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The night that Zena White moved from the United Kingdom to America, she dropped her bags at her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[18,117,208727,19,208728,17,361,337,208729],"class_list":{"0":"post-476504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-genre-indie","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-indie-power-players","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-magazine","15":"tag-music","16":"tag-record-labels"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116545278961778582","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n