More than forty South Florida bands, DJs, artists, and vendors are set to descend on Churchill's Pub in Little Haiti on August 28 and 29 for Indie Underground, a two-day “superlocal” music and arts festival with two-day passes starting at $13.34. The lineup includes acts like Cherry Soul, Yung Americans, Folktale San Pedro, Century Park West, and Blind Fish, all set to take the stage at the storied venue starting at 6 p.m. both nights.
The festival is curated by Good Company, a Miami-based events collective founded by Rachel Lili, a Kendall-raised DJ and daughter of a local psych rock musician who once operated a warehouse venue also called Indie Underground, according to Miami New Times. Lili held the first Good Company show in her own backyard in January 2025 after growing worried in 2024 that the city's live music scene was dying out, the outlet reports. That grassroots instinct has since grown into a recurring showcase, with the band Dancers Die among those who reached out to Lili about setting up a show of their own, per the same account.
A Benefit Built Into the Bill
Proceeds from Indie Underground will benefit Guitars Over Guns, an art-based youth development organization that pairs vulnerable young people with music, mentorship, and the arts. The nonprofit was co-founded in Miami in 2008 by professional trombonist Dr. Chad Bernstein and his father Bob Bernstein, and it has grown from an initial 15 students to serving more than 10,000 youth across Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, according to Law Rocks.
The organization's track record carries some weight behind the fundraising pitch. Program evaluations cited by Caplin News show that more than 90% of participating students improved their academic performance and conduct, with 96% of enrolled students living at or below the federal poverty line. Bernstein's own 2012 University of Miami doctoral dissertation found that structured music mentoring significantly improves social-emotional development and reduces risk factors among middle school students in urban settings, per Scholarship@Miami. Performer Blue Mystic, who is on the Indie Underground bill, has said that art served as a lifeline and a coping method while growing up in a troubled home, Miami New Times reports, and Lili has said the event is designed to give back to the community.
Raffles Tie Together Little Haiti's Music Scene
Festivalgoers can also enter a raffle featuring gift cards to Dále Zine and Sweat Records, plus a grand prize of passes to III Points Music Festival. Sweat Records sits adjacent to Churchill's Pub at 5505 NE 2nd Avenue in Little Haiti; the record shop was founded in 2005 by Lolo Reskin and briefly operated out of Churchill's back room after Hurricane Wilma destroyed its original location, according to WLRN. Dále Zine, the independent art publisher and bookstore established in Miami in 2009 by Steve and Lillian Saiz, relocated its storefront to the Miami Design District in January 2024 after previous stints in Downtown Miami and Little River, per the Miami New Times.
The grand prize itself points to a major event on the local calendar. III Points, which launched in 2013 in Miami's Wynwood Arts District, will hold its 13th annual festival at Mana Wynwood on October 16 and 17, featuring more than 10 stages across five city blocks, as noted by Time Out.
Churchill's Pub's Long Road Back
Hosting the festival at Churchill's Pub carries its own weight in Little Haiti. Founded in 1979 by Dave Daniels, the pub closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic and endured five years of eviction battles and foreclosure proceedings before officially reopening on September 5, 2025, as Hoodline previously reported. Since its reopening, the venue has added new stage carpeting, an outdoor patio, and an in-house kitchen called Bleu Island Kitchen serving comfort food.
The venue's underground bona fides run deep. Audio engineer Frank “Rat Bastard” Falestra founded Miami's International Noise Conference at Churchill's Pub in 2004, hosting hundreds of experimental acts under a strict 15-minute set limit, and he returned to engineer sound when the pub reopened in late 2025, according to Miami New Times. The bar's ties to its Little Haiti neighbors also go back years — in September 2019, Sweat Records partnered with Churchill's Pub to curate and host the venue's 40th anniversary celebration featuring local live bands, a collaboration Hoodline covered at the time. That decade-long pattern of grassroots cooperation among the neighborhood's independent music and art institutions is now playing out again with Indie Underground's lineup of raffles, local vendors, and a beneficiary built around youth mentorship.
