Five-piece alternative rock and art-rock band IVY won the Te Tohu nā te Marea i Kōwhiri — People’s Choice Award at the 2024 Mighty Aotearoa Alternative Awards, formerly the Student Radio Network Awards, this month.
They were also the only contenders from Dunedin to receive an award.
Lead guitarist James Axton said they found out they had won the award at a Radio One 91FM watch party and were "completely shocked", having not expected to win anything.
To celebrate, they had "a little boogie out in town" before sitting down at home to play some Xbox and have a cup of tea, he said.
While it was "not the Grammys or anything", it was a "pretty big deal" for a small local band to have won the award.
"And it means a lot to us because it’s the first piece of national recognition that we’ve ever received."
He hoped the win would raise both the band’s profile nationally and their chances at receiving funding from NZ On Air, which was a "huge goal".
Formed in Bayfield High School in 2020, IVY’s music music sounded a bit like a resurgence of the Dunedin Sound era "with a modern New Zealand flavour", Mr Axton said.
The band combined heavenly, soothing vocals with raw and retro-feeling instrumentation to evoke a strong sense of nostalgia and emotion, having changed their earlier creative direction to more complex and brooding tones.
A long-term goal was to move to either Australia and Europe and the band had already started promoting themselves overseas, he said.
IVY won Radio One 91FM’s Bring the Noise competition last year and they are set to embark on a national tour and release their debut album next year.
