Gavyn Bernhardt is a 19-year-old singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist who writes hard rock with psychedelic, experimental, and folk influences. His music changes fluidly between soft, vulnerable songwriting, and protest heavy, driving rock. Known for his dynamic live performances around the Philadelphia area, he often partners with his brother: producer, multi-instrumentalist & vocalist, Owen Bernhardt. His debut EP “On the Air,” a concept EP protesting the decline and corporate over-saturation of the internet, fuses manic sound collages with more traditional hard rock in a static fueled spiral that was written, recorded and produced by the brothers from their home-built basement studio, Sightbloom Records. 

 

Gavyn has been an artist, a musician and a singer for as long as he can remember. With almost all of his arts education through community and arts organizations in Pottstown, PA near Philadelphia, he started playing piano at the age of four, and drawing from the age of six. After trading piano for guitar at age nine, he went on to learn bass, banjo, ukulele and mandolin, before taking up songwriting at sixteen as a way of processing the surreal state of the world. He wrote his first song in 2023 (the eclectic “Remains of Wagon”), inspired by a decrepit wagon wheel from the Desert of Maine, as well as a handful of other strange blues and folk songs, that he began playing at local open mics around the Philadelphia area.

 

In the summer of 2024, he became fascinated by politically active artists like Hozier and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, as well as more experimental rock artists like Jack White, Queens of the Stone Age, Tom Waits, Radiohead and King Crimson. After trading his initial folk sound for harder, protest heavy, experimental rock, he began working on his first EP, “On the Air,” in response to the increasingly aggressive encroach of AI art and music online.

 

“This EP was written over the last two years in response to the internet rapidly becoming a corporate hellscape. It’s isolating, flooded with ads, and hostile to real creativity. 'On the Air' is about refusing to let big companies exploit our humanity in favor of AI. Otherwise, we'll all end up trapped and alone; curled around the speaker listening to what is essentially white noise.”  

— Gavyn Bernhardt

 

The songs from “On the Air”, as well as Gavyn and Owen’s cover of Tom Waits’s “Goin’ Out West,” have been heard on a number of different radio stations from WXPN 88.5 FM Philadelphia, to WDCV 88.3 FM (Dickinson College), WIUP 90.1 FM, CKMS 102.7 FM (Waterloo, Canada), Amazing Radio (UK/US), and many more. Additionally, with “On the Air” out in September 2026, Gavyn already has another two projects in development.