Craig Finn

Born in Boston and raised in Edina, a suburb of Minneapolis, Craig Finn first made his mark on the Twin Cities indie rock scene with Lifter Puller in the 1990s before moving to New York and launching The Hold Steady in the early 2000s with Tad Kubler. Finn’s alternative and indie rock, with a post‑punk sensibility, primarily serves a highly identifiable narrative songwriting approach — part talk‑singing, blunt phrasing and songs constructed like short fictions populated by recurring characters and references to religion, partying and urban drift. Alongside The Hold Steady, Finn has pursued a sparer solo discography focused on the voice: Clear Heart Full Eyes (2012), Faith in the Future (2015), We All Want the Same Things (2017), I Need a New War (2019), A Legacy of Rentals (2022) and Always Been (2025), the latter made with Adam Granduciel and members of The War on Drugs. He has also collaborated occasionally with figures from the American indie‑rock scene, such as Titus Andronicus, while remaining tied to the Minneapolis and Brooklyn scenes.