If you’re chronically online and an indie music fan, you may have encountered content from Kelsie x The Yellow Button. She’s been posting about her favorite artists on YouTube and Tumblr since 2016, and she gained near-overnight success on TikTok during the pandemic.
“All of a sudden it just blew up out of nowhere,” she says. “I had like 50,000 followers within a few days, which was kind of crazy.”
Since then, she’s built a tight-knit music sharing community across various platforms. She hosts a radio show on Sirius XM and listen-along streams on Twitch — where fans can live-react, comment and send in songs for Kelsie to review.
“It really changed my life — I never thought I would be on the radio, let alone just having an online presence,” she says. “It’s definitely a little scary at times, but it’s just really cool to see how far everything’s come in the last 10 years.”
Kelsie has garnered a reputation for deep cut song recommendations and carefully curated playlists for every season. While the Midwest emo and pop punk scene of the 2010s shaped many of her formative musical experiences, today she traffics in an ever-expanding range of sub-genres — from shoegaze and “indie twang,” to slowcore, hyperpop and beyond.
“[Streaming has] been one of the easiest ways to discover new music, because everyone in there has such different music tastes,” she says.
As 2025 comes to a close, Kelsie’s fans — or “button buddies” — await her year-end favorites list. She says Bleeds by Asheville indie band Wednesday is one record that’s sure her “best albums” list this year.
“I've talked about it so much,” says Kelsie. “I feel like it's almost a given.”
Looking back, Kelsie never expected that folks would place such trust in her music taste. But in a landscape where music discovery is increasingly driven by algorithms, Kelsie is carving out space for music curation and human connection.
“Music is one of the biggest things in my life, and I don't want some kind of robot technology giving me music recommendations when they don't even know who I am,” says Kelsie, a self-described “AI hater.”
Although The Yellow Button is a powerful platform for online community-building and music discovery beyond the algorithm, Kelsie says in-person music spaces are also essential. At a time of artist and user boycotts against Spotify, she sees going to shows as an act of solidarity with artists and against tech oligarchy.
“The best thing we can do is either attend shows, going to live shows or just buying physical media from the bands themselves,” she says. “Because it's just getting to a point to where it's like, no matter what streaming platform you have, it's like, everyone is truly evil.”
