AVERY COUNTY, North Carolina — If there is such a thing as the classic Appalachian success story, the rise in popularity of the outside-the-box band Cigarettes @ Sunset would be that story.
But nothing comes easy in Appalachia.
The five-member band, which includes Garrett Dellinger, Ryland Bagbey, Sarah Vann, Wells Whitman, and Ethan Moore, was born in the winter of 2022, practicing their music in the cold, unheated seats of the EDGE of the WORLD Snowboard Shop in Banner Elk, North Carolina.
Four years later, they have amassed over 225,000 monthly Spotify listeners with a unique sound that blends lyrics about small-town grit with an irresistible, undefinable beat that band members call “Possum Rock.”
Dellinger, the lead vocalist, explains that they were playing at a bar one night when a drunk patron walked up to their merchandise table. “He said, ‘Do y’all play possum rock?’ I just kind of shrugged and thought, ‘I’ll go with that,’ and the label stuck,” he said.
Bagbey jokes that he hopes the “very drunk guy” doesn’t come back looking for royalties.
As for the unique name of the band, Dellinger admits it was pretty impulsive: “I was enjoying a smoke at sunset on the mountain and thought it would make a great name for a band.”
The story began in the rugged Blue Ridge Mountains, where childhood friends Dellinger and Bagbey started writing music in 2021. Moore and Whitman soon joined, but their unique sound wasn’t solidified until classically trained violinist Vann joined the mix.
Vann says her introduction to the group was supposed to be a one-off favor when they asked her to add a fiddle to a cover of the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris.”
That single performance changed everything.
“When Garrett lets me go with it, I like to layer and loop, and make it sound orchestral,” Vann explained. “I think it’s a nice juxtaposition.”
It is that exact intersection — Vann’s intricate, sweeping classical sensibilities weaving through Dellinger’s gravelly vocals and heavy indie-rock riffs — that gives the band its identity. They are young people who shared the same ridgeline, grew up navigating the same cultural independence, and brought those shared roots onto the stage.
When there is less to do, you create. You pick up an instrument.
To understand the music of Cigarettes @ Sunset, you have to understand the lines that blur across the ridges of western North Carolina. It is a place where towns bleed into one another, connected not by superhighways but by two-lane roads, shared hardships, and the quiet resilience and defiance that define modern Appalachia.
The band effectively captures this in their lyrics, using a bluesy, mountain-rock beat to convey both the beauty of the vast, quiet space of mountain life and the isolation and pride that come with it. This is exactly where the music hits you.
Their story is one repeated across the generations in the hills and hollers of the region. When there is less to do, you create. You pick up an instrument. You find others who feel the same pull and are looking for an outlet for their creativity, and you form a community.
Their debut EP, “Possum Rock,” released in March under Lost Highway Records, isn’t a polished Top 40 country product. It is an unruly, riff-heavy and fiercely independent collision of indie rock, gritty blues and traditional mountain fiddle runs. Tracks such as “Pavement,” which has eclipsed 4 million streams, capture love, addiction, and smalltown restlessness. The record sounds exactly like Boone, North Carolina: Local bar venues, gravel driveways and open mountain fields.
For Cigarettes @ Sunset, Appalachia isn’t a marketing gimmick — it is a worldview forged by both the beauty and the brutality of the region. When Hurricane Helene tore through their home region of Boone in late 2024, it altered everything. However, the devastation didn’t break the community — it brought people together.
For the band, living through that recovery underscored a deep commitment to making music that endures, serving as a reminder of the rugged resilience baked into the mountain DNA. It is why their music balances deep sorrow with an absolute refusal to break.
The breakout success of Cigarettes @ Sunset, who went from playing tiny bars around western North Carolina to logging nearly 100 shows a year and packing rooms on a multicity national tour, signals a much larger cultural shift.
America is experiencing a profound awakening to its Appalachian roots. For decades, coastal media dismissed this region as an afterthought, an isolated pocket of the past. But today, every day, Americans are hungry for something real.
In a world filled with manufactured internet trends and artificial perfection, the raw, unfiltered honesty of “y’allternative” and Appalachian music is striking a massive chord. Listeners from Texas to London are singing these songs back to the band word-for-word at their shows. They are looking to the hills and finding comfort in the storytelling, the community, and the timeless truth that the best things in life are grown right from the land they call home.
READ MORE from Salena Zito:
Ghost of Alexis de Tocqueville Returns — What America Can Learn From Him
Qintel Puts Pittsburgh on the Map for Cyber Intelligence
Salena Zito is a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM
