Artist · chart history
Heartless Bastards
Band Cincinnati United States Formed 2003
Heartless Bastards formed in 2003 in Cincinnati, United States. Heartless Bastards has 26 chart appearances on 25 radio countdowns from 10 stations on RockLists, spanning 2009–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “How Low”, which appears on 5 lists with a best position of #12. The station that charted Heartless Bastards most often is WYEP (Pittsburgh, PA), with 7 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2021.
Heartless Bastards began as Erika Wennerstrom's own recording project in Cincinnati, with Wennerstrom playing most of the instruments herself, David Colvin on drums, Reuben Glaser adding lead guitar and Jesse Ebaugh playing bass. Things got moving in December 2002 with a demo of five songs taped at Ultrasuede Studios, and in August 2003 she took a live band to the Comet, a bar in the Northside neighborhood, for the first show. The name came from a bar trivia machine: a question about Tom Petty's backing band listed "Tom Petty and the Heartless Bastards" among the choices, and she found it too funny to let go.
Patrick Carney of the Black Keys passed her demo along, Fat Possum signed the band in 2004, and Stairs and Elevators came out that year. What followed was blues rock with the grit left in: fat, fuzzy riffs, a rhythm section that stomps instead of swings, and Wennerstrom's voice hauling the whole thing uphill. The Mountain in 2009 made that climb literal, Arrow in 2012 loosened up with the hypnotic "Parted Ways", and Restless Ones in 2015 reached for daylight on "Gates of Dawn".
A Beautiful Life arrived in 2021 with "Revolution", as urgent and direct as anything they've done, a rallying cry built on chugging guitar. Wennerstrom, Colvin, Ebaugh and Mark Nathan make up the current lineup, the catalog runs to six albums, and the records have come out on Fat Possum and Partisan.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Heartless Bastards on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | How Low | 5 | #12 | – | 2021 | |
| 2 | Parted Ways | 6 | #23 | – | 2012 | |
| 3 | Revolution | 8 | #26 | – | 2020 | |
| 4 | The Mountain | 3 | #49 | – | 2009 | |
| 5 | Gates of Dawn | 3 | #59 | – | 2015 | |
| 6 | Out at Sea | 1 | #39 | – | 2009 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
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