Chicago, IL · punk · emo

Sincere Engineer

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Chicago's rawest-throated punk songwriter — a hometown hero slot for songs that turn anxiety into gang vocals.

Sincere Engineer is the project of Chicago songwriter Deanna Belos, who writes and sings most of the material and performs with a full band featuring drummer Adam Beck, guitarist Kyle Geib and bassist Nick Arvanitis.

The songs are fast, guitar-driven punk with a Midwest emo streak, built on plainspoken lyrics about self-doubt, dead-end jobs and general disarray, sung in a hoarse, unpolished voice that has become the project's signature.

Belos began releasing music in the mid-2010s. The band's debut album, Rhombithian, came out in 2017 on Red Scare Industries. They signed to Hopeless Records in 2021 for Bless My Psyche, followed by Cheap Grills in 2023 and Probable Claws in 2026, which includes a spoken-word feature from actor Wil Wheaton.

In 2025 Belos released a self-made documentary, Nobody's Gonna Do It For You: Ten Years of Sincere Engineer, marking a decade of the band, shown on YouTube and Veeps as well as at Chicago's Top Note Theatre. Live, the material lands between confessional and communal, with choruses written to be shouted back.

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punkemo