About Us
Cruisin Records is an indie DIY record label created to support queer artists.
Based in New Orleans, Anacortes, and Philadelphia, this endeavor emerged from long conversations between Clyde Petersen and Theo Hilton about how to support the amazing musicians they’ve met over years of creating music and touring.
The Team
Theo Hilton (Nana Grizol)
Theo Hilton is co-founder of Cruisin Records. Originally from Athens, GA, Theo lives in New Orleans. Over years of touring with the bands Nana Grizol and Defiance, Ohio, Theo developed a deep appreciation for spaces of queer visibility in DIY art and music. Through conversations with Clyde Peterson about how to foster queer family and support artists in the DIY scene, Cruisin Records was born. Theo hopes to keep working with great folks to put out music, and perhaps one day hold events or even a festival in around New Orleans and/or Seattle. Theo is also a housing justice activist and PhD student of cultural anthropology at Tulane University, where he studies Federal historic preservation projects and land ownership along the Mississippi River.
Clyde Petersen (ManDate/Your Heart Breaks)
Clyde Petersen is a transgender artist, working in film, animation, music, and installation. He re-creates lost worlds and documents queer culture that has been largely erased by AIDS, capitalism and gentrification. He works to offer alternate, more equitable realities and futures through the reexamination of overlooked histories of queer communities. His work is slow and patient, animating only a few seconds of film a day, gathering new oral histories and building scale-model worlds to tell stories in. They travel the world with their bands, Your Heart Breaks and ManDate.
Darby Cox (4333 Collective)
Darby Cox has attempted to play multiple instruments throughout her life but eventually realized she’s a lot better at helping other musicians behind the scenes. She has been actively involved in the music scene in every place she’s lived in for the last 15 years in media, marketing, and managing capacities.
She joined Cruisin Records in 2018 after going to an acoustic Theo Hilton show in Seattle and has since helped talented and passionate people get their music to as many lucky ears as possible. Today she helps Cruisin’s artists get press for their releases, manages the label’s social media and website, and works to grow awareness of the label as a whole.