Carver Jones began his music career living in a van and busking across the country, but on Saturday night he found himself in a basement music venue in Boyle Heights for his first Los Angeles headline show. In the crowd, one particularly on-theme action-adventure hero, Indiana Jones, hyped up the audience.

The man in costume was Michael Tringale, a senior majoring in music industry and the night’s host, who brought together a lineup of indie artists for Ugly Flower Productions’ latest show, “Indie and a Jones” at AboveTheBridge, where 170 attendees filled the room. 

“This is a first step for us,” Tringale said. “We usually don’t throw indie shows. We’re pretty rooted in the punk scene here in L.A., but based [on] the success of this, we might continue to do more indie shows and broaden out in terms of the type of shows we do.”

Tringale, along with fellow music industry seniors Kai Tano, Aadi Pitre, Ariane Villanueva and Vincent Vasquez, began throwing shows as Ugly Flower Productions in Spring 2026, as part of a class: Live Music Production and Promotion. Students in the course act as concert promoters and put on a show, donating some of the proceeds to charity. 

For Ugly Flower’s first show, they threw a punk show in Boyle Heights called “Boyle Ice,” with local artists Spunk, Integra Pink and american woman. They sold nearly 300 tickets and donated $2,000 to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a charity that supports undocumented immigrants. Since then, the group has put on four shows in the area.

For “Indie and a Jones,” Tringale brought together a lineup of small artists, most of whom had never played a show in L.A. before. The night began with Junah Blue, a friend of Ugly Flower, followed by Lucaa, an artist from Chicago, then taka from Dallas and headliner Jones coming all the way from Nashville.

Tringale said he discovered the artists while finding new talent as an artist and repertoire consultant, first at Encore Recordings and now at Broke, an independent music label. He said he did independent research online looking at indie playlists and using the companies’ respective proprietary technology to find the artists. 

“I was a big fan of Carver, big fan of taka, and Lucaa was on my radar, and it just so happened that all of these artists were super willing to play their first show here in L.A. and do it with us,” Tringale said.

Luca Dinicola, who goes by Lucaa on stage, moved to Pasadena a month ago from Indiana, and said Tringale messaged him about being part of the show only a few days after he arrived in the city, in what felt like serendipitous timing. 

“This was my actual first L.A. show, so it was pretty cool,” Dinicola said. “It was literally the second day I moved out here, I got a text message, and I thought I was seeing things. I’m like, ‘What? [That] sounds too good to be true.’”

Dinocola said he is releasing a new album called “heaven in static” soon, with a lead single and music video coming out on Tuesday. The project’s title is an ode to the low-budget production software Dinicola used to self-produce the majority of the songs. 

Jones also recently released an album, “8,” and said while he has experience opening for other artists in L.A., “Indie and a Jones” was his first headlining performance. He played songs from the album as well as a cover of “Purple Rain” by Prince. Jones said he appreciated that the crowd was open to supporting and discovering new artists.

“The lineup was so good, where everyone here has loved music, and were willing to stick around and see what the next thing is,” Jones said. “I find that with [the] young generation, people are wanting to hear live music again.”

Tringale said that to continue to grow Ugly Flower’s audience, the group wants to throw diverse shows. While the production company is rooted in the punk scene, they want to appeal to R&B and indie fans too.

“We want to have our fingers [on the pulse of] all of the artists that are coming up, and we want to be able to create platforms to support them,” Tringale said. “That’s what makes Ugly Flower super special: that we all care a lot about music and the artists, not just their music, but them as human beings personally, and we want to create a space where they can share their musical focus.”