- Kes has signed with THE·TEAM for live music and touring representation across the world, excluding North America.
- Agents Shanae Dennis and Alex Hardee, both based in London, will lead the deal.
- The band continues with dGi Management for artist management, and was previously booked through Independent Artist Group (IAG).
- The signing follows a landmark year that included Kes's NPR Tiny Desk debut and a record-setting stop on their Roots, Rock, Soca Tour.
Kes, the Trinidadian soca group fronted by Kees Dieffenthaller, has signed with THE·TEAM for live music and touring representation across the world, excluding North America. Agents Shanae Dennis and Alex Hardee, both based in the agency’s London office, will lead the relationship going forward.
The band continues to be managed by dGi Management, the New York company led by Damon DeGraff alongside Yoni Goldberg and Tae Na. Kes’s previous booking representation ran through Independent Artist Group (IAG).
Formed in Trinidad in 2005, the group built an international following through an eclectic blend of R&B, pop, rock, soca, EDM, and reggae, anchored by hits like “Wotless” and “Hello.”
2026 has been a landmark year for the group: in May, Kes made its debut on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, a performance frontman Kees Dieffenthaller called “a full-circle moment of fulfilment” for the band. Their most recent studio album, Man With No Door, was released in March 2024.
That momentum carried into the band’s Roots, Rock, Soca Tour, which ran from London to Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York and Toronto, closing before a record-breaking crowd of 16,000 patrons at the RBC Amphitheatre.
The signing adds Kes to THE·TEAM’s expanding global roster, which includes Ciarán, formerly known by his BROCKHAMPTON stage name Bearface, and rising Atlanta rapper Pz’. The agency has also worked out territory-specific arrangements, such as its deal with French techno artist Anetha, who keeps separate representation in France, North America, and South America.
Takeaways
This is a straightforward infrastructure play: Kes keeps its longtime management team at dGi intact while handing global touring strategy to a bigger agency, right as the band’s profile is peaking outside the Caribbean diaspora.
A Tiny Desk debut and a record crowd in Toronto suggest the international appetite for soca is real, not seasonal, and THE·TEAM is betting on that trajectory continuing.
Does keeping North America carved out of the deal hint at a separate U.S./Canada agency signing to come? Could THE·TEAM’s global reach open new festival markets in Europe, Africa, or the Middle East for soca? Will the Tiny Desk exposure translate into crossover streaming numbers the way it has for other genre-defining artists?
