Another big leap forward for Shay Pinto and lomipo — and another reason to pay attention to what’s happening in Israel’s independent pop scene right now.
Lomipo headlined Zappa Tel Aviv on Jan 28, 2026, playing a 50-minute set of around eight original songs, along with their own takes on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and “Pink +White.” But there was never much question about where the center of gravity was. Shay Pinto – lomipo’s lead singer, songwriter and electric guitarist – drove the whole thing. At this point, his writing and performances are making a pretty convincing case for him as one of the most compelling and influential musical voices working in Israel today.
What makes Pinto interesting is that you can hear a lot going on in his music without it ever sounding like he’s trying to show you how much he knows. The songs move through extended chords and unexpected harmonic turns, melodies take their time getting where you think they’re going, and his vocals have this slightly behind-the-beat feel that gives everything room to breathe.
His guitar does a similar thing : sometimes holding the harmony together, sometimes just dropping in a texture or a phrase at exactly the right moment. There’s real harmonic sophistication here, but also serious restraint. Nothing feels thrown in just because it can be.
The band – Pinto on lead vocals and electric guitar, Aviv Mor on lead guitar, Orian Rose on drums and Amit Minz on bass – gave the songs plenty of space to change shape live. They weren’t just recreating the recordings onstage. The arrangements could pull back almost completely and then suddenly open up into the full band, without losing the thread. And through all of that movement, Pinto’s voice and songwriting stayed right at the center.
The room was with them, too. There were singalongs toward the end of the set, sustained applause and an encore, followed by a meet-and-greet. Musicians, producers and people from the local independent music community were in the crowd as well. Daniel Aviv opened the night, with lomipo taking the 9:30 headline slot. It didn’t feel like just another band passing through Zappa.
Putting lomipo at the top of the bill felt like a statement about the kind of new, original Israeli music that belongs on one of the country’s major stages.
And Pinto didn’t exactly arrive there out of nowhere. His work with lomipo has passed two million streams, and the band has reached around 80,000 monthly listeners. His songwriting is traveling beyond lomipo, too. “Aphrodite,” with Pinto as lead songwriter, made it to the semifinal of Eurovision – Sing with Greece after competing against roughly 300 submissions,and the song went on to pass one million views on YouTube. He has also worked as a songwriter and producer with Mantra Publishing, Artlist.io and Groundworks Records.
Numbers are one thing, though. Watching Pinto onstage makes it much easier to understand why they’re getting as big as they are. He can take music that is harmonically detailed and carefully arranged and somehow make it land immediately in a live room. That combination isn’t common. Pinto has already built significant professional and national recognition, and nights like this make it pretty clear why his name keeps separating itself from the pack in contemporary Israeli songwriting.
There’s another reason the Zappa show matters. Zappa isn’t some random club that happened to have an open Thursday night. Haaretz has called the Zappa Group a “major player” in the Israeli music scene, while Calcalist went even further, calling Zappa “The Queen of Live Shows” and the “clear leader in the live performance industry.” The numbers back that up: the group has reportedly sold around one million tickets a year in Israel and abroad. A venue with that kind of reputation doesn’t build it by putting just anyone at the top of the bill. The artists Zappa chooses to headline are part of what keeps audiences coming back and part of what keeps the Zappa name relevant in the first place. Giving Pinto and lomipo that spot says something about how they’re seen: as artists who can carry the night.
That’s what made this show feel bigger than another line on lomipo’s gig history. Zappa’s reputation made the headline slot meaningful, but it works the other way around, too. A venue stays important by finding artists capable of delivering the kind of nights people associate with its name. On January 28, Zappa put Pinto’s songs, his voice and his band at the center of the evening and trusted them to do exactly that.
They did.