The gradual shift in musical sensibility for Arctic Monkeys (due at 1STBANK Center with the Black Keys on Monday and Tuesday) can be traced through the guys' aesthetic: They wear sunglasses a lot now. They wear them in music videos and on stage, and sometimes when it's not really sunny enough... More >>

Having honed his chops early on with jazz heavies like Jon Hendricks, Wynton Marsalis and Betty Carter, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, who turned fifty in January, is a fine musician and leader in his own right, as evidenced on a number of discs he's released under his own name. The fiery vibraphonist... More >>

You could say Dawes is a little folky, a little country, a little Americana. But the California quartet is also just stripped down cool, playing the autobiographical musings of Taylor Goldsmith -- founder, singer and principal songwriter for Dawes. Along with fellow Sera Cahoone, Dawes brings... More >>

"Soundgarden has always shown a willingness to experiment well outside the standard rock mode, which has given the act a greater arc of creative development than that of many of the other bands who were also lumped in with the grunge phenomenon." The band's 1989 album, Louder Than Love, was... More >>

Logic is a part of the new generation of rappers quickly gaining traction thanks to masses of young fans across the country finding common ground on the internet. Unlike many other internet sensations, Logic is a legitimate, serious lyricist with more raw rhyming talent than personality, not... More >>

Moon Boots maintains a mysterious persona appropriate for a being who's allegedly imbued with sentience in a top-secret NASA experiment, but here's what we know about him: He's based out of Chicago, he's signed on the French Express label, and he has a grasp on the sort of funky, dirty, soulful... More >>

Weapönizer sounds like its members incorporated grindcore percussion into the context of noisy thrash, the kind that comes from the pit of hell where Slayer and Venom are looped. With a self-titled 2012 album that draws influence from Napalm Death's 1987 classic, Scum, the band is led by a... More >>

Michal Menert has parlayed his snowboarding mentality into a music career. It's all about doing what you love because you love doing it, and Menert embodies that in every way, from the dedicated tours to the free distribution of glitchy, bass-driven music. More >>

Ryan Bingham's voice sounds like the guy has spent decades blowing through cartons of cheap cigarettes and gallons of cheaper whiskey somewhere along the lonely, broken mid-American highways. A former bull rider who spent a good chunk of his teens and early 20s on the rodeo circuit, Bingham... More >>

If someone were to make a movie about the rise of a popular fictional indie-folk band, that person might do well to study the actual story of the Head and the Heart. Formed in Seattle in 2009, this project started out playing open mics at the Conor Byrne pub in the Emerald City's Ballard... More >>

On Hazard of the Die, the followup to his 2011 debut, Sometime Around, Andy Palmer shows continued growth as a songwriter. The beginning of "The Monk," the eight-song disc's opener, is fairly tame, but strings, arranged here by Kailin Yong, gradually swell, making the song seem damn near epic... More >>

Guitarist/singer Coco Montoya started off as a rock drummer. Albert Collins walked into the club where Montoya was working, and the club owner let him use Montoya's drum set -- without asking him. Montoya blew a gasket, and Collins ended up calling to apologize. Collins phoned a few months... More >>

Ryan Bingham's voice sounds like the guy has spent decades blowing through cartons of cheap cigarettes and gallons of cheaper whiskey somewhere along the lonely, broken mid-American highways. A former bull rider who spent a good chunk of his teens and early 20s on the rodeo circuit, Bingham... More >>

The indie-folk movement has become a plague. What started as an innocent return to roots quickly became a fad and, somewhere along the line, the pining for simplicity and an authentic nod to American roots music turned into a push to get ahead. But the cynicism directed at Americana's revival... More >>

The saving grace of any good cover band is to not go for the all-too-obvious hit. Credit Motor City's turbo-sleaze outfit the Detroit Cobras for limiting their self-penned material with the full understanding that they'll never write songs as soulful or enduring as the ones by Otis Redding,... More >>

As a founding member, rapper and producer of Three 6 Mafia, Juicy J helped cultivate a sound that combined a creeping darkness with DJ Screw-influenced, syrup-induced trippiness, pairing unlikely horror-flick sound effects with rolling hi-hats and popping snares. The group complemented their... More >>

Averaging 200 shows every year for the past eight years, the members of Pepper have earned a reputation for being as dedicated as they are hedonistic. With five full-length albums under their belt and the development of their own record label, the Hawaiian-bred members have demonstrated an... More >>

Like another Irish-American brood in the media, the Gallagher family of Showtime's Shameless, everyone's favorite Boston-based Celtic punk band, the Dropkick Murphys, keep things lightheartedly aggressive and endearingly real. The band is bringing their brazen brand of sing-along friendly... More >>

This Miami band formed in 2004 when Steve Brooks and Juan Montoya of influential doom band Floor got together with their friends Jonathan Nuñez and Rick Smith. Somewhere between sludge metal and noisier punk, Torche's sound has more in common with the likes of the Melvins, Helmet and... More >>

While riding the bus to school as a child, Zsuzsanna Ward spent her time in headphones, thinking about just how much she wanted to become a singer. As an adult better known as ZZ Ward, she reached the crux of that dream long ago and is now well on her way to moving into the mainstream. Ward cut... More >>

The decade-old phenomenon that was the Postal Service is back. In the ten years since the team of Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) and Jimmy Tamborello (Dntel) made music together as the Postal Service, we got Garden State, we got Owl City, we got an onslaught of music blogs, and the... More >>

"When I first got going," recalls Lorin Ashton, "I was into fuckin' brutal, satanic death metal." Even with all of his hair, it's hard to imagine that Ashton, better known in dance circles as Bassnectar, was once enthralled with extreme metal. After all, dubstep, the subgenre he's essentially... More >>

"When I first got going," recalls Lorin Ashton, "I was into fuckin' brutal, satanic death metal." Even with all of his hair, it's hard to imagine that Ashton, better known in dance circles as Bassnectar, was once enthralled with extreme metal. After all, dubstep, the subgenre he's essentially... More >>

Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson at Red Rocks. Sweet Jesus! How this totally obvious and sure-to-be-awesome pairing has not happened before now is anybody's guess. The music world's O.G. shock rocker and his direct artistic descendent are slated to share a bill at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Brace... More >>

The xx is an electronic pop group from London, England, whose music is informed by soul and post-punk as well as hip-hop and modern electronica. The act's critically acclaimed, self-titled debut album from 2009 garnered the outfit widespread popularity. And while a lot of bands would have... More >>