Douglas Spencer is taking a bumpy ride down memory lane. Huddled up with Monofog vocalist Hayley Helmericks on a snowy Colorado day, the wiry guitarist is recounting how he first got into music. When he was eight years old, Spencer and his dad stopped at a yard sale. That’s where…

Is it getting hot in here, or is it 3Oh!3? Early in 2006, the Colorado hip-hop scene received a smack in the face from Sean Foreman and Nathaniel Motte, two pasty-faced Boulderites ready to get the party started. With barking flow, Casio beats and frenetic live energy, the duo known…

Emerging in 2005 from the wreckage of bands like Call Sign Cobra, Pariah Caste and Murder Scene Clean Up Team, Big Timber has waited until the waning hours of 2006 to issue its first full-length. Taking its title from the unglamorous town where it was recorded, Alma (slated for release…

Nearing her fiftieth birthday, Lisa Germano has no reason to shy away from the tough stuff. Not that she ever has: Looking back to her early-’90s singer-songwriter beginnings, you’ll find the Indiana native tackling obsession, depression, addiction and death with a surprisingly straightforward and undaunted stoicism — and no shortage…

Croques monsieur. Ponderous films. Ennui. You can now add vicious, monstrous metal to the list of things for which France is famous. Bayonne’s own Gojira (the Japanese name for Godzilla) unloads a brimming bag of hefty, riff-tastic, thoroughly thunderous metal. The quartet — freres Joe and Mario Duplantier (guitarist/vocalist and…

Piece Of Shit. Product Of Society. Pissed Off Stef. Regardless of what the letters stand for, Stefon Leron Alexander stands for emotive rhymes, inventive beats and the uniquely self-effacing rap of the Twin Cities. P.O.S. began his musical career with Minneapolis punks Cadillac Blindside and Building Better Bombs, but it…

Soldiering on without your lead singer is a bold move for any band. Sometimes it really pays off (Faith No More), and other times it totally sucks (everybody else). After an emotionally and musically complex 2004 math-metal debut, Of Malice and the Magnum Heart, Misery Signals’ hardcore-influenced singer, Jesse Zalaska,…

Mike Kinsella made a name for himself with his work behind the kit for Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc and many other revered Chicago art-core projects. With his solo project, cheekily named Owen (perhaps to conceal his history and the connection to his indie-famous family of older brother Tim and…

When acerbic alt-comic Brian Posehn name-checked Buffalo’s Every Time I Die (along with Maiden and Metallica) on his metalcore-mocking “Metal by Numbers,” it wasn’t entirely clear whether it was a trick or a treat. However, after an eight-year evolution — more metal and less melody with each successive release –…

Like pimply, overweight teenagers, the four Welsh boys of Bullet for My Valentine wave their Iron Maiden fan-club cards proudly as they thumb their noses at the whine-and-grind school of metalcore popularized by their Trustkill labelmates. This potent metallic monster balances dewy-eyed romanticism and slit-eyed cynicism as well as it…

Doing his part to make genres and labels obsolete, Florida’s Andy Bothwell — whose nom de musique is Astronautalis — gleefully rips the indie hip-hop “kick me” sign off his back, folds it into a graceful origami swan and sends it flying into a wastebasket filled with tattered scraps of…

Beards are now! Thrift-store blazers are now! Manchester United warm-up jackets are now! But most of all, Thunderbirds Are Now! Purveying that intoxicating amalgam of punk-rock brat-itude and dance-friendly dervish drums that made sensations of like-minded spaz rockers Hot Hot Heat and We Are Scientists, the quivering Detroit quartet seem…

In the mid-’90s, it seemed like there were armies of woman-fronted, shoegaze-inflected outfits conquering the pop charts. The Sundays, the Cranberries and the forgettable Frente! all spiked the fuzzy dreaminess of My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins with pop hooks that made them irresistible to an audience burned out…

The universal pop-music theme of love takes on intensely personal meaning for Portland, Oregon’s Prids. Guitarist/vocalist David Frederickson and bassist/ vocalist Mistina Keith founded the band after meeting, falling in love and wandering around the Midwest in the mid-’90s. They were soon married and — not too much later –…

Since Beck Hansen first dropped “Loser,” it’s been both a pleasure and a pain to watch the eccentric musician evolve. From the album-as-fart-joke aesthetic of 1994’s Stereopathetic Soul Manure to the Berlin Bowie sheen of 1998’s Mutations and the barrio mystique of last year’s Guero, Beck has all but refused…

Homicidal men in bear suits, ironic boxing-ring deaths and pets made of porcelain all play key roles in We Are Scientists videos, but there’s more to the Brooklyn-based dance-rock trio than absurdist videos, a laugh-out-loud website and ridiculous album art. On the act’s major-label debut, last year’s With Love and…

New York City beat bastards James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy just love wiping their french-fry greasy DFA fingers all over other people’s records. Their latest remix collection — with geeked-out takes on Tiga, N.E.R.D., Nine Inch Nails and many more — is a surprisingly chilled-out, completely addictive treat that should…

Rifling through stuffed closets of musical instruments and influences, Calexico creates indie world music that has been variously described as alt-country, spaghetti-Western and desert rock. Multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino explore cultural interstices and intersections by collaborating with Mexican mariachi ensembles, Spanish singers and others from around the…

A hit single nearly killed Nada Surf. Too arch for its own good, the 1995 MTV favorite “Popular” doomed the New York trio to novelty status. Throughout the ’90s, the threesome continued to meld the rich guitar textures of shoegaze, grunge’s warm fuzz and sunny ’60s pop — along with…

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. In the beginning, synth-pop pioneers like Bronski Beat, Soft Cell and Heaven 17 collectively shared the DNA of American soul, ’60s pop and funk, coupled with a limited ability to re-create that music on conventional instruments. To make up for this shortcoming,…

Snowden’s Jade Tree debut, Anti-Anti, instantly transports listeners to the dark, electro-infused ’80s rock of Joy Division, Bauhaus and the Cure. So, naturally, comparisons to Interpol, She Wants Revenge and the Editors are inevitable. However, none of that name-checking helps much, except to hint at the dark drama, intensity and…

With wide-eyed innocence and cockeyed optimism, the 1090 Club — straight outta rock mecca Billings, Montana — invites you to its loose-limbed, attitude-at-the-door pop-rock party. Guitarist Sean Lynch, pianist Mike Galt, violinist Megan Dibble and drummer Steve Serfazo enthusiastically attack their songs with a refreshing lack of assumption and an…