After seven years together, the Casket Lottery has earned a reputation as one of the hottest live shows going. With skillful songwriting and musicianship, the Kansas City-based outfit produces a potent rock hybrid that flirts with pop-punk and emo without being either. Guitarist Nathan Ellis and bassist Stacy Hilt are…

San Diego’s Cattle Decapitation has a straightforward view of its fellow humans: We’re scum. Following in the footsteps of gore-core godfathers Carcass and Napalm Death, and capitalizing on a creative relationship with fellow SoCal blasters the Locust, Cattle Decapitation makes a peculiar brand of death metal that is obsessed with…

Kevin Barnes won’t play along. I’m trying to break the ice with Barnes, Of Montreal’s idiosyncratic leader and auteur, with a game of word association I’ve created by cherry-picking some of his striking lyrics, adding words that are often used to describe his band and, just for kicks, tossing in…

Much will be made of the fact that Iron & Wine’s latest record for Sub Pop, Our Endless Numbered Days, was recorded in a real studio (Chicago’s Engine Studios) with a real producer (Brian Deck, whose credits include Modest Mouse, Lois, the Sea and Cake, among others). But don’t let…

Three years after releasing its self-titled debut album on Saddle Creek, Now It’s Overhead (with Statistics on Wednesday, April 7, at Rock Island) returns with its stylistically diverse, bleak pop follow-up, Fall Back Open, an ideal companion for a cold, endless winter night or the damp dawn of a summer…

Lilium may be two-thirds of the venerable Denver-based alt-country collective 16 Horsepower, but Short Stories, the band’s second release, is a beautifully moody and atmospheric record that suggests this is far more than a side project. Multi-instrumentalists Pascal Humbert and Jean-Yves Tola make up the core of Lilium. Together they…

“I can body-slam a 250-pound person.” Amber Valentine is not making a threat; she’s just stating the facts. After years of hauling gear in and out of clubs, the woman is just plain strong. And the diminutive yet domineering guitarist/vocalist for space-sludge-noise rockers Jucifer is rightfully proud of the physical…

“I just want to buy a house and make some concrete investments,” says Cam Di-Nunzio, speaking of his artistic aspirations with tongue partly in cheek. And while he may voice the pragmatism and quotidian concerns typical of a guy in his late twenties, DiNunzio is far from typical. As a…

Supergroups are every record label’s dream. Take a handful of proven artists and bundle them into a single package, and it’s bound to be a runaway success. Such a scenario is surely what prompted record execs to suggest that Pete Droge, Shawn Mullins and Matthew Sweet take a stab at…

It’s 1979. A little boy is curled up, warm and fast asleep in his suburban Washington home. It’s a school day, so he’ll have to wake up soon, but for now, he’s breathing slowly and shallowly, safe in a dream. It’s 6 a.m. Suddenly, an unreasonably loud piano and a…

It’s really easy to make fun of Dashboard Confessional: the bleeding heart on the sleeve, the unreasonably handsome frontman, the painfully adolescent angst. It’s all a bit cloying and laughable. And then there are the fans. Watching the diehards at a Dashboard show is almost like watching the last days…