Named after an obscure town in western Texas situated far from Austin, where the band is based, Balmorhea has a sound that’s the stuff of daydreams and contemplation in a place where the pace of life is slow but you can find the answers to all your questions if you…

With a title like this for an album, you’d be excused for thinking that former Thorazine Frisbee mastermind Dan Kaufman has an absurdist, zen-like sense of humor. At first blush, the arrangement of sounds here bears comparison to the music put out by the Elephant 6 collective. Instead of Brian…

It’s unfortunate that the town that spawned the likes of Cavity and the VSS is now known mostly for jam bands whose hallmark is self-indulgent soloing. It comes as a pleasant surprise, then, that a band as dynamic, rich and concise as Three Cheers Faraday (due at the hi-dive on…

In November of 2006, the former members of Small Objects recruited a new drummer and adopted the name Blue Million Miles, which they borrowed from an old Captain Beefheart song. The quality of the songwriting didn’t fundamentally change, but the act went from a solid indie band to a full-fledged…

Although Baltimore, Maryland may not be the home of the new wave of tribal sounds in underground music, it is most certainly one of that movement’s centers — as evidenced by Teeth Mountain, which uses driving percussion in layers like some bands use guitars. The outfit’s hypnotic drones, which at…

Things don’t always work out how you planned. Given the copyright date on the back of this one (when the band originally intended to release this disc), that clearly seems to be the case here. Regardless of how long it took to issue, the Swindlers’ latest is a great. Filing…

Those familiar with Yuzo Nieto’s other projects won’t be expecting his music with Yuzo Nieto and the Hand That Rocks the Dreidel (due this Friday, August 8 at Old Curtis Street). It’s definitely not the wildly experimental free jazz of Pink Hawks or the earnest, visionary folk of Pee Pee…

Ideal Fathers is a band that shouldn’t work. You shouldn’t be able to mix edgy Gang of Four-esque guitar adventurism and funky rhythms with the thorniness and snarling vocals of early Dead Kennedys and get anything but an unholy mess. Theirs is a collection of sonic elements that seem to…

If this band had stuck with the name Killgun, you might have rightfully expected the kind of music that comes from listening to too much Big Black and Scratch Acid. Instead, the Fertile Crescent’s actual sound skirts close to post-rock with its inspired, sonically rich atmospheres. Inside the unconventional song…

The members of Secret Chiefs 3 may not actually be part of some obscure, underground Muslim music scene, but they sure sound like they are, with their appropriation of Arabic and Persian musical styles, if not necessarily instrumentation. Mr. Bungle alumnus Trey Spruance is the main architect of this band’s…

Even though he has released 58 albums on his Corwood label since 1978, Jandek is probably not a name familiar to the general public. Counted among his fans, however, are the likes of Kurt Cobain, Low and Will Oldham. The first live Jandek show happened in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2004,…

From 1993 until their first official split in March 1999, the members of Boss 302 were purveyors of a loose and freewheeling garage punk with soulful vocals. Many who saw them thought they were a sloppy band of hooligans doing their best to take after their heroes, the Fluid. But…

If P.T. Barnum could have been a musician in the modern era, he might have come up with something similar to the absurd, bombastic spectacle that is Uncle Monsterface, whose shtick is equal parts performance art, circus sideshow and psychedelic pop. Clearly influenced by the work of Jim Henson and…

Jennifer Moore most recently played Denver as a member of ’60s soul-pop cover band the Carrots. But she’s probably better known for her stint in Voxtrot. Infectious pop hooks notwithstanding, Yellow Fever is a bit different from either of those projects. Moore’s Nico-esque vocals are reminiscent of Midnight Movies, while…

Fissure Mystic (due at the Larimer Lounge on Saturday, July 26) lives up to the imaginative suggestion of its name, which came to one of the band’s members in a dream. With a career that spans right around ten years, Fissure was almost completely unknown until 2005, when it began…

My Feral Kin took root in the artistically fertile DIY soil of Phoenix, Arizona, and is currently one of the promising groups across the country tapping into a more tropical sound born of non-English-speaking folk traditions. Stands to reason: Julio Mendoza Jr., Kin’s primary creative force, is the son of…

Although better known as the backup singers for Jenny Lewis on Rabbit Fur Coat, Chandra and Leigh Watson are no slouches on their own. Having grown up in Louisville, Kentucky, these twin sisters, like many Southern kids, started singing in the church choir. Upon relocating to Los Angeles, the twins…

Rachel Pollard’s first full-length is filled with delicate, melancholic poetry and winsome reverie. While Pollard often sings about heartbreaking experiences with the hindsight of wisdom, her outlook and delivery are informed by a certain innocence that welcomes the pitfalls of life and relationships. Because of this, each of these tender…

Because singer Malgorzata Wacht moved to the United States from Poland before the term “alternative” became synonymous with “grunge,” she never had to be saddled with that musically hermetic attitude that precludes certain people from appreciating the haunting and seductive beauty of Dead Can Dance, as well as the imaginative…

In the past decade, a thriving noise scene has emerged in direct aesthetic opposition to the tanned, fake pretty faces most often associated with the city of Los Angeles. HEALTH burst from that experimental-music maelstrom in 2005 with a vengeance. Furious tribal beats, generally off-kilter rhythms and a collage of seemingly disparate…

With emo becoming a justifiably maligned quantity in recent years, especially in the flush of odious subgenres, it’s easy to forget that there used to be worthwhile bands that mined that territory. The members of Warwick, New York’s Pictures in Braille may not embrace a particular genre, but they’ve clearly…