Music

Band-Aids were worn in solidarity with the rapper, songs were sung word-for-word and thoughts of encouragement were shouted from the audience.

Tonight it was easy to forget that Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders and Stevie Nicks are both senior citizens and that their greatest impact on popular culture happened in the first half of the 1980s when both ruled the airwaves. Go ahead, try to tell them that. Because last night, both stars rocked like the old days.

I catch Katy Goodman as her van pulls into a gas station in rural Oklahoma. She’s been on the road all morning, and her back is killing her. Not that this is all that surprising: Touring is a slog, and driving through the extensive Midwestern farmlands that separate major cities is especially brutal. And gas station yoga sessions only do so much against the grueling eight-hour trek from Dallas to Kansas City.

There are a ton of Halloween shows and parties this weekend, including Widespread Panic’s three-night run at the 1STBANK Center, DeVotchKa’s annual Halloween run on Friday and Saturday at the Boulder Theater, the Infamous Stringdusters’ Big Top Halloween at the Fillmore Auditorium, Cherub at Red Rocks and Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe performing Prince’s Dirty Mind with Fishbone’s Angelo Moore. Also on tap this weekend are Joan Baez, Gang of Four, Screaming Females and the Sword. See the full list of our picks below.

Not unlike The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne last Saturday night, Tom Araya, Slayer’s ass kicking bassist/vocalist, talked to the Fair crowd about the importance of remembering to share the love about halfway through the band’s set. Then he and his band melted the faces off the people in the front…

New Wave has gone country.  Yesterday members of long-running rock band the Pretenders stopped in to Rockmount Ranch Wear, the downtown Denver purveyor of classic Western wear that frequently draws celebrity visitors.  “We never know who is going to walk in the door,” Steve Weil, president of Rockmount Ranch Wear,…

Last month, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds released the dark and deeply poignant album Skeleton Tree, along with the album’s companion film, One More Time With Feeling. Cave and company will stop at the Paramount Theatre on Sunday, June 18 as part of a nineteen-city North American tour. Tickets go on sale…

The definition of “pop music” is a constantly evolving — as a genre, it’s easily impressionable and malleable while also being a great fortune-teller of what and how the rest of popular culture will present itself in the moment. That’s also what makes pop music so wonderful — it is…

If you scroll back a couple of weeks on Mac Miller’s Instagram, past the concert shots and fashion portraits, you’ll find a photo diary of the Pittsburgh rapper’s recent trip to South Africa. There, nestled among photos of beautiful beaches, mossy mountains, the Mandela House and zebras, is a minute-long…

San Francisco-based producer Charlie Yin, who performs as Giraffage, keeps things playful, including his upbeat, electronic pop songs and R&B remixes. Scroll through his recent Facebook entries, and you’ll find a photo of Yin eating grapes, an announcement that he’s working on a new album, and stream-of-consciousness musings on his About page, including thoughts…

Last week, the Pretenders released the Dan Auerbach-produced album Alone, the band’s first album since 2008’s Break Up the Concrete. Fans who purchase the album at Twist & Shout (at the in-store register, not online) can get a wristband to see the Pretenders play an acoustic set at the store at 7…

Pop star Elle King passed through Denver last weekend and changed lives — not through her performance but through marriage. King, best known for her infectious 2015 single “Ex’s and Oh’s,” is currently playing a run of dates called the Ministry Tour, and she’s offered to officiate a wedding during…

The leaves are changing and temperatures are dropping, which can only mean that ski season is quickly approaching. And while skis and snowboards are getting dug out of closets and storage units all over the Front Range, the mountains are about to be alive with the sound of music.Yes even…

“We had been the good kids for so long, but I was so full of angst and pissed off, too.” These aren’t the words of a sullen teenager; this is Joel Madden admitting that he and the members of Good Charlotte were just as emo as the rest of us…

Over the course of her 55-year-long storied music career, folksinger and activist Joan Baez has been fearless in standing up for what she believes in, both on stage and off. She marched with Martin Luther King Jr. on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement in 1963, got arrested…

Be still, tween hearts across the Front Range. No, really, be still. Charlie Puth, the pop singer-songwriter behind the single “Marvin Gaye” and the hook of massive Wiz Khalifa hit “See You Again,” has fallen ill and cancelled the rest of his current tour — including his scheduled show on…

The musicians of duo In the Whale have established a bit of a reputation as road dogs over the years. Based out of Denver — when they are not living on the road — the two have risen in the ranks of the local rock scene, while inciting some controversial accusations…