The Northern Way debuts new single

Man, if The Northern Way doesn’t break out in a major way within the next year, it’s certainly not going to be for a lack of having radio-friendly songs. This morning, the outfit, formerly known as Set Forth, premiered its brand new single, “Starting Line,” on MySpace. Matching the undeniable…

The Bottesini Project sets up shop in Chicago

A while back, Paul Riola gave up his post as program director and treasurer at Creative Music Works to focus on making music with his Bottesini Project. With as passionate as Riola clearly was about the organization during his time there, the decision must’ve been made with much consideration. Before…

Earn a chance to perform with Imogen Heap at the Boulder Theater

Just heard about an sweet opportunity for cello players that we thought we’d let you know about: Imogen Heap is evidently looking for someone local to play the “slightly mad cello part” for “Aha!” with her on stage on Sunday, November 15, at the Boulder Theater during her Etown appearance…

Lola Black is young and beautiful — and ready to kick your ass

The members of Lola Black don’t consider themselves a supergroup. It’s easy, however, to argue that the band boasts the credentials for such a designation. The sextet’s resumé includes stints in groups like Blister 66, Snapstick Dynomite and the Eight Bucks Experiment, each of which made its own waves in…

Hearts of Palm at the hi-dive

When Hearts of Palm started out as Nathan & Stephen — a collaboration between Stephen Till of Black Black Ocean and longtime friend Nathan McGarvey — no one would have guessed that those spare songs would take on a new life once the project more than tripled its membership roster…

Headlights

When the critically acclaimed dream-pop band Absinthe Blind broke up in 2003, four of its members started a band called Orphans that would ultimately become Headlights. Under its current moniker, the foursome largely departed from the drifty, melancholy sounds of its previous project. Retaining the glittery grandeur that made Absinthe’s…

Skinny Puppy

Skinny Puppy started in 1982 as a side project of cEvin Key’s old band, Images in Vogue. With Puppy becoming a full-time concern in 1986, Key and collaborators Nivek Ogre, Dwayne Goettel and Dave Ogilvie spent the next several years putting out seven landmark releases, including Rabies and Too Dark…

Grant Hart

In the rock world, singing drummers are almost as rare as talking dogs. But Grant Hart, the man who assaulted the kit for Hüsker Dü throughout the ’80s, was more than a novelty back in the day. Besides writing and lending his voice to almost as many Hüsker classics as…

Dirty Projectors

After paying tribute in record to both Don Henley and Black Flag — not to mention collaborating with both David Byrne and Björk — over the past few years, it’s hard to pin down on paper what Dirty Projectors is all about. A listen to the group’s acclaimed 2009 album,…

Neon Indian

As modern music goes, you really can’t get that much more with-the-times than Neon Indian’s sun-warped, synth-based, dance-pop sound. It’s a style so current, in fact, that critics are still having trouble settling on a genre name for the music that this band and other blog-adored acts like it are…

No High Fives to Bullshit/Snuggle

Snuggle puts in two tracks of snarly, refreshingly unpolished, melodic punk with the archly defiant “Commercial” and the edgy and almost spooky “Aces.” No High Fives to Bullshit’s “Drawing a Blank” is a dense and dynamic slab of melodic hardcore. But the real gem here is No High Fives’ “Colt…

Chad Price

The music of Fort Collins’s Drag the River has never been short of heartache. But with his debut solo album, Smile Sweet Face, Drag co-leader Chad Price has stripped away the band’s comforting layer of drunken revelry to reveal something far more painful. Bearing nothing but acoustic-folk chords, a whiskey-scarred…

Everything Absent or Distorted

Everything Absent or Distorted had strength in numbers. There were usually at least eight members, which sometimes ballooned to a dozen or more, depending on the show, and together they created some huge, buoyant and joyous sounds, with a wide assortment of instruments. Unfortunately, the guys decided to call it…

Six Months to Live

It’s a shame that Six Months to Live’s time is up (their final show, a CD release for this album, is Saturday, November 14), since this disc shows them reaching a new level of polish. The group’s sound has evolved to something like Beulah laced with a more cynical They…

Chevelle strives to keep it live on the new record

Brothers Pete and Sam Loeffler, who formed Chevelle while still in high school, have essentially been performing as a band half their lives. They started writing music when Sam was just fourteen and Pete was twelve, and began playing gigs around Chicago just four years later, in 1995. Since then,…

DJ NumberNin6 at The Root in Boulder

Dubstep producer/DJ NumberNin6 (aka Nishant Parikh) came to the style by way of trance. That’s an unusual progression — dubstep’s roots in drum and bass are about as far from trance as can be imagined — but he manages to make it work to his advantage. Occasionally, wisps of trancey…

Cryogen streams new album in its entirety on MySpace

Ah, it’s refreshing to know that as frenzied as life can sometimes be, some things remain ever constant. In defiance of fair weather trends, Denver is still a hotbed for metal, and Dave Otero still has a hand in producing some of the best music coming out of here. For…

Got plans after The Denver Film Festival? You do now.

It’s that time again. Next Thursday night, the Denver Film Festival kicks off. Although the various films are clearly the main draw, by no means are they the only attraction. As in years past, the real excitement takes place after the screenings. For those who are unable to get their…