Concerts

Tapes ‘N Tapes (due at the Bluebird Theater tonight with the Chain Gang of 1974) may have initially snagged some recognition outside of its Minneapolis home by way of the obligatory music blog circuit, but the quartet has long outlived the hype. The band’s jangly sound has grown bigger and…

Bobby Smith of the Mighty 18 Wheeler that a new band is afoot. S.L.U.T., as the new outfit has been dubbed, features Smith and his TM18W bandmate, Bob Rupp, a scene veteran who has played with too many bands to mention, Chris Cheiffo of Dirt Poor Kings, and back from being a face on a milk cartoon, the illustrious Mr. Jeff Black of the similarly monikered Jett Black

In a press release last week, Century Media announced it would be pulling its music from the streaming music service Spotify. The metal-centric label is certainly not the first to express its distrust of streaming services, and it probably won’t be the last. As fans and consumers have been pushing…

If you’re a rapper, what’s better than being on the cover of XXL? Um, yeah, not much, actually. Well, maybe being the centerpiece of a mural and still being around to appreciate it — that has to come pretty close, right? Ask Mane Rok and Es-Nine, whose mugs were recently…

Bowling for Soup (due at the Bluebird tonight, with the Dollyrots and Sunderland) tapped into the perfect formula for pop-punk success in 1994 and hasn’t changed much since. But the quartet’s songs about wieners, booze and girls suit fans just fine, and this year the band celebrated the release of…

Celebrating the release of its first full-length offering, Sineater, Snake Rattle Rattle Snake throws down at Twist & Shout today during an early-evening in-store performance. Though the band has only been around since 2009, it’s made up of some established local-music veterans, with members hailing from past groups like Monofog…

The Pioneer Inn has made a lot of history — and music — since it opened in Nederland four decades ago. During the heyday of the Caribou Ranch, a recording studio that ran from the early ’70s until it was damaged by fire in 1985, musicians in Colorado for recording…

Before some of us knew that Drew Englander made music, we knew him for his beautifully mysterious visual art. His imagery seemed to play around with fantastic homegrown mythologies of the type that children use to people their daydreams. That sort of creative outlook informs Englander’s music, which he makes…

Starting out in Minnesota with no specific agenda, Tapes ‘N Tapes effectively absorbed the DNA of much of ’80s underground rock and’90s indie pop to create the kind of music that seems both fresh and familiar. Friends of the band sent songs off to blogs, and Tapes ‘N Tapes inadvertently…

Belfast’s Stiff Little Fingers were teenagers who played mostly traditional rock-and-roll fare in the late 1970s before they discovered punk. The Fingers combined punk’s unrestrained, id-fueled energy with classic pop sensibilities to create music that was a cousin of sorts to what the Buzzcocks had already started the year before…

Boldly seizing a moniker his mother hung on him when social anxiety held him back a year in nursery school, Scott Hutchinson leads a Northern Scotland quintet called Frightened Rabbit that plays earnest, self-searching paeans ringing with the sonorous indie-pop echoes of the Vaselines, Orange Juice and the Delgados. Signed…

There is probably no voice in hip-hop more distinctive than Young Jeezy’s. Once he exploded onto the scene with his brand of “cocaine rap,” inspired by very real life experiences, he quickly rose to the top of the charts with his gravelly, raspy voice. Those looking for beats, rhymes and life need…

“Carnival of Souls,” the lead track on this EP, with its ominous evocation of early, all-analog synth pop, would be perfect for a John Carpenter remake of the classic horror movie of the same name. From the sounds of it, Joey Wiley watched one too many weird science-fiction movies from…

As assistant professor of music and the director of the guitar program at the University of Colorado Denver, Paul Musso definitely has some outstanding chops, which is more than evident on his latest effort, Tonescapes. For the most part, the seven-song album is a collection of mostly relaxed yet swinging…

Techo Shaw, an MC with a voice as booming as the enthusiastic rhymes he spits, gets in where he fits in with this club-ready joint. Whether for the hardline 808 bass drop on the ode to ladies’ shoeware (“Stilletos”) or the flirty, sexy flow of “Press Replay,” almost all of the tracks…

Karl Ridgeway is a software developer from Boulder studying computer science at the University of Colorado. At least that’s what’s on his resumé, and it’s probably what his parents tell folks when they ask, “So what’s Karl doing these days?” Ridgeway may well be a charter member of the Geek…

I was once a juggalo. There, I said it. Circa 1997, when I was just a tender lad of fifteen with frosted hair, 74-inch leg openings on my jeans and a perpetual boner, Insane Clown Posse was just catching on nationwide, but was already the shit within the community of…

Lalah Hathaway is the daughter of Donny Hathaway, one of the pioneers of soul music. While she has lived her whole life in the shadow of her famous father, the songstress has enjoyed more than two decades in the music business, based on her reputation for putting out classic and timeless…

David Starfire started his musical career playing guitar and rocking out in bands (Cellophane Masses, for one) before weaving world music into underground electronic beats with his current solo sound; he’s also a main member of the Dub Kirtan All Stars Project with FreQ Nasty. As a multi-instrumentalist and a…

Fresh Breath Committee has undergone some major changes this summer. From MCs changing their monikers to breaking new members, the Committee is hard at work on new music and molding the brand-new crew for the rap takeover. We caught up with the guys for the rundown…