Introducing: Blackhearts

Just a bit ago, Blackhearts, the thus far super secret collaboration between Yonnas Abraham of the Pirate Signal, F.O.E. and Karma, made its online debut with a track called “Bloodlines of That Gangsta Shhh.” According to Abraham, the still burgeoning outfit will expand to include collaborations with other artists such…

Something Like Sound blog offers free local digital comp

A group of engineering students who are passionate about music? The mere notion seems incongruous, like, say, a group of accountants forming an art appreciation club and then getting together periodically to discuss the works of Van Gogh and Michaelangelo. Nonetheless, that’s exactly the basis for Something Like Sound, a…

Goodie Mob’s show at the Gothic postponed

We just go word from Live Nation that Goodie Mob’s show originally scheduled for tonight at the Gothic Theatre has been postponed due to weather. A rescheduled date for the Atlanta-based hip-hop group will be announced shortly. …

Music for snow

Ah, snow. I hate it. I am not a skier, not a ‘boarder and I sure as fuck don’t snowshoe. And it’s not because I am some pansy-ass, warm-weather transplant from SoCal or something. I grew up in Wyoming and I’ve been in Colorado for almost thirteen years, so I…

Two-disc deluxe edition of Fray’s self-titled album due next month

Gotta love record companies, especially the majors. What moxie, eh? Even in the midst of steadily declining record sales, that get progressively worse each year, and despite the fact that we’re smack dab in a recession with record unemployment, they’re still trying to squeeze every penny out of us with…

Spellcaster’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Time Travel Committee at Rhinoceropolis

Less a band than a loose agglomeration of musicians engaging in a performance-art piece, Spellcaster’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Time Travel Committee (due at Rhinoceropolis on Friday, October 30) brings the danger back to an indie-rock show like few have since the Kindercide last performed. Spellcaster puts aside his usual noise…

Steely Dan

Steely Dan sounds like the 1970s incarnate — not because its music makes you think of earth tones, discotheques, quaaludes or the Eagles, but because its classic oeuvre was so non-threatening that it hid the lurid tales and subversive content of its seemingly innocuous songs, written in a decade that…

White Rabbits

Too often, the term “pop” rightfully conjures images of hackneyed premises about love and longing and music too lacking in an individual sound to be more than cultural wallpaper. White Rabbits (from Brooklyn via Missouri) clearly dispensed with such refinements and forged songs that are thematically far-ranging and rich in…

David Bazan

Christmas is still a couple of months away, but one of its biggest supporters will be coming to Denver early. David Bazan, formerly of Pedro the Lion and Headphones, may seem an unlikely St. Nick, but he’s taken the Christmas spirit by the reigns and just released his sixth installment…

Christ on Parade

Born Against, Millions of Dead Christians, Christ on a Crutch: Traditionally, hardcore punk bands haven’t cut the Christian religion a hell of a lot of slack. San Francisco’s Christ on Parade proudly considers itself part of that lineage, and for good reason. After forming in 1985, the group released its…

The Show Is the Rainbow

Never afraid to lubricate the dance floor with a little well-slung mud, Darren Keen of Nebraska’s one-man band The Show Is the Rainbow is as known for his frequent lambasting of the prominent Omaha indie-rock scene as he is for his own abrasive yet massively catchy dance jams. Keen seems…

Weird Turn Prose

A little too experimental to be straight-out country and too countrified and honky-tonk to rightfully be considered alt-country, this latest release from Weird Turn Prose is nevertheless a sonically consistent and rewarding listen. It’s obvious the songwriters didn’t bother with genre considerations, and nowhere is this clearer than on the…

The Skyline Surrender

Denver has no shortage of young, hungry metalcore bands. The Skyline Surrender isn’t any less ambitious than the rest — but its debut EP, This Is Character, shows that the quartet has more than just high hopes. The disc draw equally from the metallic undertow of Darkest Hour and the…

Plastic Fantastic Lover

It’s hard to put your finger on Plastic Fantastic Lover’s music. Most of it falls somewhere between a folkier Tom Waits and a mildly psychotic take on the Grateful Dead’s mellow, hippie-folk side. But then it takes a turn into something like electronic down-tempo for a track or two before…

Potcheen

Originally called the Potcheen Folk Band, this outfit has dropped the “folk” from its name, and that makes sense — because while the musicians delve into traditional Irish folk songs like “Foggy Dew” and “Whisky in a Jar,” they also use the genre as a foundation to build upon and…

House music is back, according to Pete Tong

As the longtime host of the BBC Radio 1 shows Essential Selection and Essential Mix, Pete Tong is arguably one of the most influential DJs in the world. Beamed across the U.K. and the world, those shows have introduced millions of listeners to the latest and greatest sounds in dance…

Juliet Mission is a master of the sad and dark

In the early 1990s, Andre Lucero, Doug Seaman, Tony Morales and Elizabeth Rose formed the popular experimental-rock band Sympathy F. Seaman later went on to a brief stint in Worm Trouble, and Morales played in the Kalamath Brothers with Kevin Soll of 16 Horsepower. Lucero and Seaman also performed as…

Modeselektor

Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary, better known as the German dance-music duo Modeselektor, aren’t afraid to expand the horizons of techno in their productions. Studio collaborations with Thom Yorke of Radiohead, noisemeister Otto von Schirach and fellow techno traveler Apparat are evidence of that. In their DJ sets, such as…