D’Girl (aka Dosha Harris) has emerged as a compelling new force to be reckoned with in the mostly male-dominated local scene. But it goes way beyond the fact that she’s a lady MC. The twenty-year-old, who’s been rhyming since age thirteen, carries herself with the poise of a veteran and…
San Francisco’s Birds & Batteries may be essentially a pop band, but the lushness of the act’s songwriting and the ability to evoke and articulate complex emotions with poetry and intensity is a rare talent these days. The group’s latest album, 2010’s Panorama, lived up to its title as a…
You may have noticed recently that Josh Ivy has been popping up behind the decks in the Mile High City with greater frequency. Good news: He’s not visiting. He’s back from his hiatus in North Carolina. We caught up with Ivy for a few minutes to talk about his break…
St. Vitus (due tonight at Summit Music Hall) were one of the pioneers of a style of music that took its direct inspiration from the first four, maybe even the first six, Black Sabbath albums. The band’s aggressive guitar work flirted with psychedelia but was too heavy to ever be…
It’s true: Drums, guitar, bass and a vintage NES can collide and create gorgeous music together. Pete Berkman, the 22-year-old behind the part-chiptune, part-traditional rock band Anamanaguchi says it was as simple as his own high school-age realization that what Weezer and dudes behind Mega Man 2 were doing was…
Inspired by the first wave of punk in the U.K., the Beat combined the social critique of punk with the broader emotional and sonic palette of reggae. Formed in 1978, the English Beat (so named when the band made its way across the Atlantic) released three classic albums before Dave…
Lupe Fiasco’s Lasers was the album he didn’t like and the label didn’t want to release. It’s a disaster of pandering, middle of the road pop from a rapper, who, at the very least, seemed full of fight until now. Most of the album couldn’t hold its own in a…
The National and Sharon Van Etten recorded a song for the Win Win soundtrack. It leaked yesterday, but Fox Searchlight has pretty well scrubbed the legal-ish streams. Regardless, the two artists are a good fit, Matt Berninger’s sleepy baritone makes a seamless companion for Van Etten’s own honeyed hum. The…
Charismatic, enigmatic and often hilarious, Lee Burridge built his reputation as one of dance music’s most well liked DJs playing gigs all over the world and winning over nightclubbers everywhere he goes. In advance of his show tomorrow night at Beta, we caught up with the English-born jock and talked…
Tanya Morgan, once a group with a following confined to the East Coast underground hip-hop scene, has seen several layers of artistic success since first coming onto the scene. Anyone affiliated with the following of Donwill and Von Pea can assert the mainstream success of artists like Kid Cudi and…
After a seventeen-year run, Austin’s Asylum Street Spankers have embarked on their final run, which they’ve affectionately dubbed the “Spanks for Everything” tour. During its storied history, jazz-folk act has gone through some fifty members and now tours as a seven-piece. In advance of the band’s three-day run in Colorado…
American Idol reunited JLo and Diddy last night, when the latter came to perform on the show now judged by the former. In case you need a refresher, the two had a very public, very volatile relationship ten years ago…
Adele, the soulful British pop diva who’s had this coming for a long time, has the first blockbuster album of 2011 with 21. She’s atop the Billboard charts this week, having sold 350,000-odd copies. This is a welcome development no matter how you look at it: Take a tour through…
TREY ANASTASIO BAND 03.01.11 |Ogden Theatre Whenever I think of Phish singer/guitarist/composer Trey Anastasio’s most powerful solo work, my mind always turns to “orchestral funk” — the term Anthony Keidis used to describe the Talking Heads’ large-band era (with Adrian Belew on searing lead guitar) when inducting the art-rock legends…
It’s been a big week in the inexcusable career resurgence of Chris Brown. Rihanna allowed her restraining order against him to be eased. Apparently someone sitting on some unreleased photos of the damage Brown inflicted on his former girlfriend thought this would be a good opportunity to share them; they…
Alex B is no stranger to the electronic scene. The producer has been making music since he was nineteen. A member of Pnuma, he first started making music on his own as Paper Diamond. That project, which is signed to the Pretty Lights Music imprint, became increasingly popular without him…
Linkin Park does not need an introduction. From Hybrid Theory to their newest album, A Thousand Suns, LP has continued to progress and grow as a band, giving its eager fan-base something to look forward to with every new release. In advance of the band’s show this Saturday, February 26…
A decade after starting the Jayhawks with Gary Louris, Mark Olson left the band in 1995, the same year Tomorrow the Green Grass was released, to look after his then-wife Victoria Williams, after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. While the Jayhawks continued to tour without him until the band…
Emerging from the no-wave scene in the New York underground in 1982, Swans became known for music that was forbidding, terrifyingly intense in its execution and lyrically uncompromising in its depiction of the darker side of human existence. Although an influence on industrial music and much of post-punk thereafter, Swans…
Yeah, the guys in Smith Westerns (due tonight at the Larimer Lounge) are young, and their attitude on stage and in interviews seems to be filled to the brim with youthful exuberance with a touch of bravado. But none of that would matter if this Chicago band didn’t write fundamentally…
Kevin Kain (aka Kevin Henderson) can typically be found posted up in the VIP area of the hottest clubs on any given weekend night, and occasionally a Thursday appearance at Club Vinyl’s Reggae on the Roof…
Denver has made quite the name for itself as one of the holy lands for American turntablism. After all, almost half of the national DMC competitors were from Colorado this year. While none of the locals placed in the competition this time around, scratch culture continues to thrive in the…
