We came. We saw. We tweeted. Last night, Westword hosted the third annual Denver Web Awards, our celebration of Denver's greatest digital minds. In September, we put out a call for you, dear readers, to nominate your favorite online projects, and a team at Westword spent more than a month whittling your suggestions down to our final entries across categories featuring news, arts, food and music. Continue reading to see the winners of the music categories in this year's Denver Web Awards.
See also: - Denver's Best Instagram Account 2012 - Slide show: Web Awards 2012 - Meet your 2012 Denver #WebAwards winners - Twenty best Instagram photos from the 2012 Denver #WebAwards - Meet the 2012 Denver #WebAwards finalists - Fifteen best tweets about the 2012 Denver #WebAwards
Best Music Blog: ThisSongIsSick.com Colorado's non-stop music scene requires up-to-the-minute coverage and insider information to keep its followers in the loop. ThisSongIsSick.com has established itself as an event sponsor and a music blog while also delivering a generous supply of electronic music to the world. With exclusive releases for Colorado musicians, TSIS gains more than three million views per month by providing free downloads of albums, unreleased tracks and fresh new remixes. Now the site is moving into show production, most notably that of the recent Big Gigantic gig at Red Rocks. Best MC on Social Media: Wheelchair Sports Camp (Wo)manned by Wheelchair Sports Camp MC Kalyn Heffernan, this Twitter feed is part promotion, part information, part hysterical observation. A vocal Occupier and social-justice warrior, Heffernan keeps her people up-to-date on political news while alternately musing about whether she should drop acid and go see Primus live. Whatever she's on, her followers definitely want more of it. Best Band on Social Media: Wheelchair Sports Camp With more than 8,600 tweets, Heffernan is as prolific as she is hilarious. As she says on the band's Twitter profile, she's a freedom fighter for the little ones and has no problem poking fun at herself, posting photos dressed as a garden gnome or as Chucky from Child's Play. Sometimes she'll just bust out one-liners like "Shoutout to my homegirl who woke up next to a loaf of bread this morning!" or "I was looking in my chair for earplugs and found some saltine crackers instead." Best Nightclub on Social Media: Beta Nightclub You don't become the No. 1 Club in North America (DJMag.com) by keeping quiet about your events. Beta Nightclub brings the biggest names in electronic music to this city, and it maintains its spot at the top by holding ticket contests, releasing guest-list spots via Facebook and consistently providing professional coverage of its shows. With more than 35,000 followers, the venue's page is updated regularly with fliers for upcoming shows, nightlife shots from the previous weekend's events and inquiries into acts that dance-hungry Denverites want to see. Best Shameless Self-Promoter: Mane Rok If there's a tutorial on how not to fuck up online promotion of one's musical persona, Mane Rok's the professor. The MC utilizes Facebook posts as a means to promote upcoming shows while splicing updates with juicy news clips. The result? An intelligent, informative balance that never comes across like rapper spam. Check out his Twitter, too. Best Music Video: "The Fallout," by The Epilogues In this stark and jarring video, director Dillon Novak perfectly captures the ragged energy of the Epilogues. Everything is here: a damsel in distress, blood, shadowy figures -- even an abandoned house. Shots of the band playing wildly are paralleled with a scary-movie chase scene, culminating in an ending that looks as though it could lead to a sequel. Fingers crossed. Best DJ or Producer on Social Media: Ben Samples Between traveling to play gigs at some of the country's most notable venues and hanging out around Denver on random nights to see the talent that comes through, Ben Samples doesn't shut up on Twitter. Through social observations, backstage self-portraits, reports of late-night hijinks and other humorous anecdotes and quips, Samples lets you know what he's thinking when he's thinking it. And his response to followers' random questions and commentary keeps the conversation consistent and interesting. As far as we know, he's also the first person on the Internet to use "Lindsay Lohan" as a verb. Best Bartender on Social Media: Kevin Burke There's no question that Colt & Gray bartender Kevin Burke knows an insane amount about spirits, beer, wine and cocktails, but the guy also isn't afraid to tell you that he's drinking Crooked Stave out of a red Solo cup or that he left his pants, coffee and water at home. While he'll occasionally toss out a few of his recipes on the Twitter-verse, he'll also unload humorous observations like "Most people would be surprised to know that yes indeed, wine corks smell like cork."
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