There is no fence-riding in hip-hop. It is the most competitive genre of music, partly because of the way it formed and partly because it remains the newest major movement. So there is no shortage of hatred going around. But sometimes, someone does something so heinous they transcend artistic disagreement…
A little girl starts this two-song EP by saying, “I’m apologizing in advance for what you’re about to hear.” It’s meant to be self-deprecating, obviously, but that only makes sense if you follow it with death metal or something equally badass. Instead, Be the Ant follows it with nine minutes…
Here’s a plot line no one could have predicted two years ago: Canadian teen drama star turns into singer/rapper whose most famous freestyle involves reading lines off a BlackBerry. Buoyed by his association with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, he attains such massive success that he does a single for…
Makeout Point is a relatively new Denver band you can call post-punk because it’s literally true: At least two of the four members used to be in hardcore bands. They’ve settled down now with fuzz pedals and melody, and you can hear the lead single from the upcoming 7-inch Night…
The second single off Drake’s upcoming blockbuster finds him with some 808s and orchestra, courtesy of (who else?) Kanye West, doing his Casanova thing. The reaction was sort of neutral — it’s not terrible, but it’s also not “Forever.” Something of a holding pattern. But then the video came out…
It’s a simple concept: Write a program that searches news articles for naturally occurring Haikus and pair them with an obliquely related flickr photo. Personally, we could never do this because we do not know how to use something called Unix Cron Scheduling. But Eric Peterson does. You may know…
Mike Marchant • Blue Million Miles • Old Radio 05.7.10 | Hi-Dive It’s 2010, where we can start show reviews with social media: Approximately ten hours before Friday’s show at which his album was to be released, Mike Marchant posted the following on his facebook page : “just got a…
We would hate for you to miss out on all the awesome that happens every weekend in our fair city, so we’ve decided to run down five of the best shows in one easy-to-swallow post, with video and audio. Tell us — and the rest of the world — what…
Here’s the newest track off the upcoming Bruno Mars EP It’s Better If You Don’t Understand, which comes out May 11. This song started cropping up on YouTube last night. It’s not as good as “Nothin’ On You” or the first single off the EP, which you can hear below…
It’s not often that we hear from DU’s online student radio station, KVDU. But for more than a year now, the station has hosted a greatest-hits collection of local bands for an interview and in-studio performance series. Series curators Eric Peterson, of local bands Old Radio and Houses, and Whitney…
Andy Guerrero returns to his funk act after shutting it down to focus on his work as a guitarist for the Flobots. This is his return home in a lot of ways, and mainstream success has left its mark: This is squeaky-clean music, more broadly influenced than before, crafted by…
As expected, B.o.B.’s Adventures of Bobby Ray is the number one album in the country this week. Of course, it only needed to sell 84,000 copies to do it. As Billboard notes, this is the first three-week run of no albums breaking 100,000 since February of last year. Cue alarm…
May 4, 2010: As good a day as any to say that Nathaniel Rateliff has made it. His sparse and powerful In Memory of Loss has been available digitally for a week, but today it appeared in physical form in record stores across the country. Rateliff grew up in Missouri,…
Paean • Bad Weather California • Mehko & Ocean Birds 04.31.10 | hi-dive Paean spent eighteen months working on its debut full-length, Songs For Us To Sing. Three of the band’s six members are siblings, and the album was recorded in a studio in their parent’s garage. So there was…
We would hate for you to miss out on all the awesome that happens every weekend in our fair city, so we’ve decided to run down five of the best shows in one easy-to-swallow post, with video and audio. Tell us — and the rest of the world — what…
Lupe Fiasco • B.o.B. 04.29.10 | Ogden Theatre B.o.B. and Lupe Fiasco collaborated on “Past My Shades,” which appears on the former’s just released, soon to be number one album, B.o.B. Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray. Yet the two did not play the song together during either set last…
There is no shortage of super-earnest bands with a dozen members and twice that many instruments in Colorado. Paean, probably the flagship band of Fort Collins label Act So Big Forest, is one of the better entrants in the category (real number of members: six). Live, the act is consuming…
The cover’s off the grill, the windows are down and sweet freedom is on the horizon. Ahh, summer is coming. And while it’s still early, there have already been more than enough entrants in the summer jam sweepstakes to make a short list. A few ground rules: 1. Must have…
We were all sitting around wondering how to make Guess How I’m Peeing even more offensive/frivolous, and then it dawned on us: adult vending machines. So this week, we’re peeing, sure, but we’re also enjoying the sights, and maybe even reaching into our pockets. For some change, sickos. Ultimately, we…
Yeasayer | Sleigh Bells 04.24.10 | The Bluebird Theatre If anyone is getting tired of Brooklyn, it didn’t show Saturday — a pair of the hippest bands from the hippest borough in the world packed the hell out of the Bluebird. We’re talking sweaty backs leaving wet prints on strangers’…
We would hate for you to miss out on all the awesome that happens every weekend in our fair city, so we’ve decided to run down five of the best shows in one easy-to-swallow post, with video and audio. Tell us — and the rest of the world — what…
Jónsi • Death Vessel Paramount Theatre | 04.22.10 There was a moment during Jónsi set at the Paramount while he was playing the (excellent) single “Go Do,” in which 85 percent of the crowd had risen from their seats. That probably makes sense because Jónsi, whose real name involves a…
