Ed Marshall is a music critic who wrote for The Big Take Over for some years when he was roommates with the magazine’s publisher, Jack Rabid. Since the early ’90s, Marshall has been in and out of the underground music scene in Denver, a veteran of bands like Man Ray’s…

On songs like “Melpop,” with its hint of guitar atmosphere in the background, textural, minimalistic percussion and echoing bass line, Velocirapture imagines the kind of moody yet strangely compelling bedroom recordings Robert Smith might have made had he grown up a couple of decades later. On “The Watcher,” a clacking…

Ethan Holtzman went to Cambodia in the 1990s and returned with music culled from the rich Cambodian rock scene that had existed before the Khmer Rouge put an end to just about everything in that country for five years. Holtzman recruited his brother Zac and some musician friends to do…

With the 2009 release of High Beams, Carbon Choir (due at the hi-dive this Friday, January 20) showed promise with a set of introspective, heartfelt songs rimmed with layers of impressionistic, melodic flickers of sound. As Joel Van Horne’s vocals soar over the top of the instrumentation, he shows an…

NURSES @ THE HI-DIVE | 1/15/12 This was one of those Sunday shows where a lot of people showed up and everybody seemed to be very into all of the artists on the bill, from the opening set from The Don’ts and Be Carefuls all the way to the end,…

Red Fox Run plays bright, fresh-faced pop-rock songs that manage to avoid coming off as either cheeky or overly earnest — the kind of music, evidently, that makes Barry Fey glad he’s no longer in the music business. The act got its start when friends Daniel Rondeau, Joshua Hester and…

When this band refers to its music as “post-indie space rock,” it’s fairly safe to assume that the description is meant as a witticism. And yet “Day One” sounds like an unlikely fusion of two-step Americana and sharp, sparkling guitar rock. But We Were Cosmonauts doesn’t content itself with just…

Sometime in the past decade, Nurses moved from Idaho to Portland. Now based in a town that’s in no short supply of chamber-pop bands both great and mediocre, Nurses has successfully taken some of that style and transformed it into something much more idiosyncratic. At least that’s the impression you’ll…

Mansions on the Moon holds the rare distinction of being able to say that it’s been backed by the likes of Pharrell Williams and Shay Haley and also opened for Wiz Khalifa. Few indie acts can make that kind of claim. Such opportunities undoubtedly came about because of Mansions on…

It’s fairly obvious that Patrick Dethlefs — a transplant from Tacoma, Washington, who now makes his home in Kittredge, Colorado, of all places — is no stranger to the kind of focused introspection that yields the mature songwriting style he has cultivated at a relatively young age. Folk? Americana? Sure,…

THE SKELETON SHOW @ Carioca Café (“Bar Bar”) | 1/ 7/12Halfway through her set, after hitting who knows what chords and wailing about being hatched from a witch’s egg and flying high, Sara Century held up the guitar she was playing and asked if anyone had a pick, as she…

While the term “surf rock” could be applied to the music of Moon Tides (due at the hi-dive this Saturday, January 7), “dream pop” would probably come closer to describing the sound of this Fort Collins-based band: hazy, breathy vocals underneath delicate, shimmery guitar melodies. And although Moon Tides is…

ITCHY-O @ 3 KINGS TAVERN | 12/31/11 A number of people at this show had no idea what Itchy-O was about. So when one of the uniformed cadre of musicians, his arms lit up with a short row of lights, went running through 3 Kings just prior to the performance,…

Meaghan Lillis met Josh Guisinger while the two were students at Auraria. Lillis was studying piano performance, and Guisinger was an art student. They had run into each other at Radiohead and Björk concerts, and then at the bookstore in Westminster where Lillis worked. They bonded over music and decided…

It’s likely that Madeline Johnston didn’t actually hole herself up for the winter with only her private thoughts and the company of a crate of records and books while writing this album. Just the same, these eight tracks have that sort of feel — a kind of lonely, minimalist, contemplative…

Although Mark Arm is sometimes credited with coining the term “grunge,” all of his bands have been informed by a keen sense of humor as well as the great raw sound of the garage-rock bands of the Pacific Northwest. Forming Green River in 1984 with friend and guitarist Steve Turner…

Noise punk — or whatever all-encompassing term you prefer — is nothing new. That said, any band that sounds like it’s bursting with a desperate energy and has the inspiration and drive to engage inner turmoil head-on is always going to be relevant. Shoppers, from Syracuse, New York, embodies that…

SPEEDWOLF @ MARQUIS THEATER | 12/16/11Speedwolf vocalist Reed Bruemmer feigned surprise at the end of the band’s set last night and asked the audience if they actually wanted to hear the band cover KISS. Of course everyone did, so the guys closed the record-release show with their raucous rendition of…

We’re very serious,” notes Speedwolf frontman Reed Bruemmer, “about being lighthearted.” Speedwolf is equally serious about writing music that’s fun to play and doesn’t come off as phony; the band isn’t exactly trying to redefine heavy music. It’s led by Bruemmer, a veteran of the scene from Death Destruction Chaos,…

Though not related to the Los Angeles band featuring former members of Mika Miko, Bleachedblonde nonetheless shares some of the gritty garage aesthetic of that act. “Surf Nazi Must Diet” is a clever reference to a Troma film, but it’s also the name given to a hyped-up garage-rock song that…