If you’ve never heard of Owl City until now, you’re forgiven. The brainchild of young pop composer and producer Adam Young, Owl City, seemingly came out of nowhere in the past six months and is quickly becoming a phenomenon. Foisted to the forefront solely on the strength of a strong…
Back in 2008, we named Boostwell Crew the best hip-hop crew in Denver. Headed by SP Double, the crew consisted of local emcees and producers, Flawless, Fo Chief, ManDaMyth, Catch Lungs, EMB, Purpose, Procise, Kontrast and a few others. Shortly after the recognition, a number of members left the crew…
These days, a real punk band (sorry, Green Day) can almost never find its way onto the pop charts. But back in the day (see: mid-’80s), England’s New Model Army released political punk that didn’t merely sell to left-wing extremists. Almost thirty years ago, frontman/mastermind Justin Sullivan, who has been…
Time, aka Chris Steele, has been involved in the Denver hip-hop scene for over a decade, and his current and future collaborators include Sole of the Anticon collective, Talib Kweli, Drake, Kool Keith and C-Rayz Walz. The snarkier hip-hop aficionados refer to the form Time writes and performs as “alternative…
Churchill is a yet another newer Denver act that has arrived on the scene seemingly fully formed. The outfit came together from the collaboration of a pair of college chums, Tim Bruns and Michael Morter, when the former moved back to Denver after a stint in Nashville trying his hand…
Jeremy Gregory had some innovative ideas for this weekend’s Endotrend Festival – such as silk-screening t-shirts as admission rather than issuing hard-tickets. Unfortunately, it’s going to take a little while longer for some of those ideas to take flight. Just a week before the event, being billed as the country’s…
In this week’s issue, we ran a short profile on Wino by Phil Freeman culled from his recent conversation with Scott “Wino” Weinrich, a singer/guitarist who’s split his time with a slew of revered metal and hard rock acts such as Saint Vitus, the Obsessed, Spirit Caravan, Place of Skulls,…
Bryan Adams is on the short list of the most successful and popular of rock singers to emerge in the ’80s. The Canadian-born Adams has had a string of hits in the last three decades, while 1983’s Cuts Like a Knife and 1994’s Reckless are albums that became part of…
Joy, Phish’s eleventh studio album and first release in five years, nabbed the top spot at Bart’s CD Cellar while six Beatles re-issues (including Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper’s and the Stereo Box Set) dominated the store’s top ten for the week ending September 13. Yo La Tengo’s latest, effor, Popular…
Brooklyn’s the Depreciation Guild has spent the last few years fusing elements of synth pop, dream pop and experimental electronic music into an indistinguishable amalgamation of the band’s wide-ranging sonic influences. In reviews and profiles of the band, much has been made of the group’s use of an old piece…
Know for some insanely explosive shows, Israeli rock monsters Mononotix often move their shows into the crowd, creating sweaty pits of madness. On Where Were You When It Happened?, the band’s first full-length, released this week on Drag City, guitarist Yonatan Gat says the band captured some of the energy…
With the recent release of its sophomore EP, This is Character, Denver metalcore group the Skyline Surrender is starting to gain ground in the local scene–although it hasn’t been an easy victory. The original quintet of singer Josh Viles, bassist Jinji Thompson, drummer Ben Scarbro, and guitarists Justin Williams and…
There is a long tradition of ex-punk rockers trading in their power chords and electric guitars for the idyllic green pastures of folk music. Frank Turner of Winchester, England made that very leap a few years ago after the breakup of his progressive hardcore band Million Dead had reached its…
Thao with the Get Down Stay Down’s latest record, Know Better Learn Faster, carries a wide menu of influences. Like the ensemble’s previous work, the album draws from traditional American folk precedents, as well as snippets of other sounds that range from old Motown to ’60s pop. The blend comes…
According to Cymbals Eat Guitars 20-year-old frontman Joseph D’Agostino, Lou Reed didn’t want a lot of cymbals on the first three Velvet Underground albums because “cymbals eat guitars,” which explains the copious amounts of floor toms on those early discs. While that might have inspired the band’s moniker, there’s still…
The Thermals new album, Now We Can See, represents more than simply a fresh recording for the Portland-based trio. After an amicable departure from the iconic Seattle label Sub-Pop, the group released their new disc on Kill Rock Stars. According to frontman Hutch Harris, the shift afforded the band the…
Often compared to New Wave bands of the early ’80s — especially the Human League –Brooklyn, New York’s Red Wire Black Wire, uses synthesizers as a primary compositional instrument. Described by the New Music Express as having an icy sound, the immediacy and sincerity of Doug Walters’s vocals helps the…
The Glitch Mob started out as a Los Angeles-based DJ collective that pooled its collective talent to make a more collaborative music with expanded sonic possibilities. As individual artists, Ooah, edIT and Boreta have released solo albums of cutting edge electronic music but it is as a team that they…
With early support from one of the country’s most important independent radio stations, KEXP in Seattle, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart — appearing at Monlith this weekend — struck a chord with fans of earnest, dreamy, lush pop music. Though often compared to C86-era and Sarah Records bands,…
New York City native Joe Bithorn plays the role of George Harrison in Rain, one of the most popular and well-known Beatles tribute bands in the country (appearing September 22 to 27 at the Buell Theater. Raised with a steady diet of classical, jazz, blues and psychedelic rock influences, Bithorn…
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros are definitely one of the more buzzed about underground bands to come to Colorado this summer and deservedly so. With a briskly selling headliner show at the Planet Bluegrass Wildflower Pavillions in Lyons on Friday September 11 and a hotly anticipated appearance at Red…
The indie rock world has more than its share of rags-to-riches, flannel-to-Fendi stories – glimmering groups who seem to go from the basement to the buzz bin overnight. Bad Veins – the Cincinnati-based duo of multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Benjamin Davis and drummer Sebastien Schultz – fits the mold, rocketing from its first…
