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When most singer-songwriters show up at open mics, what you can expect is a series of weepy ladies and gentlemen strumming away on acoustic guitars. In direct opposition to these expectations, what you will find Friday at the New Frontier Lounge is a horse of a different color. Featuring many
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It's easy to take some of the Puget Sound's brightest stars for granted. Tacoma has a way of enveloping its populace like a glorious afghan, soothing and nurturing the talent within. Whenever one of our finer artists flies the coop to Portland or Brooklyn or Los Angeles, it always comes
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Despite having a tenure as a signee to a Universal Records affiliate, grabbing a modest hit with her Cee Lo Green collaboration, "Come Along," and generally gaining a huge swath of new fans, Vicci Martinez has returned to Tacoma and to her more independent roots. Teaming up with local hip-hop
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Los Angeles duo Haunted Summer bring a dimensionality and range to dream pop that's as refreshing as it is intriguing. Without sacrificing the gauzy serenity that typifies the genre, they bring inflections of '50s pop (as on the swaying "Ain't One" and their swooning cover of Animal Collective's "Bees") and
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It may say more about me than it does about the band in question, but I initially was convinced that Steady Lean's name was an anagram of Steely Dan. A cursory examination of the letters will prove that this is not true, and a spin of their music will point
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I normally don't make it a point to ask about their band name. For the most part, it's nonsense anyway. No one takes the time to ask Steely Dan or Pearl Jam or the Flaming Lips about their vaguely gross names. (Incidentally, I wonder if Steely Dan all shouted "F---!"
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As Tom Lehrer immortally said, "Spring is here! Su-pa-ring is here! Life is skittles and life is beer!" We've made it through the terrible wasteland of the temperate winter, and we've lived to come out on the other side: spring. How do we show our benevolent gods that we are thankful
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While four-piece Pile from Massachusetts named themselves a single, indistinct word, there are thousands of pages to be written with that one little word. Standing out amongst the English language, "pile" is a word that rarely denotes something good. I guess you could have a pile of delicious donuts? More
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Chicago quartet the Boxers start out their most recent LP, The Blue Pool, with washed-out snippets from Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet," distorted and sinister, before segueing into a sort of anthemic, melancholy rock. It's reminiscent of the days when the Flaming Lips were transitioning from stoned punks into the glorious
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Portland trio the Woolen Men carry with them a number of easily identifiable influences that mix together in delightful ways. They bring the '50s rock by way of Violent Femmes, the stately indie pop of Guided By Voices, and the shambolic lo-fi rock of Pavement. It's ear candy for a
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One of the more bizarre movie-watching experiences I've ever had is when my dad sat me down and had me watch Beach Blanket Bingo. Yet another in a seemingly endless series of beach party movies in the '60s, featuring Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, and tons of groovy dancing, Beach Blanket
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Oakland five-piece Halcyonaire approach the genre of country music from a roundabout way. Much like bands like Phosphorescent, the music is less about approximating the sound of country than it is about creating a hazy mirage of what country feels like. These are drifting songs that have a relatively loose
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The music of Peach Kelli Pop harkens back to the sugary sound of Beach Blanket Bingo - albeit with a fuzzy veneer of bubblegum garage pop - but sneakily provides more substance than Frankie and Annette could've mustered. From bedroom recordings to playful glamor shots on album covers and associations
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Hall & Oates is one of those bands that it's very easy to scoff at: the dumb hair and mustaches, the painfully sincere music and the blue-eyed soul. Still, in this era of post-irony, where hipsters are able to enjoy cheesy music without ever having to keep it at arm's
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Now that indie music has increasingly begun to incorporate pop music into its life, we've found ourselves at an interesting crossroad, where the underground no longer has any fear of selling out or sounding too corporate; instead, bands have folded Top 40 sounds into their brand of uncompromising idiosyncrasy, resulting
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Here are the things that I know about Julia Dream: they have taken their name from a Pink Floyd song; they are a Korean psychedelic band; they take their Pink Floyd and psychedelia seriously; they are solely devoted to making your brain do backflips. Every song of theirs is designed
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Oakland trio Religious Girls is gospel music for noise. Praising everything both beautiful and abrasive, Religious Girls are fascinated with taking clattering and chanting and making it a main character. Eardrums are pummeled, pupils are dilated, and minds are expanded to the place where they can receive that glut of
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In the late '60s and into the '70s, there was a sea change in the world of country music. Rather than drawing from the glut of radio-ready folk and country that dominated the airwaves, a new class of country singers came up through the ranks, bringing with them a more
