Music

Experimental pop band Holophrase has always existed on the fringes of Denver, whether with its difficult-to-qualify musical style or in its living arrangements. The band currently resides in Henderson, a community in Adams County. At the end of a dirt driveway, three-fourths of the band shares the basement of a house and a garage. Outside, you can see undeveloped fields, an increasingly rare sight in most of the metro area.

We’ve endured the seemingly endless death spiral of the 2016 presidential campaign, cast our votes and taken selfies of our flag stickers…now what? We’ll be obsessively watching tallies and forecasts, but once the polls close, we need safe havens, distraction, healing and maybe even celebration. We need music, people, sweet music. Here are seven concerts in Denver on election night 2016.

Chuck Coffey has more Denver music pedigree on his own than a lot of bands combined. Starting Not Bad Records in 1997, Coffey helped numerous Denver bands put out albums and gain much needed exposure, all while playing in notable Denver bands like Eyes and Ears, Big Timber, Contender and countless others. These days, Coffey continues to help out bands from all over the world on his Snappy Little Numbers imprint and is set to put out his first full-length with his current band SPELLS.

The sci-fi thrash-metal band Vektor started in Tempe, Arizona and now calls Philadelphia home. But its origin story truly begins in rural valley outside Durango, where vocalist and guitarist David DiSanto lived during middle school and high school.

We’ve put together a list, in no particular order, of nine Denver musical pairs. #Relationshipgoals, anyone?

Courtney Barnett was set to appear at Project Pabst last May but she had to cancel her gig after getting an offer to appear on Saturday Night Live. Anyone bummed that she didn’t make the festival can see her headline at the Ogden Theatre on Tuesday, November 8. Sabrina Carpenter is at the Bluebird Theater tonight, Monday, November 7, and the Strokes guitarist Nick Valensi brings his band CRX to the Larimer tonight. Napalm Death and the Black Dahlia Murder are at the Summit Music Hall tomorrow. See our full list of picks below.

The creative young Boulder trio Grass is indicative of the music being pushed over the last year by ambitious local cassette label First Base Tapes: gritty and experimental but catchy, clever and (while ear-bleedin’ loud) deceptively pleasant.

Rae Sremmurd brought the Sremmlife II tour through Denver last night and turned the Ogden into a Tumblr-age hit factory, playing banger after banger. Perhaps more than the songs played, the sold-out show featured many ridiculous onstage antics. For those of you who didn’t get a ticket to the show or didn’t get any Snapchats from your friends who were there, Westword compiled a list of all of the wild moments that you missed.

This summer, the Colorado Department of Transportation launched its driver-safety campaign titled “A Few Can Still be Dangerous.” This message for the general public came from results of a CDOT survey last year which revealed that 70 percent of young men ages 21-35 in the state of Colorado believe that they are safe to drive after consuming two or three drinks.

The best concerts around Denver for November 4-6, 2016, including Safe in Sound, Marc Anthony, Sturgill Simpson and more.

Colorado is home to more than its fair share of great music. Perhaps no one knows this better than the musicians themselves. With that in mind, we asked one of our favorite Colorado artists which other local artists we should be checking out, and thus began the “One Band Leads to Another” musical scavenger hunt. It works like this: A band recommends a band, then that band recommends a band, and so forth. Follow the thread to discover new Colorado voices, enrich your local listening experience and find out where you can catch these bands performing live this month.

As a member of Dualistics, Science Partner and more recently the Gin Doctors, singer, guitarist and songwriter Tyler Despres was a fixture in the Denver music community for more than a decade. He died on Tuesday, November 1 the age of 34, of an aortic aneurysm.

List of concerts announced this week for Denver and Colorado.

Concert review of Young the Giant at the Ogden Theatre in Denver.

Interview with organizers about Levitt Pavilion Denver.

Interview with the Lemon Twigs.

Interview with country-folk singer-songwriter Amanda Shires.

Jason Vaughn, 12, of Denver, was shouted out by Drake at a show on October 1. Vaughn responds to his musical hero here.

A profile of the Boulder ‘vocal rock’ a cappella group Face.