Music

Whoa! If you check the electronic iTunes Top 10 chart right now, you’ll notice that Big Gigantic’s latest album has jumped to the second spot on the chart. While that in itself is noteworthy, what makes it more so is that the outfit made Nocturnal available for free download on…

Based upon the number of hoarse voices we encountered after the game this past Sunday, we’ve reached the following conclusions: Nobody in this town seems to know how to express his enthusiasm without damaging his voice. And with another big game on tap this weekend and the way the season’s…

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have postponed their upcoming tour to allow time for frontman Anthony Kiedis to recuperate from the recent surgery on his foot to remove a bone and repair a detached flexor tendon. The band, which was originally due at the Pepsi Center on Sunday, March 4,…

Are you ready to party? What are we saying? Of course you are. You were born to rage! Good thing: Artopia, one of our most eagerly anticipated parties of the year next to the Westword Music Showcase, is upon us once again. The lineup has been finalized, and we’ve got…

Those looking for a little rowdy cinema to warm up those dreary final months of the season should look no further than Growler Distro’s Mid-Winter Punk Film Festival, which features only the most hard-core selection of underground punk-rock movies of the ’70s and ’80s through today. The series is a…

As a founding member of the Punch Brothers and bassist for Leftover Salmon for the past decade, Greg Garrison undoubtedly knows his way around bluegrass. Before all that, though, Garrison was a jazz fan. As a teenager, he immersed himself in albums like John Coltrane’s Crescent and the Oscar Peterson…

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,…

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…

Inspired by the Mayan calendar’s succession, STS9 has developed a one-of-a-kind musical experience in the form of a tour dubbed the Great Cycle Spectacles, a presentation of art, imagination and music performed by one of the most sought-after psychedelic jam-rock bands going right now. After a successful tour following bassist…

Formed in 2008 around music already written by bandleader Michael Fitzpatrick, Fitz & the Tantrums came together within a week, just in time to play their first show. The chemistry was perfect, and the group’s brand of rhythm and blues with a shiny modern radio style was cemented. While there’s an…

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…

There’s a subversive genius at work beneath the surface of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” At first glance, it’s an instantly approachable bit of lite-rock fluff that peddles an equally pleasant message: “Hey, guys, wouldn’t it be great if we could all, like, just get along?” Pretty universal. But that was never…

Kid Hum’s latest release, Love to Give, is not your typical beat tape. The production pulls together unlikely rhythms, piano-infused beats and hip-hop flavors across eleven very short tracks. Early on, “Haunting Memories” conjures a feeling of dark nostalgia, while “Passing Time,” with its stuttered bass line, is funky in all…

Having performed professionally for more than two decades with Ken Peplowski, the Artie Shaw Orchestra, the Stylistics and a number of Broadway shows, Boulder-based reedsman Eric Erhardt is finally releasing his debut as a bandleader with A Better Fate. On the eight original cuts here, Erhardt, who started composing for…

Bedrockk’s debut full-length showcases an admirable ability on the band’s part to concoct a unique blend of mellow dubstep, reggae, electronica and even some dancehall. David Marquess’s smoky, passionate vocals and soft guitar riffs on songs like “Diamond in the Night” and “Streets Are Shinin” balance nicely with the more…

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…

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…

Lumonics has been hosting electronic-music events in its beautiful, psychedelic space for some time now, and this year, the venue is teaming up with Tune Events to present Tune In Fridays, a new series of underground parties. For the inaugural show, DJ DRC is coming in from San Francisco. The…

Update (2/7/12): Isaac Slade and Joe King give a track-by-track breakdown of Scars & Stories, the Fray’s new album. Just before the holidays, the Fray offered another peek at its upcoming album, Scars & Stories, the followup to the act’s eponymous sophomore release from 2009. While the record’s first single,…