In 2007 I was lucky enough to see Sonic Youth play their landmark 1988 album Daydream Nation in its entirety. From opener “Teen Age Riot” to the closing “Trilogy: Eliminator Jr.,” it was awesome. For …

A few years ago, San Diego punk-rock hero John Reis decided that he was tired of playing in two or three bands at the same time. He disbanded both Rocket from the Crypt and Hot …

Reel Big Fish has been playing ska-punk since the early ’90s and is best known for the 1997 hit “Sell Out,” but to me they will always be the band that created one of my …

Producers Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker, with their project Zero 7, have long been leaders in the field sometimes called downtempo music. The genre mixes the electronic and the organic, the modern and the retro, …

On their website, you can watch a video of Tape Deck Mountain playing a cover of Danzig’s “Mother” that’s both inappropriate and perfectly right. These unassuming San Diego indie rockers seemingly couldn’t have any less …

I first met Shayde Sartin when he was playing bass in a San Francisco garage rock band called the Hotwire Titans. Later I would occasionally run into him at the record store where he worked. …

The Big Pink take their name from a famous album by the Band, but their music sounds — at first, anyway — as if it has little in common with the American roots music of …

When the Raveonettes’ Facebook account announced the release of their new album In and Out of Control last month, one disillusioned fan commented, “I don’t know how you went from Lust Lust Lust to this …

When Sea Wolf released their first album a couple of years ago, they had a name taken from a 1904 Jack London novel, music with old-fashioned instruments, lyrics about mysterious old Gypsy women, and a …

I saw Shonen Knife sometime around ’94, and I remember this odd feeling that I was playing out a role that had been written for me by hipsters who didn’t really know what they were …

My wife is a practical Midwesterner and doesn’t have a lot of patience for songs that go on for more than three minutes. If we’re playing a CD in the car and a guitar solo …

When the Andy Warhol Museum decided recently to hire a band to write a soundtrack for Warhol’s famous silent-film screen tests, it couldn’t have picked a more appropriate act than Dean & Britta. Watching the …

Miike Snow appeared earlier this year as a near-anonymous trio of Swedes with a name that looks like a typo and a logo that looks like a jackalope. But despite the humility, the three multi-instrumentalist …

Om is a metal band — sort of. I should just get that out of the way first, because otherwise the following is going to seem misleading. Okay, here goes: Om’s new album is called …

Twenty-three years ago, the British music paper NME (New Musical Express) released C86 on cassette, featuring 22 songs by 22 new bands. Soon, music critics started using the term “C86” to describe other bands that …

A friend told me she likes Throw Me the Statue because they remind her of Guided by Voices. That’s kind of odd: TMTS is a one-man project partial to drum machines, synths, and hushed vocals; …

The Thermals’ 2006 album The Body, the Blood, the Machine was a punk-rock concept album about an America tyrannized by a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. Sound familiar? One online commenter described The Body as sounding like …

Calexico leaders Joey Burns and John Convertino have been playing in their signature mariachi-indie-rock-experimental-spaghetti-western-film-noir-soundtrack style since the early ’90s, when they were part of the all-instrumental combo Friends of Dean Martinez. But that doesn’t mean …

An article in L.A. Weekly recently declared the Zeros the “hands-down top-dog punk-rock band of the ’77 West Coast conflagration,” specifically singling them out as better than X, the band that usually gets the crown. …

The Lovemakers have attracted a lot of press since the band formed in Oakland in 2002, and nearly every article begins the same way: by telling the story of how the band’s only permanent members, …

I was flipping through a newspaper and came across an article about an upcoming show featuring four tribute bands that impersonate, respectively, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Rage Against the Machine. The same …

Golden Boots describe their music as “alt-alt-country.” They do have a vaguely country-ish vibe to their vocal harmonies, and some of their older material is no weirder than Wilco at their weirdest. But never mind …

A friend recently sent me a link to a YouTube video of a Caribbean steel-drum band playing a cover version of Joy Division’s “Transmission.” It’s one of those wonderful cover versions that makes you better …

A band’s gotta know how to promote itself these days, because no one else is going to do it for them. L.A.’s Killola is on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. They’ve got a blog, a YouTube …

Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca has been getting some of the best reviews of any release this year. Music site Stereogum asked, “Wait, is Bitte Orca the best album of 2009?” Note the question mark. New …

You know that raspy voice. You know that tiny figure, dressed in bad-girl black. You know that flawless face with the heavy eyeliner. You know that black hair. You know that big-guitar sound punching out …

John Vanderslice had been playing music for several years, first as a member of MK Ultra and then as a solo artist, but his career didn’t really take off until he set up camp in …

We all get excited when our favorite old bands reunite, and we tend to overlook the fact that the musicians probably hate each other and are only getting back together because their solo careers have …

We tend to think of the ’80s as a time of synthesizers and performance-enhancing hair products, but the decade was also a time of musical revival. Record companies began reissuing their old vinyl releases on …

Tentacles, the debut full-length from Long Beach’s Crystal Antlers, opens with a looping keyboard sound, but if you think this is going to be some kind of electronic album, you’re in for a shock. Soon, …

St. Vincent is the nom de rock of one Annie Clark, a young singer-songwriter shredder who has done time backing Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree. When I first heard Marry Me, St. Vincent’s debut …

The Dears have a lot in common with Arcade Fire. Both bands are from Montreal. Both are led by a husband-and-wife team. Both make powerful, emotional indie pop. And both are critics’ favorites. In other …

No one wants to see a show where everyone onstage is standing motionless behind a keyboard. For years, electronic-music acts have struggled with different ways to address this — with varying levels of success. They’ve …

A couple of years ago, when the Shins were just getting ready to release their third album, Wincing the Night Away, lead Shin James Mercer told Pitchfork, “One thing I worry about is that Malcolm …

I don’t want to say that Damien Jurado is somber. Let’s just say that he’s the kind of guy who writes lyrics like “Happy birthday, John/ Where has your sweetheart gone?/ She left today with …

Robert Fisher, the man behind the Willard Grant Conspiracy, has a deep voice and a talent for dark but sophisticated lyrics. His music is usually categorized as Americana, but it can just as easily slip …

In a lot of ways, it’s never been easier to be a musician. These days, with a handful of equipment and a smidgen of talent, you can create something on your laptop that sounds nearly …

The first time I heard the Donkeys’ “Excelsior Lady,” I thought they were singing, “sexy lady.” Fortunately, I was wrong. But almost everything about the Donkeys — from the Crosby Stills and Nash harmonies to …

A few months ago, when Facebook was in the throes of a “25 Things About Myself” chain-letter epidemic, my friend Andria sent me a list of 15 albums that changed her life. Andria moved to …

The New Yorker recently ran a brief profile of Lily Allen, mostly covering the same old ground (daughter of semifamous parents grows up to be singer-songwriter specializing in blunt but effective tales of everygirl sexual …

Zac Pennington, leader of Parenthetical Girls, is as skinny, pouty-lipped, and androgynous as a young Mick Jagger. His stage moves are so fey and effeminate that, in comparison, Morrissey looks like Johnny Cash. And his …

Listen to the online-only live album that Brooklyn band Asobi Seksu released in October 2006, and the first thing you hear is a loud burst of guitar feedback. Guitarist James Hanna bends his notes, tweaking …

Chrissie Hynde is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a mother, an environmental activist, an animal-rights activist, and a restaurateur. (See her in this month’s Gourmet magazine, talking about her restaurant, the VegiTerranean, …

“We’ve forgotten what’s sacred in this fast-paced world,” belts out singer Sarah Dugas in the Duhks’ “Fast Paced World.” Judging by the accompanying video, what’s sacred is the right to wear push-up bras and put …

Carl Newman is better known as the main man behind four albums by Vancouver supergroup the New Pornographers, but he has also released two solo albums as A.C. Newman. The first, his excellent release The …

Years ago, when I was trying to decide where I wanted to go to college, I took one look at UC Santa Barbara and said, “This isn’t going to work.” How on earth would I …

Son, it’s time we had a talk about The Bird and the Bee. You see, sometimes a man meets a woman, and together they form a musical duo. Let’s say this man is Greg Kurstin, …

Eagles of Death Metal don’t sound like the Eagles, and they don’t sound like death metal. But with this band it’s not just the nonsensical name, it’s the whole package of ridiculousness. It’s the cheesy …

Fountains of Wayne seems like a weird choice for an all-acoustic set at Anthology. The band’s songwriters, Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger, are best known for writing irresistible, catchy power pop with jokey, name-checking lyrics …

Beach House is the name of the band, but “Bleak House” is more like it. The duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally specializes in beautiful but slightly unsettling music built on slow drumbeats, droning …