Sacramento – The last day at TBD Fest drew a larger crowd than I had seen all weekend, especially during the evening sets. (Ed., Best New Bands’ Day One coverage is HERE; Day Two is HERE.) The festival was clearly coming to a close, and while I was exhausted, my lungs were full of dust,
Austin – One of the biggest names in music festivals is getting bigger this year, growing to a second weekend to accommodate a larger lineup, and, maybe more importantly, a larger crowd. Austin City Limits presents a mix of pop music’s biggest new names and some welcome reunions (Outkast and The Replacements? My mind has
New York – Indie pop duo Tune-Yards have a new video for “Real Thing” from their recent album Nikki Nack on 4AD. Tune-Yards has also confirmed a string of December dates including four intimate nights at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg fromDecember 4-7 and a performance at LA’s Wiltern Theatre on December 10. A limited ticket pre-sale has begun
New York – Sallie Ford will begin her North American tour this Friday. Her new album, Slap Back, will be released next week (October 14), but fans can pre-order the album now on iTunes and the Vanguard Records Store. Slap Back, produced by Chris Funk (Decemberists, Black Prairie, Red Fang), introduces the indie rocker’s all-new line-up
Sacramento – The heat came back with a vengeance on the second day of TBD Fest, yet the excitement and the energy of the festival made it totally bearable. The second day had a little more variety in terms of the artists performing and tons of great new bands to check out. Drowners First up
Nashville – Ask the average listener to close their eyes and visualize rock and roll and the image will be similar for most folks; vintage Gibson and Fender axes plugged into humming tube amps, long hair and scruffy beards, guitar solos with crunch distortion, and lyrical stories of women and whiskey to tie it all
New York – Hesitant Alien opens with the jarring beeping of “Bureau.” The track sounds vaguely like My Chemical Romance, perhaps only because it features lead vocalist and co-founder Gerard Way’s unmistakable yowl, but there is also something unmistakably different. Like really different. This observation may seem a little “no duh” to some; however, it
Chicago – Last year, Midwest four-piece Vinyl Theatre started to make some noise online with their indie-electronica single “I Need You Here” and the EP Gold. After Billboard took notice of the twentysomethings, music lovers from Brazil to Malaysia blew up their Soundcloud. In August Vinyl Theatre announced they had signed with Fueled By Ramen
Brooklyn – Dinosaur Feathers is the umbrella moniker for an indie band that’s seen its fair share of turnover since its inception in 2008. Likewise, the mastermind behind this act, Greg Sullo, is equally comfortable with embracing the unknown with unabashed gusto. Since he started to focus his efforts on making music, Sullo had steadily
Austin – The Preatures’ breakout EP Is This How You Feel? took its queues well. The Sydney band’s 2012 debut, Shaking Hands, introduced us to a group with a nice premise and an ambition to draw from a lot of different music, but arrangements that were too cluttered for the eclecticism to be obvious or