Mar 26, 2010 By Chris Tinkham Web Exclusive

Danish director Niels Arden Oplev didn't seem like an obvious choice to direct The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the screen version of the first book in Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson's immensely popular Millennium trilogy. Oplev's previous film, Worlds Apart, was an intimate family drama about a teenage girl confronting the doctrines of her religious denomination, Jehovah's Witnesses. Oplev initially declined producer Sören Staermose's overtures to direct the much-anticipated film adaptation, but Staermose's persistence paid off. Prior to its release in the U.S. and UK, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo grossed over $100 million worldwide, easily becoming Sweden's most successful film. More

Mar 21, 2010 By Chris Tinkham Web Exclusive

The Most Anticipated Albums of 2010 section in Under the Radar's Winter 2010 Issue includes a short article on Rose Elinor Dougall's debut album. Here is the full Q&A of that interview. In December of 2008, Rose Elinor Dougall released her first single as a solo artist, "Another Version of Pop Song." The following February, Dougall blogged on her MySpace page that her debut album was nearly finished. But, more than a year later, her album, titled Without Why, has yet to be released. On the morning of the eve of 2010, Dougall was in good spirits as she discussed her impending album and divulged the logical reasons for its extended incubation. More

Mar 08, 2010 By Frank Valish Web Exclusive

After having graced U.S. shores with a (very) short tour in the fall, Swedish four-piece The Mary Onettes are primed and ready to bring their particular brand of lush, '80s-inflected pop music to the States once again this spring. The band will be working off its latest album, Islands, it's second with Swedish indie record label Labrador. The album may be the band's best to date, inspired largely by the loss of several important people in singer/songwriter Philip Ekström's life prior to and during the writing process. Ekström speaks with Under the Radar, sharing some of the hardships that came with Islands and discussing what is ultimately a triumph of spirit in music. More

Mar 07, 2010 By Matt Fink Fall 2006 - The Decemberists

Though the stigma seems to be lifting-as producers such as Pharrell can make any former teenybopper sound forward thinking and innovative-making pop music can still be a frightening proposition for artists who are ingrained with the mindset that all good music must be difficult to be substantial. For Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, this mindset produces an impulse to apologize for making a record that can be enjoyed on first listen, one that doesn't require any of the details of his rise to fame as a critically adored but deeply troubled artist More

Mar 05, 2010 By Aaron Passman Web Exclusive

When it came time to craft their latest record, the members of Philadelphia quintet Dr. Dog were shooting for something different. Rather than lay down their latest batch of Beach Boys- and Beatles-inspired psych-pop themselves, as they'd done in the past, singer/guitarist Scott McMicken says the group decided to experiment with outside production. "The studio craft side of it has been as much what we're about as any other thing," says McMicken. More

Feb 19, 2010 By Laura Leebove Web Exclusive

Simon Balthazar, frontman of the orchestral pop group Fanfarlo, grew up surrounded by instruments. And although he learned how to play the piano, guitar, drums and mandolin early on, it wasn't until he was about 17 that he figured out a way to effectively use them: first to play other people's songs, then to write his own More

Feb 11, 2010 By Chris Tinkham Web Exclusive

In making North Face (Nordwand), an adventure film about alpinists ascending the most dangerous rock face in the Alps, German writer/director Philipp Stölzl and cinematographer Kolja Brandt disregarded such Hollywood films as Cliffhanger and Vertical Limit and aimed instead for the authenticity of the documentary/reenactment film Touching the Void. More

Jan 22, 2010 By Laura Studarus Web Exclusive

"We're a bunch of idiots! We definitely mix that into what we do because that's who we are," confesses Clare and the Reasons' frontwoman Clare Muldaur. "We take the music we do very very, very seriously, but we don't take ourselves that seriously." More

Jan 14, 2010 By Laura Leebove Web Exclusive

Since its 2005 Columbia debut Thunder, Lightning, Strike!, The Go! Team has built up a reputation for super-energetic vocalist Ninja's chants mixed with samples compiled by frontman Ian Parton. 2007's Proof of Youth (Sub Pop) found the British band taking a more melodic approach, and the still-to-be-named third LP, which Parton says will likely be out sometime in the spring, is headed in the same direction. More