Nov 01, 2007 By Frank Valish Web Exclusive

For the majority of his professional music-making life, Euros Childs fronted the Welsh quintet, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. A happy-go-lucky indie-pop collective that often mixed its English singing with Welsh, the band called it quits in 2006, leaving 2003’s understated Sleep/Holiday as its swan song. Since then, Childs has gone on to experiment with his pop music, releasing three solo albums: 2006’s varied Chops, the Welsh-onlyBore Da, and, most recently, The Miracle Inn, which features, at its center, the 16-minute, multi-part suite that shares the album’s name. Childs took a few minutes during his current U.S. tour to e-mail some answers to Under the Radar’s questions. More

Nov 01, 2007 By Matt Fink Dirty Projectors

Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth is a talkative guy off the record, but he clammed up as soon as the tape started rolling during this mid-September phone interview. Of course, it could just be that he’s tired of explaining his latest conceptual project, a song-by-song re-imagining of Black Flag’s 1981 punk classic, Damaged, that begs far more questions than it answers over its 10 incessantly unpredictable tracks. More

Nov 01, 2007 By Frank Valish Robert Pollard

Say what you will about Robert Pollard, but the ex-Guided By Voices frontman is certainly never lacking for ideas. More

Oct 02, 2007 By Aaron Passman The National

The June release of Boxer (Beggars Banquet), The National’s fourth LP, was met with the same universal critical praise that met its predecessor Alligator. One of the strongest records of 2007 so far, Boxer could be the soundtrack to walking home from the bar alone after last call. More

Oct 02, 2007 By Lily Moayeri West Indian Girl

In 2004, West Indian Girl was two fellows: bassist Fran Ten and vocalist/guitarist Robert James, who worked out of a studio in downtown Los Angeles. In 2007, West Indian Girl is a six-person collective with the inclusion of vocalist Mariqueen Maandig, drummer Mark Lewis, and keyboardists Nathan Van Hala and Amy White. More

Oct 02, 2007 By Frank Valish Web Exclusive

For their third album, Teenager, Dublin’s The Thrills chose a different approach from their past efforts. More

Oct 02, 2007 By Lily Moayeri Koop

The Swedish duo of Oscar Simonsson and Magnus Zingmark, professionally known as Koop, have done a great job of adapting—and in the process, owning—music from parts of the world other than where they hail from. More

Oct 02, 2007 By Lorraine Carpenter Web Exclusive

Amid the heaps of visual flash and sonic flair displayed by British musicians over the years, Miki Berenyi’s cherry-red mane and featherweight falsetto remain unforgettable. More

Oct 01, 2007 By Matt Fink Fall 2007 - Beirut

“I’m under the impression that it isn’t nearly as eclectic as it could have been if we had included the Arabic song, the Yiddish song, the other Portuguese song, and another song…” Devendra Banhart pauses as he searches his mental rolodex for the Native American tribe whose language he adopted for another of the songs that was left off his fifth full-length release, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. Sitting backstage at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz, CA, Banhart acknowledges no grand design in the sprawling mix of Spanish folk variants, acoustic ballads, ‘50s pop, and hairy rockers that compose his latest opus. Add in a little French and Portuguese, and you have an album that reflects the citizen of the world status Banhart has cultivated through years of travels. He has little concern that the album won’t communicate with English-only speakers. More