May 19, 2009 By Tom Vale The Wooden Birds

We’ve all been there: you’re the frontman for a popular indie rock act, but you leave your beloved home state of Texas to pursue a PhD in Biochemistry at Columbia. Ok, maybe we haven’t all been there, but that’s where The American Analog Set’s Andrew Kenny has been, and now he’s back, a in Texas and on the indie music scene, with Magnolia, the debut release from his new band, The Wooden Birds.

May 16, 2009 By Mark Redfern Web Exclusive

“It’s like a magical, unreal, heavenly land, isn’t it?,” observes Los Campesinos! violinist Harriet about the Coachella music festival. The Welsh band is hanging out backstage at the festival in the California desert a few hours before their energetic performance later that afternoon. Los Campesinos! released their first two albums, Hold on Now, Youngster and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, in 2008. The band has been recording their third album in Connecticut, but took a break for a short U.S. tour, including their Coachella appearance. We spoke to Harriet and drummer Ollie as they spilled the beans on what to expect from their next album, which is due out next year.

May 13, 2009 By Kyle Lemmon Cryptacize

Pseudologia, fantastica, or mythomania, is the scientific term for pathological lying, but the clinical jargon can also uncoil plenty of meanings in the imaginative realm of pop music. What comes out of the jukebox and the music halls are often enchanting twists of the truth. For Cryptacize singer Nedelle Torrisi, guitarist Chris Cohen (former Deerhoof member), drummer Michael Carreira, and new bassist Aaron Olson, the term is inverted and warped by Torrisi and Cohen’s sped-up and indolent guitar and organ figures and the jerky rhythms of the quartet’s new tempo duo. The Oakland band’s Asthmatic Kitty 2008 debut (Dig That Treasure) gave fans of quirky pop a gem to unearth and the aptly-titled Mythomania continues the trend. As the group prepared for a European and U.S. tour that will take them well into the summer months, several members of Cryptacize spoke at length about the concept of their new album, the gift and slight embarrassment of encouraging parents, the Bay Area music community, and the Brazilian drumming style called ‘Maracatu.’

Apr 30, 2009 By Mike Hilleary Death Cab for Cutie

Death Cab for Cutie is currently on the road alongside Ra Ra Riot and Matt Costa (with Cold War Kids as the opener during the first half of the tour). While on tour Death Cab’s vocalist Ben Gibbard doesn’t do much with his available free time. The things he does do, however, he commits to with consuming sincerity. Aside from raiding the inventory of numerous cities’ record shops, with the new season of Major League Baseball starting up, Gibbard has been living in a state of nine-inning increments: watching games, checking the latest stats, and listening to all kinds of sports commentary. He’s even managed to get out to an actual ballpark, recently catching the Twins face off against the Blue Jays in Minneapolis.

Apr 28, 2009 By Chris Drabick Odawas

Isaac Edwards and Michael Tapscott, the principles and mainstays of Odawas, have succumbed to their wanderlust. Relocating to the West Coast, the band now makes the Bay Area their home base. It is from there that the duo discussed their latest record, the downright oceanic The Blue Depths, their third full-length for Bloomington, Indiana’s Jagjaguwar Records (Bloomington was once also home to Odawas). Edwards and Tapscott touch on all their influences, from the obvious (Brian Eno), to the less obvious (Eric Serra) to the, err, completely unpredictable (Arrested Development).

Apr 25, 2009 By Tom Vale Web Exclusive

Onstage at Club De Ville at this year’s SXSW, time finally ran out. “Well, goddamnit, Austin, we have to go,” said Matthew Houck, singer/songwriter and organizing Beard Number One of the multibearded monster that is Phosphorescent. His joy was slightly dented by the news, but he recovered quickly (“we’re not going to pout. Well, we might pout a little”). Then he brought the show to its slightly premature close with a raucous, freewheeling version of-what else?-“The Party’s Over”: “Let’s call it a night/The party’s over/You know that all good things must end.”

Apr 11, 2009 By Frank Valish Husker Du

This year marks two important anniversaries for Bob Mould. Thirty years ago, in 1979, his seminal trio, Hüsker Dü, played its first live gig. Ten years later, after Hüsker’s brutal demise, Mould made his solo debut with Workbook, an indie-rock masterwork and certified classic that found Mould baring his soul. It is an album that remains as poignant today as it was then. Mould’s latest and ninth solo album, Life and Times, revisits the writing style and personal tone of Workbook, and, while Mould has dabbled to various degrees in electronic atmospheres and textures in the past decade, Life and Times also finds him more at ease with the guitar than he has seemed in years.

Feb 01, 2009 By Evan Rytlewski Winter 2009 - Anticipated Albums of 2009

Brian Aubert is flattered that so many people mistook him for a woman after hearing his band’s breakthrough single, “Lazy Eye.”

Feb 01, 2009 By Jim Scott M. Ward

“You can only discover something once,” M. Ward says, speaking about both his own music and the influence other artists have had on him. Over the course of his first five solo LPs, Ward slowly opened up, both lyrically and musically, so that each successive album still exuded that feeling of discovery. His sixth, Hold Time, is no exception.