Ted Leo’s about as dependable an indie-rock show as you’ll see: The thoughtful, rocking New Jersey troubadour sings so hard you can see the veins popping from his neck; he attacks his guitar as if it were on fire; he rushes tempos his capable band easily keeps up with. With…

The Everglow, the new album by Virginia-based emo quintet Mae, is the well-meaning counterpart to My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge: Whereas the MCR disc tells the graphic-novel-inspired tale of a guy forced to collect the souls of evil men, Mae models itself after a colorful children’s book,…

Perhaps Shelby Lynne should have called her new album Suits Herself. After two records defined in large part by the sonic stamps of the male megaproducers who helmed them–2000’s I Am Shelby Lynne, with Bill Bottrell (known for his work with Sheryl Crow), and the next year’s Love, Shelby, with…

In between tours with ascendant nautical metallers Mastodon and goth-chic pop-punkers Alkaline Trio, Death by Stereo headlines Dallas the day before the release of Death for Life, the Orange County metalcore outfit’s new album. Avenged Sevenfold fans anxiously awaiting that band’s terrific major-label debut would do well to bide their…

With a sound as plain as her name, Julie Roberts isn’t a particularly flashy female country singer, especially compared with veteran showstoppers such as Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks or an outspoken newcomer like Gretchen Wilson. But on last year’s self-titled debut, the 26-year-old South Carolina native doles out…

At this late date no one expects Robert Plant to make another In Through the Out Door, let alone another Houses of the Holy. So it’s tempting to assume that Mighty Rearranger, Plant’s first album of original material in more than a decade, sounds great only because it doesn’t find…

It’s somewhat comforting to know that whatever disputes may rend big-bucks gangsta rap from time to time, Snoop Dogg most likely will be there, anxious to restore the peace but even more anxious to make a quick buck. So here he comes to town on tour with the Game, West…

Grammy-nominated local boys Bowling for Soup have managed to parlay what in other hands could’ve been the makings of a one-hit wonder–“Girl All the Bad Guys Want,” their jock-baiting 2002 hit–into an honest-to-goodness career making the sort of insanely tuneful pop-punk singles that sound great on Top 40 radio between…

Say what you will about your Arcade Fire and your Fiery Furnaces, but if it’s indie that looks beyond itself for inspiration that you’re after, you’ll do no better than hanging your hat with L.A.’s Rilo Kiley, two embarrassingly talented (ex-child star) singer-songwriters and the rhythm section that supports them…

In 2003, when noisy Brighton guitar rockers British Sea Power released their debut album and Canadian disco-folk chanteuse Leslie Feist was familiar only to indie-rock liner-note readers, this double bill would only have made much sense in a consideration of the underground’s relatively limited market share. Two years later, supporting…

Stereophonics front man Kelly Jones has been Britpop’s bridesmaid–but never its bride–for so long you could hardly blame him for throwing in the towel. Name the first fellow U.K. rock act that comes to mind, and it’s likely experienced more in the way of success than the Stereophonics: Oasis, Blur,…

Worlds Apart gets Austin noise-rock act …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead pretty close to its prog-rock apotheosis, with strings, horns, a kids choir and more than one chamber-music interlude. But onstage the band remains a potent group of pissed-off punks. Recent shows have included deafening…

On last summer’s Curiosa Festival, a Cure-headlined road show that also featured sets by such Cure-influenced hot shots as Interpol, the Rapture and Thursday, U.K. power trio Muse were the odd men out: They’re not stylish, they don’t have great haircuts, they don’t write songs about the interminable melancholy of…

Luckily for Dallas, the traveling road show of mediocrity known as the Jägermeister Music Tour–currently featuring post-Creed modern rockers Alter Bridge–has this year been folded into KDGE’s annual alt-rock celebration. How else could one metropolitan area have handled so much rock on one night? So if you’re good and consume…

In the solo work she’s released since the casual dissolution of the Moldy Peaches, the New York anti-folk duo she shared with singer-songwriter Adam Green, Kimya Dawson has concentrated on teasing out the emotional profundities that were sometimes hard to hear in the Peaches’ ragged, profane little ditties. On Hidden…

The last time New York’s high-concept electroclash outfit Fischerspooner tried to go pop, they didn’t have much in the way of songs to help them make an impact with people not easily impressed by synthesizer squelch alone. So they came up with a stage show heavy on the spectacle their…

Phillips used to front Toad the Wet Sprocket–or Toad and the Wet Sprockets, as people familiar only with the Santa Barbara pop-rockers’ jangly 1991 hit “Walk on the Ocean” remember them. On his new solo disc, Winter Pays for Summer, Phillips remodels himself as a good-natured roots-pop troubadour, singing mildly…

Bay Area-based MC Lyrics Born has one of underground hip-hop’s most playful, distinctive voices: a deep, resonant rumble full of little cracks and hoarse spots, able to swing from nimble syllable-stepping to a laid-back drawl. This helps on a remix record like Same !@#$ Different Day, LB’s loose reimagining of…

Despite the impassioned hyperventilations of the New York media and the nationwide blogosphere, the UK hip-hop offshoot known as grime has yet to make much of a commercial impact in the United States. Aficionados insist that the release of the excellent new Run the Road compilation may change that; the…

Brad Paisley, who headlines this radio-station lollapalooza, is one of Nashville’s most likable stars. He sings about domestic squabbles and drinking too much and wacky Hollywood celebrities but gives the everyday a ring of uncommon grace–the way your wife falls asleep on your arm and makes your limb fall asleep,…

These twitchy, tuneful Canadians have taken so long to follow up Make Up the Breakdown, the excellent album Sub Pop released in 2002 (and Reprise reissued the next year), that skeptics have begun wondering if there’s still enough interest in the new dance-rock to support Elevator, Hot Hot Heat’s third…

A decade after he redefined a post-grunge alt-rock counterculture with a two-bit accidental call to arms called “Loser,” is there a musical stone 34-year-old Beck Hansen hasn’t turned over, or at least tried to? He’s done everything from bongwater-stain hip-hop to yellow-latex pop-funk to dirty-leaves folk-blues to Laurel Canyon strum-rock…