Combing through the area’s best music in 2015 is a big job — there’s a lot of it — and that task gets even bigger when you toss in the videos accompanying some of the best music. North Texas is rich with musical talent and with video directors helping to…
Los Patos Poderosos make celebratory Latin dance music you have never heard before, but only one of them speaks Spanish. Made up of a diverse group of musicians from UNT, some of them are classically trained, studied jazz and even have hip-hop projects. Robert Hokamp plays guitar for the band…
Production for Rigor Mortis’ documentary, Welcome to Your Funeral, started in 2007. The original idea was to make a film about the birth of the DFW metal underground. But after Rigor Mortis guitarist Mike Scaccia died in 2012, the focus shifted solely to the band, which was mixing metal with…
T’was the week before Christmas when all through Dallas, not a venue was stirring, not even a house. That might sound like exaggeration for dramatic effect, but it’s not too far from the reality of sparse shows leading up to the holidays. But luckily, once all the trees have been…
When it comes to the best albums made by North Texas artists, it was a year of extremes. Some, like Slobberbone front man Brent Best’s Your Dog, Champ, took years and seemingly endless series of ordeals, to see the light of day. Others, like Leon Bridges’ Coming Home, was the…
Paul Quigg never saw himself working at a concert venue. He’d spent 40 years in the music business, playing in bands and doing sound engineering for recording studios, theaters and television productions. So when his old friend and bandmate Jeffrey Liles approached him about joining him at The Kessler Theater,…
Zhora sits at the Twilite Lounge in Deep Ellum, shooting straight “Kentucky whiskey”, as she called it, in a mock-Southern accent. Zhora is the stage and DJ name of Dallas-based singer Taylor Rea, inspired by a character from Blade Runner. Onstage, she’s a catsuit-wearing siren, moving with the swaggering precision…
Performing in front of hip-hop legends like the D.O.C., Erykah Badu and Dorrough is a dream for most up-and-coming MCs. But for six lucky performers, that dream became a reality last Saturday night at Trees. The event was the finale of the first annual DDFW Master of the Mic competition,…
Texas country has always been hard to define, but at the end of 2015, the task seems harder than ever. As Texas artists start to see more success in Nashville, other music scenes are bleeding into the genre. The lines between Americana, Texas country and Nashville country aren’t as neatly…
There were some real heavy hitters that stepped up the plate in Dallas music in 2015, some of them familiar faces and some of them (most of them, in fact) coming seemingly out of nowhere. Seeing the Queen herself, Erykah Badu, return with new music was one of the clear…
Where were you when you first heard the otherworldly opening track to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless? How about when you first absorbed the kaleidoscopic chords of Souvlaki by Slowdive? The ranks of these classic, opulent shoegaze opuses that whisk you away on shimmery clouds of reverb could very well be…
Denton’s Thin Skin made a lot of noise during their set at Double Wide over the weekend. The music is sloppy in the best way possible; bassist Ashley Givens and guitarist Katie Reese have wild vocals and the band has a cutesy punk sound that is fun. Seriously fun. Thin…
Brent Nuro transplanted to Dallas after cutting his teeth in the Kansas City scene. Nuro can now be found playing at the Nothing But Techno residency at Crown & Harp. For this week’s mixtape drops deep in to the vortex of deep techno vibes more common with Berlin’s Panorama Bar…
When Stoney LaRue first headed out on the road 18 years ago, Texas country was in an entirely different place. It was a relatively insular scene, free of Nashville interlopers and incredibly tight knit. Today the scene has since expanded and plenty of Texas artists have moved on to Nashville,…
It’s been an interesting year for music festivals in North Texas. “Interesting” as in a year of transition, although to the most part essentially a year of growth. While Spune put its Index Fest on hiatus until 2016, it rolled out the first-ever Reunion Fest and moved its marquee Untapped…
2015 was a year of transition for concerts in Dallas, and we mean that in the best way possible. For all the cyber ink that’s been spilled vaunting the return of Deep Ellum and Dallas music in general (this year, and last year, and the year before last…), it’s a…
Who is Lou CharLe$? It’s a more legitimate question than with most musicians, given that there’s next to no concrete information about the 20-something Fort Worth resident. Hell, it’s even the name of his website. But when a young artist is opening up for Chamillionaire and Immortal Technique, getting features from…
Jazz in the Atrium, the longtime weekly source of live jazz music at the Dallas Museum of Art, is calling it quits after this Thursday, December 17, with a performance by the Freddie Jones Jazz Group. The series is a local tradition, a place where up-and-comers from Booker T. Washington…
If Adele saved your Thanksgiving this year, then take heart: you can expect her to do the same thing right around the same time next year. This time, though, we’re not talking about another record. No, in November 2016 the current best-selling artist in the world is going to be…
Dallas music did pretty well for itself last week. Leon Bridges, Kelly Clarkson and Don Henley all scored Grammy nominations, and Bridges doubled down on his week by performing on Saturday Night Live. Equally important (ahem), the Dallas Observer handed out its own music awards and threw a factory-sized party in the…
KSCS 96.3 FM’s Country Fest With Lee Brice, Tyler Farr, Dan + Shay, Canaan Smith and Jamie Lynn Spears Verizon Theatre, Grand Prairie Saturday, December 12, 2015 Possibly the five most random country music acts possible came together Saturday night at Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie for 96.3 FM KSCS’s…
!!! With Stereolad and Pageantry Club Dada, Dallas Friday, December 11, 2015 How do you make punk rock something you can dance to in the clubs? Easy, you run it through your funky disco filter from the 1970s and just let it grow. Sure enough that’s what !!! (Chk Chk…
