Music

When Incubus hit the national stage in the mid-’90s, the California quintet sounded like kissing cousins to Omaha’s 311—mainly because both bands shared a love of spacy grooves, loud guitars and turntable-based samples. Since the turn of the millennium, however, Incubus has pulled away from stoner rock and recorded increasingly…

Two years ago, Gustav Estjes was ready to quit rock music. The 28-year-old multi-instrumentalist mastermind behind Swedish psych-folk rockers Dungen had just put the finishing touches on Tio Bitar, the group’s fourth release since forming in Stockholm in 1999, and the second for which Estjes wrote all the songs, played…

Natasha Khan creates illusions to help take her audience on a journey and, in part, as a way to dispel those images for herself. She’s the wildly creative force behind Bat for Lashes, a moniker she created for herself as she made the transformation from art school student to celebrated…

I interviewed Soulja Boy recently, who I’ll just go ahead and call by his real name, DeAndre Way, and it was pretty wild: The Atlanta-based, teen millionaire rapper wore his colossal, eponymous pendant—which he says contains a hundred G’s of diamonds—and bragged about how all the big names in hip-hop…

Hailing from Norman, Oklahoma, Mickey Reece, the man behind El Paso Hot Button, combines dirty guitar riffs, pulsing kick-drum action and searing vocals into a tenacious aural assault. Boosted by the energy emanating from all four of his limbs, Reece’s one-man garage-band sound recalls the golden formula of other stripped-down…

It’s amazing how cyclical certain aspects of the Denton music scene can be, because, for the second consecutive year, an album release show for The Heartstring Stranglers doubled as a going-away party for a founding member of the band. Last August, the chamber-folk act had just finished recording its self-titled…

It’s fitting, perhaps, that the first sound heard on the new Telegraph Canyon record, The Tide and the Current, is the faint whisper of a buzzsaw churning in the distance, humming behind the introductory piano chords of opening track “Into the Woods” as the song teases its audience with an…

Far from the dark-clouded pessimist he’s often portrayed as on the radio, singer-songwriter/radio producer/radio host Danny Balis is, at least on this day, in a great mood. And why shouldn’t he be? The former Sorta and current King Bucks bassist is just about to self-release his debut solo effort, Too…

It’d be easy to lump Trey Johnson’s solo work in with his earlier efforts as the frontman for Sorta. That old familiar voice, after all, in all its vulnerable, heartfelt glory, still bounds about—and, with this record coming via Johnson’s name and not Sorta’s, that shining, delightful beacon gets placed…

With big hooks, roaring guitars and coy humor, Cheap Trick was America’s answer to AC/DC, a catchy, hard-rocking act boasting arena-size heft. And the band crashed Big Star into Thin Lizzy, producing three end-of-the-’70s albums—Cheap Trick, In Color and Heaven Tonight—that dwarfed their contemporaries’ output, though it took At Budokan…

Fans of Air Review’s swamp-cum-bombast single, “Chasing Corporate” will be taken somewhat aback by the opening track of this impressive, heavily Radiohead-influenced debut. Because, rather than continue along the radio-friendly path of the undoubtedly catchy, clap-along single, album-opener “Exodus” finds Air Review flexing its vocal harmony muscle. Instruments swirling with…

…and for the Luddites still rockin’ the Youtube, here’s your link.This week’s installment of DC9 in Space starts with a tandem swig of beer, features maybe a few too many one-liners from King Buck keys man Chad Stockslager, and ends with a performance of “Tethered,” one of the many fine,…

Our nightlife photo-bros headed out to DJ Inzo’s set at Lift in Uptown and then swung by Suite Basement on Friday night. Then they caught Doc Martin at Afterlife on Saturday. I wonder which Youtube video some of these guys’ dance moves came from… Oh well, I guess it’s just…

If you’ve seen Scary Movies 3 or 4, or have friends who went an offbeat direction with their wedding entertainment, you may already be familiar with the work of Michael Jackson impersonator extraordinaire Edward Moss.If you rolled into The Lodge last night expecting to grab a beer at your usual…

Hey, skater dude–pissed off about having to go back to school next week? Work out that anger in the mosh pit Saturday at Alliance Skate Park (1002 Lonestar Pkwy. in Grand Prairie). Left Hand Salute, Television City, The Hollow Empire and Silver Fox will rock the suburbs starting at 8…

Quia already offered her take on last night’s Mos Def show at the House of Blues–and she stuck it out to the very end, unlike a good portion of the crowd.For another look at the show, though, we’ve got Mattie Stafford–who was right up front with her camera for Mos…

Rob Viktum, long one of our favorite area hip-hop producers, has a new project coming out next week–a collaboration with Don Will, one-third of the very much buzzing Brooklyn-based Tanya Morgan, for an EP called Aight, New Drink.And it features Viktum’s soulful beats very much in the environment in which…