Justin Townes Earle makes country music that plays lonesome and pretty on his latest LP Midnight at the Movies (#14 on our list of best albums of 2009). Live, Townes Earle’s sound is louder and grittier and enhanced by pure charisma bred from real talent and a solid musical pedigree.
Local readers can catch his live [...]

[Photo: Laura Ciekot, Stranger Dance archive]
Along with some guy named Jack Black, Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass has given the world musical treasures like “Inward Singing” and “Cock Pushups.” Gass has also spent the last eight years praising the rock gods with with his other band, Trainwreck. The five-man act does rock and roll with Skynard [...]

The Sound: It’s all about light on Contra, coastal sunlight and sonic lightness manifested by the twinkly, symphonic surf pop sound further cultivated since Vampire Weekend’s debut blew up hard two years ago.
Electro/synth elements suggest the long arm of Animal Collective’s influence, yet VW remains wholly their own by maintaining the precision at the core [...]

Taking a cue from Jack London’s 1904 nautical adventure, Alex Church named his musical endeavor Sea Wolf and set forth into chamber country/rock waters. The result is pretty, atmospheric music that would serve well as the soundtrack to many a London novel.
White Water, White Bloom, Sea Wolf’s third release, was produced by Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Monsters [...]

The Dodos‘ Meric Long and Logan Kroeber combined their loves of country picking, West African Ewe drumming and heavy metal to create one of the more unique indie rock outfits today. No longer just the pride of San Francisco, their percussive and eclectic sound have made fans in all corners — from the headquarters of [...]

All photos by Brittany Nelson & Christine Campbell
I sure hope that any dance-hating Bay Area citizens were far away from Treasure Island last Saturday, because the first day of the festival was a 12-hour ass-shaking, arm-waving, beat-dropping, jump-up-and-down, pump-your-fist-in-the-air-like-you-mean-it kind of day.

Last month’s Bon Iver sunrise show at LA’s Hollywood Forever Cemetery was an awe-inspiring and uniquely memorable musical event for the ages, which led us to wonder: how the hell did it happen? Stranger Dance caught up with the cemetery’s Executive Vice President Jay Boileau for the inside scoop on how Justin Vernon ended up [...]

After the May release of Manners, Passion Pit quickly became indie’s pop music darlings of the summer. The LP built on the buzz surrounding the band’s 2008 Chunk of Change EP, which featured the now ubiquitous, dare-you-not-to-dance track “Sleepyhead.” Stranger Dance caught up with Passion Pit’s drummer Nate Donmoyer on the band’s current tour.

StrangerDance: What [...]

I like to think I can string together a serviceable sentence, but seeing Bon Iver early last Sunday morning at LA’s opulent Hollywood Forever cemetery as the rising sun burned through a thick haze of fog after a night long slumber party on the cemetery lawn was a once in a lifetime experience for which [...]

Amazing Baby played The Troubadour (arguably LA’s coolest venue) on Wednesday night and exemplified that putting the word ‘amazing’ in your band’s name is a ballsy, pun-ripe maneuver (amazingly bland, not as amazingly as you’d want them to be, etc.) when the music comes off a bit like an afterthought to the cultivation of an [...]