Welcome back to Video Round-Up, where the SD crew picks through the flurry of videos circulating this particular week and posts the highlights.
This week, there’s lots of action on the “live” front, including some notable live performances by Paul McCartney, Weezer, Grizzly Bear, Wilco and Feist, Japandroids, Spoon, and Cymbals Eat Guitars. After that, enjoy [...]

Whenever the moon is just right, the Vague Panther picks his favorite mp3s from the web to bring you the “In the Know” series. If you’ve got a tip that might pique his interest email him at vaguepanther(at)strangerdance.com.

With Woods, Wavves and many others, some of you may be getting a little bit sick of the [...]

While more under the radar in the “grizzled, bearded, singer-songwriter” realm of artists like Ray LaMontagne and Iron & Wine, the especially crusty Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (aka Will Oldham) nonetheless maintains a position near the center of the alt.country universe. Analogies should veer from the galactic, however, because Oldham’s work is heavily based in soil, [...]

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is scheduled to release his latest album Beware next Monday (3/16/09).
To whet your appetite, here’s the video for “I am Goodbye,” directed by Leif Johnson.

Will starts a full tour across North America and Europe tomorrow in support of the album. Bay Area readers will get two chances to see the wild folker [...]

In case you haven’t heard the gorgeously tortured songs of J. Tillman before, the phrase “better late than never” comes to mind. Somewhere between Nick Drake, Iron & Wine, Ryan Adams and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy in sound, Tillman has quietly released six beautiful records, including his most recent, Vacilando Territory Blues (released January 20).
Tillman got [...]

As 2008 comes to a close, we at Stranger Dance are starting to look forward to what 2009 holds. A number of our favorite artists (Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, Jason Isbell, M. Ward, Wilco, etc.) have confirmed upcoming albums and even more are flirting with the idea.
A few things stuck out to us while compiling [...]

Here’s an old mix that I made for a friend. It started out as an introduction to Alt Country, but turned into more of a mood mix than anything. It’s still one of my favorite mixes that I’ve made.
It’s got some pretty sad bastard material on it, but I don’t think of it as depressing [...]

Will Oldham has been a personal favorite for a while (be it under Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Palace Music, Oldham or whatever name he’s adopted for the project at hand). He is a songwriter in the truest sense of the word. His music spans a wide range of genres from folk to experimental and can be [...]

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 8 is coming back to Golden Gate Park October 3-5. This year’s lineup is as impressive as we’ve come to expect, featuring a good mix of bluegrass (Del McCoury Band, Earl Scruggs, Hazel Dickens, etc.), bluegrass-friendly (Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Loudon Wainwright III, etc.) and distinctly non-bluegrass (Gogol Bordello) [...]

I’m not a big fan of Kanye’s rapping (I think I’m the only one out there that doesn’t like any of his albums), but the man is clearly one of the best producers out there.
Preferences aside, this is a damn cool video. Not only did he use a great sample from Daft Punk, he updated [...]