Los Angeles epic, heavy quintet Red Sparowes has announced North American headlining tour dates this spring supporting its forthcoming third album. The disc, titled The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies The Answer, will be released via Sargent House on April 6, 2010.
There has never been as pronounced of a leap in style and scope as with Red Sparowes‘ [...]

British post-punk legends Echo & The Bunnymen are launching their first US tour in support of their acclaimed new album, The Fountain. The shows are hot on the heels of the band’s recent tour celebrating their landmark album Ocean Rain that included orchestral performances at New York’s Radio City Music Hall and the Nokia Theatre [...]

Ben Barnett is a musician who has, all his life, documented experiences through song. After releasing eight albums, six singles, and five splits as Kind of Like Spitting over the course of a decade, retiring the moniker and reinventing himself as Music Director of Seattle’s Paul Green School of Rock, Barnett has now emerged triumphant [...]

Electric President is made up of Ben Cooper and Alex Kane, both natives of Jacksonville, Florida. Their musical history is scattered — Ben played in bands from the time he was 13, in as many of four at once, sometimes as a guitarist, or a drummer, singer or bassist. Alex first started playing as the [...]

The Mars Volta sibling band Zechs Marquise hits the road once again today, supporting RX Bandits on a lengthy North American tour. The El Paso quartet featuring Mars Volta multi-instrumentalist Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez and his bassist brother Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez has toured almost incessantly since the August 2009 release of its debut album Our Delicate Stranded Nightmare [...]

At long last it is upon us. One of the most important and influential alternative bands of the 1990s, Pavement, have reunited.
To commemorate the occasion, Matador Records presents Quarantine The Past, a 23-track best-of collection compiled by the band and fully remastered.
The tracks span the entirety of Pavement’s career from 1989 to 1999, from the scratchy and mysterious sounds [...]

2009 brought the release of the highly acclaimed sophomore album from Somali-born K’naan, entitled Troubadour. From that album, which The Source called “an album that displays raw emotion coupled with genre-bending song composition” and “a breath of fresh air” comes the song “Wavin’ Flag.” The track has been selected as a theme song of [...]

Garotas Suecas come raging from Sao Paolo, Brazil — five boys and a girl playing fuzzed-out, psychedelic garage rock nu-Tropicalia. Influences range from Otis Redding to Os Mutantes. Imagine ? and the Mysterians jamming it out with Gilberto Gil, and you might have an idea how fun this band can be. Better yet, listen to [...]

Fresh off the Dope Winter Ball Tour alongside Tash of The Alkoholiks, League510 is back with their latest leak, the fun and catchy “In My Face (Womp Womp).” Hailing from the Bay Area, the group is quickly making a name for themselves as the leaders of the burgeoning Town Techno movement. Off their upcoming compilation [...]

The Street Dogs, it is somewhat of an understatement to say, are from Boston. Mike McColgan’s name was already indelibly linked with the city, as he had already made his name as the frontman for the Dropkick Murphys, the standard-bearers of Boston punk during the late 1990s. Most musicians dream of achieving that kind of [...]

Though a succession of releases for the Gern Blandsten, Ace Fu, Lookout (and most recently) Touch & Go labels, Ted has established himself as one of the best songwriters breathing, regardless of genre. For the sake of argument, however, we’ll testify that Leo’s marriage of modern punk with classic pop is always subject to revision [...]

Ben Davis was in punk bands Sleepytime Trio and Milemarker, and has developed into a musician with diverse interests and influences.
Lovitt Records released the critically acclaimed The Hushed Patterns of Relief in 2001 which was recorded at Salad Days by Brian McTernan. The record began as a quiet four-track project, Davis’ first release was a [...]

Kill Rock Stars is very excited to announce that on April 6th, 2010, they will be adding Elliott Smith’sRoman Candle and From a Basement on the Hill records to their catalog.
Roman Candle is Elliott Smith’s first solo album and was originally released on Portland’s Cavity Search Records in 1994.
Roman Candle had quite an impact on Slim [...]

On March 9, 2010 Joyful Noise Recordings will issue an extremely limited cassette split from Jookabox and Kid Primitive Family.
The Jookabox/Kid Primitive Family split is an ethereal, percussive-heavy exercise in existential musical chairs. Jookabox, who just released their third album Dead Zone Boys (Asthmatic Kitty/Joyful Noise), rediscover their folk roots on Side A. A far [...]

Fight Softly is the second album for Sub Pop by New Zealand’s pop masters The Ruby Suns. Ryan McPhun has the kind of voracious musical mind that cites as equal influences ‘80s New Jack Swing and modern Angolan kuduro, Fleetwood Mac and Britney Spears, Brazilian tropicalia and Argentinean cumbia. He’s the kind of diligent, meticulous soul that spends [...]