With a distinctive voice and lyrical style that combines a blend of acoustic and pop influences infused with a hint of jazz, Kathy brings a unique spectrum of songs to the stage. The music is as unconstrained by artistic boundaries as the woman herself. As a young teenager growing up on Edinburgh's south side, Kathy loved to sing Sunday hymns or 'songs', as she preferred to call them, at her local church. When folk hymns were introduced to the church and her mother became one of the singers, Kathy started to pick up on these catchier tunes and in a few years decided she too wanted to join the folk group. She was now equally drawn to the guitar and started to learn on a ...

Stay is an indie psych pop band from Barcelona. After the release of two demos, Stay (2001) and As Another Girl (2003) the english label Matchbox Recordings released the third EP , So Slow (2004). That release and a more personal sound, very careful tunes and guitar work truly influenced by Britpop and madchester scene, made possible a record deal with Wild Thing Records (Madrid) in 2004. Starting to lose control (WTR, 2005) is the first LP and two singles were extracted from this. The band keep on their influences but also have a look to late-60’s american sound and vocals work from bands like CSN&Y or The Byrds. Good reviews permitted the band to play in important national festivals like Primavera Sound 06, Bilborrok or on the T...

Die Antwoord lead vocalist Ninja (born Watkin Tudor Jones) was a part of the South African hip-hop scene for many years, fronting such acts as The Original Evergreens, MaxNormal.TV and The Constructus Corporation. He is known for adopting different stage personas. In the case of Die Antwoord his persona is Ninja: a hyper violent character who is very different from his previous incarnations. Die Antwoord was later created as a group in 2009, consisting of performers Ninja, Yo-Landi Vi$$er, and DJ Hi-Tek. Their debut album $O$ was made available as a free download on their official website. $O$ features Cape Flats rappers, Jack Parow, Jaak Paarl (aka Jaak), Knoffel (aka Garlic Brown), Scallywag and Isaac...

Say Anything has been making odd, unclassifiable indie rock music since they were 14 or 15 years old, playing strangely literate and loud rock, characterized by what one might imagine if Larry David fronted a Fugazi cover band with the members of Queen. Not that that's a stretch or anything. Having been birthed from the indie/punk boom of the early twenty-first century, Say Anything rose to prominence with their (oddly) popular record …Is a Real Boy and somehow broke the "pretty boy punk" mold by establishing a career that thrived somewhere between music your pretentious college student of an older brother would like and the loud crap that your little brother uses to annoy him with. Say Anything followed that record u...

Towns are an abstract idea, in the same way that music is. The logician would argue that since a town is abstract and music is abstract then a town must be music. Revelstoke is a town in the British Columbian Rockies. One of the most beautiful towns in the world (as most settlements hiding in the mountains are), where the tectonic hands clapped loudly and bent their geological elbows high into the sapphire sky. And the trees laughed and swayed and danced between the snow and the grass. Revelstoke is also music or maybe a musician. An abstract musician. For convenience let’s agree it’s a who, not a what. However, should we choose to go the “what” route, Revelstoke is a series of mini symphonies built ...

Indie-folk pop band from Austin, Texas, began as an acoustic duo consisting of Kelsey Wilson and Alexander Beggins singing ukulele love songs written and shared over red wine and old photographs. With northern U.S. parks and fields as their backdrop and a tour van as their practice studio, Kelsey and Alexander formed their first ten songs, flawlessly documenting the ups and downs of a less than idealistic yet enchanting romance. Wild Child has evolved since then into a six-piece band, accenting the soulful vocals and folk-influenced instrumentation with lush strings, key...

Gardens & Villa is the project of five college friends from Santa Barbara, formed following the collapse of a noisier post-punk band and a hitch-hiking journey up the west coast. Members Chris Lynch, Adam Rasmussen, Levi Hayden, Shane McKillop began playing in earnest as Gardens & Villa in 2008. The name is pulled from the location of their house on Villa Street, and the property's lovely garden to which they tend. The music they make is very much connected to coastal city they call home -- the ston...

Like all families, Kopecky Family Band beats with the same heart and writes in the same blood. ‘The Family’ began creating music together in Nashville, Tennessee in the Fall of 2007. What began as late night talks about life and dreams gradually flowed into eccentric and beautiful music that has led to numerous tours, including adventures to CMJ, SXSW and Bonnaroo, three EP releases and friendships across the country. Leading the family are singers Gabe and Kelsey, along with Steven (lead guitar), Corey (bass), Markus (cello), and David (drums). The music is emotive, and evokes raw honesty and vulnerability, whilst capturing your attention through its unmistakable power and presence. The sounds created by ...

With their new album Enjoy The Company, The Whigs have created a raucous ode to rock and roll. From the opening track, an exhilarating eight-minute mission statement called "Staying Alive," the record offers a powerful sonic rendering of a band opening up to the depth of their past and kicking open the doors to their future. But most of all, this is the undeniably established sound of a band affirming their legacy in the American rock and roll paradigm. While The Whigs recorded their second record Mission Control at famed Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood and their third release In The Dark in Athens, the making of Enjoy The Company was a dramatically different affair. This time the group sought the guidanc...

Formed in San Francisco in 2009 by Wooden Shijps guitarist Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada, Moon Duo’s first two critically acclaimed EPs, Killing Time (2009) and Escape (2010), fused the futuristic pylon hum and transistor reverb of Suicide or Silver Apples with the heat-haze fuzz of American rock ‘n’ roll to create tracks of blistering, 12-cylinder space rock.Their debut album Mazes, recorded in San Francisco and mixed in Berlin during 2010 as the band prepared to move to the mountains of Colorado, explores a far broader, lighter, sound. That’s most clear on the dreamy organ and skipping riff of the title track, which recalls the Velvet Underground, or the handclaps and swinging organ bloops over the po...

Minneapolis continues its golden run of producing quality talent with the first project to arrive out the Gayngs collective, the super slick electronic pop-soul outfit Poliça. Fronted by ice cool vocalist Channy Leanagh who sang with Gayngs, produced by Ryan Olson and featuring Mike Noyce from Bon Iver, it’s a who’s who of the current Twin Cities scene. Continuing the tradition of having friends in high places with Prince and Kanye West among Gayngs fans, Poliça have already been backed by none other than Jay Z who posted their video for the new for single ‘Lay Your Cards Out’ on his Life + Times blog.After collaborating in the studio and live with Gayngs in 2010, it became apparent that Cha...

Recalling the Dirty South sound of UGK and Scarface, Mississippi rapper/producer Big K.R.I.T. spent five years on the mixtape circuit honing his skills before his 2010 release took his career to another level. The release was the mixtape K.R.I.T. Wuz Here, a groundbreaking critical success that had bloggers declaring the South's future, while a commercial success as well, generating enough downloads and "likes" that the Def Jam label took notice, signing the artist that same year. It was also the year K.R.I.T. -- which stands for King Remembered In Time -- appeared on Currensy's Top 40 debut, Pilot Talk, along with Wiz Khalifa's hit mixtape Kush & Orange Juice. His 2011 release Return of 4eva was extravagant by mixtape stan...

Having collaborated and toured with indie strangelings of Montreal, Regina Spektor, and Sondre Lerche, singer, violinist, and composer, K Ishibashi (aka Kishi Bashi), embarks on a epic orchestral solo project. His solo live show is a dazzling array of looping and vocal/violin gymnastics. K is also singer of the NYC synth rock band Jupiter One.A lush array of looping and vocal/violin gymnastics... Kishi Bashi's debut full-length, 151a, is a bright and soaring avant-pop record written primarily on violin - Kishi Bashi's main instrument which has brought him to record and tour with the likes of Regina Spector, Sondre Lerche, Alexi Murdoch, of Montreal and more. Kishi Bashi colla...

Even in the urban wilds of Brooklyn, there may be no one else like Jean-Philip Grobler, aka St. Lucia. Originally from Johannesberg, St. Lucia grew up performing with the Drakensberg Boys Choir School. When the choir wasn't traveling - they toured Japan, Australia, Europe and more - they stayed in an enclave tucked in the South African mountains, learning everything from Bach to minimalist opera. A young musician could hardly find better training. But musically, St Lucia's heart lay elsewhere, and South Africa was full of other rhythms. "My mom says I used to sing along to Michael Jackson," he says - an ordinary anecdote, until he adds, "when I was an infant." As a you...

There are few things in music more exhilarating than the sound of a young band in a hurry. Velocity, hunger, surprise: these are the qualities that keep a band interesting. Bombay Bicycle Club’s third album in as many years reminds you there was a time when new bands put out a record every year or so, each one expanding their territory and making listeners reassess their assumptions. As its title promises, A Different Kind of Fix is not at all what you’d expect. It is the sound of a band throwing the doors wide open and confounding all preconceptions.The band members have never wasted much time. Frontman Jack Steadman, guitarist Jamie MacColl (grandson of folk legend Ewan, nephew of the late Kirsty), bassist Ed...

How to Destroy Angels is a musical project announced in April 2010 amongst Trent Reznor, Mariqueen Reznor, and Atticus Ross. The band is named after How to Destroy Angels, the first single by Coil.The band started out by releasing 4 short clips. The clips contained the band members playing various instruments. Shortly after these clips, they released their first single ‘A Drowning’ through Pitchfork.com. After, the band released a video for a track entitled “The Space in Between”. The EP was released as a digital download on the 1st of June, 2010, and was released in a physical format on the 6th of July, 2010.Trent Reznor is renowned for the creative methods through which he releases his mu...

FIDLAR are slackers at heart. The only thing they really care about is skateboarding; trivial things like doing their homework and making the grade in school have little meaning to them. But when their adopted Vietnamese brother turns up dead after discovering an error in the shipping records at his place of work, FIDLAR begins to suspect something more. Refusing to accept the police's theory of suicide, FIDLAR launches their own investigation, determined to uncover the truth of what really happened to their brother. They will be playing SXSW 2012. Hailing from L.A., FIDLAR - made up of Brandon, Max, Zac, and Elvis - started playing together in ...

Some bands work their fingers to the bone, writing, touring, gigging, and waiting with bated breath for opportunity to knock at last. For Benjamin Davis, frontman of the indie rock duo Bad Veins, opportunity kicked down the door and dragged him across the threshold by his shaggy, dirty blonde hair.

”I never really had the plan to have a band. I just like to record, and experiment with recording, and I had been sitting around with a bunch of gear making sounds, working on a solo recording project that I called Bad Veins.” In early 2006, Davis gathered a megaphone, a telephone, several other quirky gadgets, and an inherited reel-to-reel nicknamed Irene, and played his debut gig at a sm...

A more charismatic, enigmatic nomad of a furioso frontman/artist/guitar legend could not be imagined. You can’t make this shit up.Grinning gold teeth behind blonde shades, in black, skeletal denim, with a studded “KING TUFF” across the shoulders where feral locks fall around his infamous “Sun Medallion.” With an acoustic guitar slung over the shoulder, King Tuff slinks through the abandoned halls of Detroit’s Malcolm X Academy. His baseball hat reads “VERMONT.” It’s the 4th of July.Will somebody please snap a photo of this animal before it escapes back into the wilderness from which it came??!!Magic ...

DIIV is the nom-de-plume of Z. Cole Smith, musical provocateur and front-man of an atmospheric and autumnally-charged new Brooklyn four-piece.Recently inked to the uber-reliable Captured Tracks imprint, DIIV created instant vibrations in the blog-world with their impressionistic debut Sometime; finding it’s way onto the esteemed pages of Pitchfork and Altered Zones a mere matter of weeks after the group’s formation.Enlisting the aid of NYC indie-scene-luminary, Devin Ruben Perez, former Smith Westerns drummer Colby Hewitt, and Mr. Smith’s childhood friend Andrew Bailey, DIIV craft a sound that is at once familial and frost-bitten. Indebted to classic kraut, dreamy Creation-records psychedel...

Sarah Register and Andrya Ambro allied as TALK NORMAL in 2007, after years of friendship, and haven't stopped moving. Since their lightning-strike first appearance, TALK NORMAL's sound has stormed upward and outward, referencing few and relating to many, a jarringly songful gale of rhythm and noise supporting pleas and plaints, signal-calls and marching orders. Each show builds on past ones: up-to-the-moment updates of ideas previously stated, new phrasings of old upheavals delivered with increasing focus and joy. Darkness and light; fury, silence, space and sound. TALK NORMAL is part of a long lineage of musicians who took their tools and ideas outside of the existing comfort zone a...

Guy Fox is an explosion of talent and eclectic songwriting - an apt description for a band that shares its name with an 17th century assassin that tried blow up Britain’s Parliament. Their music reflects an ethos of passion and energy; a starry eyed nonchalant approach that is palpable and refreshing. And did we mention that the drummer is one of the main singers?The bands influences, both collectively and individually, are very apparent in Guy Fox’s sound. Fun dancy high life vibes, rich harmony of the Steely Dan era, large band arra...

Dynoride originally formed in 2008 when Burnell Eckardt and John Taylor, old high school friends, came together with the intent to create quirky acoustic songs. After having written a handful of tunes the duo began to record 1-track demos in Burnell's one-room apartment. Soon thereafter it became apparent the songs needed drums and the group then added Kyle Rohweder on drums and recorded a 5-song demo. Kyle then brought his friend Zac Cox into the line-up on lead guitar. The foursome then went on to play some local shows and had begun recording what was supposed to become the album "What You Wanted". During the recording session the tr...

Since he was 5 years old, Andrew Beerer has loved music, first learning classical piano.  His love for learning new instruments evolved into acoustic guitar while living in France at the age of 20.  This is when writing music became a want and need on a daily basis.  The album's first song, "Just A Man", was written in France, and was the first song ever written by Andrew.  In November of 2010, Andrew got together with his Producer, Brian Strain, and started recording an Album, which is appropriately called Just A Man.  Brian's partner Dan Richardson joined in the studio a year later adding a missing element to the team.  There were variou...

If the seed of Jim Morrison were gestated in the womb of Sookie Stackhouse, and then born into a world out of a Robert Rodriguez film, The Chaw would best set sound track of the life of this bizarre hypothetical love-child protagonist. The Chaw's sound is very strong in character. Dark moody sounds, drenched in reverb, referencing soundtracks of the classic spaghetti westerns, big open bar chords and barky low register guitar leads ala Dick Dale, and psychedelic soundscapes, take you on a trip on a dusty trail through a vivid world, full of mystery, and intrigue. The music is not your typical hodgepodge of genres, a label fitting of the music of many newer bands these days. The Chaw, who have a very strong identity, transport us to a very s...

Many words describe numerous emotion but when combined 3 specific words invoke emotion; Another Lost Year. On the front of ever- changing music, Clinton Cunanan, Adam Hall, David Whitaker, Lee Norris, and Andrew Allender from Charlotte, NC, are creating an empire in the Alternative Metal/Hard Rock realm with truth in lyrics and an unimaginable live show that places second to none. In less than a year’s time Another Lost Year has shared the stage with the likes of national rock powerhouses including 10 Years, Pop Evil, Framing Hanley, Sore Eyes, Bobaflex, Royal Bliss, Nonpoint, Rev Theroy and Grammy performing artist Almost Kings. Completing a full touring schedule from Florida to New Jersey, Michi...

We are a new London-based band called BºCºº and our first CD, Red Dress, is indie rock-pop. BºCºº are Scott Wade and Damian Ward with; Adam Falkner, Lo Polidoro, Sulene Fleming and Nick Chandler and Rob Pluckrose.The album was mixed by Phill Brown at Modern World Studios...

Fresh off the success of last year’s Social Studies LP—which earned the approval of everyone from NPR to The New York Times to The Guardian, who compared the breakout release to early Madonna, the indie disco of Prelude Records and “CSS doing an impression of Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band”—Body Language have returned with a new EP (Grammar, due out through OM’s Lavish Habits imprint on September 18th) and a full-length disc that’s set to drop in early 2013. Both of which streamline the Brooklyn quartet’s restless pop experiments with a future-shocked blend of soul and R&B.Or as multi-instrumentalist/producer Grant Wheeler puts it, “Our world still exist...

After taking hiatus from the violin/synth driven experimental indie band Kiss Kiss (www.myspace.com/kisskiss), who have toured with (Thursday, The Dear Hunter, Murder By Death, The Pogues, and more), singer Josh Benash and bassist James Okeeffe began a new band: Vuvuzela. Teaming up with classically trained Harpist Stephanie Babirak, and Drummer Ben Goldstein, the quartet began writing eccentric songs with an eccentric instrumentation. Dabbling in odd times and using obscure scales, Vuvuzela crea...

Friends is:Samantha "I'm on my way" UrbaniLesley "I'll be in the greenroom" HannOliver " Are there more drink tickets" DuncanNikki "No rules" ShapiroMatthew "I gotta go" MolnarFriends have also garnered praise from the likes of, among others, Nylon Magazine, The NME and Creature Mag who had this to say about them: “(Friends)boast a classic pop sound and their single ‘Friend Crush’ is simply the epitome of cool…This Brooklyn quintet are led by lead singer Samantha Urbani whose vocals drip with a gritty sex appeal that relays the heat of a NYC summer… The bas...