Best Hard Rock Station

A few months ago, KUPD inaugurated a new TV advertising campaign. In the ad, a crowd of rambunctious kids at a hard rock concert shouts out their devotion to KUPD, while the mother of morning DJ Dave Pratt holds a picket sign complaining that the station is too damn loud.

More than any station in town, KUPD knows its demo. It knows that station loyalists don't want their parents to like the music they listen to. So KUPD cranks it up to 11 with the kind of heavy-rock flamboyance that's been making parental ears bleed since Iron Butterfly got lost in a gadda da vida.

KUPD serves up a mix of the modern (Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age), the classic (Metallica) and the all-but-forgotten (Faith No More) in equal measure, but the common denominators are volume and attitude. It's unapologetically unhip fare that scores a direct hit with the suburban, teenage, air-guitar virtuoso in all of us.

Readers' Choice for Best Rock Station: KUPD-FM 97.9