Steve Byrne

Perhaps only The New York Times could have written this headline: "Bluegrass That Can Twang and Be Cool Too." Excuse me? Somebody inform the Gray Lady that all bluegrass is cool. Nickel Creek, the subject of the above header, is just different. The twang's there, but forget everything you think...

The comparisons to Dido and Joss Stone that surround KT Tunstall are inevitable. She's British and pretty, she sings wonderfully, and she was successful right out of the gate. But similarities to her fellow countrywomen end there. Whereas Dido and Stone are content to mine one stylistic vein, Tunstall has...

Yes, this is the CD that contains "John Walker's Blues," the most misunderstood song since George Will discovered "Born in the U.S.A." and decided, by virtue of its title, that it was a patriotic anthem. The cut is a first-person account of what made John Walker Lindh forsake America and...

Traditional Irish folk music has been combined with plenty of different musical styles, so you'd think mixing it with punk and hard-core would be some kind of joke, right? Wrong. The Dropkick Murphys, Boston's premier Irish punk working-class band, uses bagpipes, grinding guitars and bone-shaking rhythms. Three-chord punk blasts surround...