The Shins

Metz @ Crescent Ballroom

Music Fests Like Coachella Drive Concert Sales to New Heights

How Music Festivals Keep The Music Industry Afloat

This week's New Times cover story examines the music industry's only 21st-century success story: The incredible boom in live music in general and festivals in particular. Since you might still be in the throes of a Coachella hangover--or maybe you're getting ready to camp out at That Damn Show Sat ... More >>

McDowell Mountain Music Festival 2013 (VIDEO)

Are you still sleeping off the hangover you picked up at the 10th annual McDowell Mountain Music Festival? In case you somehow missed it, MMMF 3013 brought some great acts to Phoenix. We're still tapping our feet every time we hear a song by The Roots or The Shins and we've got our fingers crossed t ... More >>

10 Things We Learned at McDowell Mountain Music Festival 2013

This weekend McDowell Mountain Music Festival celebrated its 10-year anniversary in style, at a new primo location of Margret T. Hance Park, with good beer from Deschutes, and with awesome bands like The Shins, The Roots, Balkan Beat Box, Les Claypool, and more. You can catch up on our reviews, in ... More >>

14 Animated GIFs of Hippie Shenanigans from McDowell Mountain Music Festival

They came, they saw, they danced. And twirled, strutted, flipped, and bounced. Attendees of last weekend's McDowell Mountain Music Festival at Margaret T. Hance Park found plenty of ways to feel the music during all three days of the event, including those folks of crunchier, groovier, and dread-hea ... More >>

Dr. Dog and Les Claypool's Duo de Twang, McDowell Mountain Music Festival, 3/24/13

Dr. Dog, Les Claypool's Duo de Twang, and More @ McDowell Mountain Music Festival at Margret T. Hance Park|3/24/13The last day of a music festival is always an exercise in mixed feelings. The majority of the crowd is exhausted, sunburned, and dehydrated, but through it all, watching the headlining b ... More >>

The Shins, McDowell Mountain Music Festival, 3/22/13

The Shins @ McDowell Mountain Music Festival at Margret T. Hance Park|3/22/13It's been 10 years since McDowell Mountain Music fest got started, and nine since Natalie Portman, as the prototypical "manic pixie dream girl" stated that The Shins would "change your life." In that time, McDowell Mountain ... More >>

Top Five Must-See Shows in Phoenix This Weekend

Who's excited for the Instagram pictures Questlove is going to post of Phoenix this weekend? I sure am. The Roots will be in town on Saturday, March 23, to play as part of McDowell Mountain Music Festival, plus, Questo will be dropping a DJ set at Bar Smith afterward. That's sure to yield some good ... More >>

Yonder Mountain String Band: Bluegrass for People That Don't Like Bluegrass

"I don't feel at all that we have made it in the bluegrass world. We exist on the fringe at best," Yonder Mountain String Band bassist Ben Kaufmann lamented back in 2003. "The bluegrass music we are writing is different than the other bluegrass music that is out there. I think it is going to take pe ... More >>

Les Claypool: Eccentric Bassist Would Rather Be Fishing

If Primus bassist Les Claypool had a bumper sticker on his car, it would most likely read: "I'd rather be fishing." As much as Claypool likes to create strange and esoteric music, he also loves heading out on the water and zoning out. See also: -Les Claypool's Duo de Twang and Deer Tick Added to ... More >>

Christian Jacobs of Yo Gabba Gabba! Doesn't Talk Down to Kids

McDowell Mountain Music Festival 2013 Announces Local Lineup Featuring Kongos, Fayuca, and More

McDowell Mountain Music Festival's 2013 lineup, featuring The Shins, The Roots, Deer Tick, Les Claypool's Duo de Twang, and more, has expanded to include a host of local Phoenix-based acts. The weekend festival will now Kongos, Mergence, Banana Gun, Fayuca, The Veragroove, Yellow Minute, Decker, and ... More >>

The Shins and Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes Added to the Expanding McDowell Mountain Music Festival Lineup

The quickly expanding lineup of McDowell Mountain Music Festival 2013 has added two more big names to the roster: The Shins and Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes. The 2013 installment of the festival is looking to have the most impressive lineup in MMMF history, as The Shins and Sharpe join Th ... More >>

Are You a Cute Blonde Lady? Now is a Good Time to be in a Music Video

Last week, a couple of so-called indie bands released music videos that featured quirky blonde actresses. Michelle Williams traveled to Niagara Falls Wild Nothing's "Paradise" and The Girl Next Door Elisha Cuthbert imagines herself in a movie in The Gaslight Anthem's video for "Here Comes My Man." B ... More >>

Top Five Must-See Shows This Week

Yeah, yeah, yeah...we get it Mondays suck (we've read Garfield). But it means the start of a new week, which means a bunch of killer shows in and around Phoenix. And here are a few of the coolest, our top five must-see shows this week.

The Mynabirds @ Crescent Ballroom

Alert: SXSW Coverage Ahead

"What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area." -- Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive You don't have to spend much time at South By Southwest to know that all of the above building ... More >>

Record Heat by Brad Dwyer

​My favorite moment of Herman Cain's "That's it, I'm out of here" speech was when quoted Donna Summers' "Power of One," a favorite "poem" of us, and coincidentally, the theme from Pokémon 2000. Brad Dwyer features another kids show in this week's installment of Record Heat, the much-loved Y ... More >>

Viva Voce @ The Rhythm Room

Viva Voce

Katy Perry Nearing Michael Jackson's Singles Chart Record

​Katy Perry is on her way to matching Michael Jackson's singles record, according to NME.It looks like Katy Perry will hit the number one spot on the Billboard charts for the fifth time this album with her single "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)." If it actually takes the top spot, she will be the fi ... More >>

RAC (Remix Artist Collective) to Play Bar Smith on May 6

​RAC (Remix Artist Collective) are playing Bar Smith on May 6. Not familiar with RAC? Well you're certainly familiar with the artists they've remixed -- U2, Radiohead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, John Lennon, The Shins, and Pink Floyd, among a ton of others.The Collective is pretty populist, tackling indie a ... More >>

The Dodos @ The Duce

David Bowie Recording His 25th Studio Record... As Announced by AARP?

Did you ever think you would read an article about Jareth the Goblin King in an AARP magazine?​Perhaps I cast unfair judgement and assume incorrectly about the readers of music blogs. I often assume that they're smarter than a huge chunk of the average population, and also that they're under the a ... More >>

Radiohead Taking A Break, British Rapper Threatens Prince, New Chromeo Mp3

Electric Mustache: mp3: Chromeo "I Can't Tell You Why" (Eagle Cover) Idolator: ProTools: Proving What Anyone With Ears In 1989 Already Knew NME: Dizzee Rascal: 'I threatened to punch Prince Harry' NME: The Shins working with Danger Mouse on new album Pitchfork: No Age's Randy Randall Dislocates Shou ... More >>

The Shins

Kicking it

Top ten selling CDs at Zia Record Exchange, 105 West University Drive in Tempe

Chart-busters for the week

House Party

Pool will wet your whistle

Top 10 selling CDs at Hoodlums, in the ASU Memorial Union building in Tempe

Chart-busters for the week

Top 10 selling CDs at Zia Record Exchange, 3851 East Thunderbird Road

Chart-busters for the week

The top 10 selling CDs at Zia Record Exchange, 2510 West Thunderbird Road

Chart-busters for the week

The Shins

Wincing the Night Away
(Sub Pop)

It Was Free Cuz I Stole It

The year in unfair shares

Singles Going Steady

The best end-to-end albums from a singles-driven year

The Kingdom

K1
(Arena Rock)

Burning Down the House

Accelerated entropy

Mew

And the Glass Handed Kites
(Sony)

Band of Horses

Three-trick ponies

Rogue Wave

Following their bliss

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter

A powerful addiction

Marrying the Mainstream

White men learned to dance, and the emoting was as thick as the eyeliner on the year's best pop-rock records

Pinback

Yes, You Can

Braff pulls triple duty on his new project

Rogue Wave

Out of the Shadow
(Sub Pop)

The Shins

Chutes Too Narrow (Sub Pop)

BEST LIBRARY FOR CD AND DVD BURNERS

Burton Barr Central Library

Shin Music

Indie quartet emerges from a decade of obscurity to find itself the great pop hope

Letters

'N Sync? Get real

Pretty Vacant

New Times' panel of critics searches for musical gems in a disheartening 2001