Eric Swedlund

Crescent Ballroom celebrates its fifth anniversary today. It's hard to imagine what downtown would look like without the venue, which in terms of influence seems older than it is. But back in 2011 owner Charlie Levy just wanted to create a venue with character. "Strip it down to the bare...

As Chastity Belt progressed from playing college parties in Walla Walla, Washington, to major European venues in support of Death Cab for Cutie, the band remained remarkably unperturbed. The trick, if you can even call it that, says guitarist Julia Shapiro, was just being themselves and doing what they do...

It’s hard to find Marissa Nadler’s style of folk music described without the word gothic also attached. Dark, brooding, delicate and lush, Nadler’s music can sound otherworldly, even as her piercingly beautiful vocals convey an emotional directness. On Strangers, Nadler’s seventh album and second for the more typically heavy and...

XIXA came to exist almost by accident. The Tucson sextet – formerly known as Chicha Dust – formed and began playing the Peruvian style of psychedelic cumbia as a way to get more gigs without overbooking the solo projects of its two co-founders, Brian Lopez and Gabriel Sullivan. With almost...

Rather than trying to forget about the dark clouds that fell on his life in the last year, Modern Baseball’s Brendan Lukens found solace in writing a new batch of songs that faced everything head on. Lukens — who formed the pop-punk quartet with co-songwriter/guitarist Jacob Ewald, bassist Ian Farmer,...