Most of the time when a band breaks up, fans find out after it’s too late to wish their musical heroes goodbye. But in the case of the Haystacks, who serenaded Phoenix indie-rock lovers for more than two years, they gave us some advance warning. While the “Haystack Variety Hour”…

Sitting outside one of his favorite haunts, Tempe’s Stinkweeds Records, on a bright December afternoon, Eli Kuner is clearly on edge. He seems relaxed at first as he chats about mundane, getting-to-know-you things, like how he’s a history major at ASU, and how he’s lived in Mesa all his life…

Moog is not coming to the Valley. Even though it’s one of the hippest new documentaries out right now. Even though this is producer Ryan Page’s hometown, not to mention the country’s fifth largest metropolis. And even though Page says he could pack a theater with just his friends and…

The Polish American Club in Miami, Florida, seems an unlikely place for the Faint to do a concert. It’s basically a banquet hall, the kind of space you might expect to visit for a polka dance — if you’re into that kind of thing. But to see a band that…

Slouching back into a booth at Casey Moore’s, Billy Goodman passes up a cheeseburger to nurse a Corona instead, quietly joking that he could use about three. The lanky Necronauts front man, with his dark-framed glasses and head of thick spiral curls, talks about needing to relax, yet he’s so…

The joke’s on Peachcake. When Stefan Pruett and John O’Keefe started a band last summer, they weren’t serious. Then 18, the two college kids were used to being in punk and hardcore groups with actual guitars and drums, and O’Keefe was only just getting the hang of his new Roland…

From the outside, Jimmy Eat World’s Tempe studio looks just like another sterile office space in a quiet, out-of-the-way business complex. But walk through the nondescript entrance and the place is a surprisingly cozy rock ‘n’ roll den. There’s enough cushy seating for a decent-sized party, and instruments are strewn…

All across the country, punk rockers recognize him. New Yorkers know his byline. But if you’re neither, the name George Tabb might draw a blank. In short, he’s the “Professor of Punk.” Keep in mind, the man himself — dressed unassumingly in jeans and a mustard-colored tee shirt, with cropped…

Some people dread reunions. It would be easy to assume that about Charles Thompson — the charismatic Pixies front man who shrieked and howled under the name Black Francis before launching a successful solo career as Frank Black, his current moniker — who is infamous for being a grouch. Interviewing…

Those Black Keys boys have been up to no good. Not far from the blues-rock duo’s studio inside a toxic old rubber factory in an Akron, Ohio, slum, Lockheed Martin is building high-altitude surveillance airships — battle blimps — in the Airdock, one of the largest structures in the world…

If you love music, you can probably name a band that changed your life, that was a catalyst for your attitudes and tastes and ideas. That’s not to say you got stuck on it forever, or that you never branched out into other things. But discovering that band was such…

Onstage in tight, flamboyant clothes, with his eyes smeared in makeup and pale platinum blond bangs brushing his super-high cheekbones, Rory Lewarne has the wiry, androgynous good looks of your typical rock ‘n’ roll sex symbol. He just looks like he should be in front of a crowd somewhere, sweaty…

There’ll be a lot of celebrating at Casket Life’s tour kickoff show on Friday, August 6, at Ziggy’s in Tempe — not only is the band headed out for a two-week Southwest/Midwest tour, it’s also become the first group to sign to Stomping Ground Records (www.stompinggroundrecords.com), a new local venture…

Donald Martinez eagerly leans into a thick slab of steak with plenty of nuclear-grade horseradish. In wire-frame glasses and a button-down shirt, the slight, dark-haired musician has the kind of pale skin cultivated from long hours spent in front of a computer screen and inside rock clubs. Aside from his…

They buy vinyl records instead of CDs. Their instruments are older than they are. Their favorite groups were popular 35 years ago. And they’re from New York. But don’t jump to easy conclusions — the Walkmen are not garage rockers. “We used to be, definitely, but not anymore,” says lead…