Early last year, the Washington state band Modest Mouse took an extended trip to Chicago and made a record with Brian Deck, a central figure in the sprawling Windy City musical family that historically centers on the defunct avant-blues group Red Red Meat. When they headed back to Washington (or…

The only chore that goes along with being into the Dismemberment Plan — a Washington, D.C., outfit that in about three years has gone from being the oddity of the remarkably goal-oriented D.C. punk scene to perhaps the most creative underground guitar band in the country — is deciding which…

Stake a place near the front of the stage at Nita’s Hideaway on Saturday to see a guy trying hard to define himself playing music that works against that.A self-styled Paul Westerberg type, young media darling Pete Yorn’s debut album, musicforthemorningafter (cute, huh?), presents a ruggedly handsome guy with a…

You will, no doubt, think you know where this is going: Three guys, dressed in black, maybe a little eyeliner on just for effect, definitely some secondhand suits, hitting creepy chords on some old piano, peeling off a fuzzy guitar solo, the singer mewling like a sexed-up absinthe fan. Simple,…

Jonny Greenwood would prefer not to be here, this I know. Talking on an intercontinental phone call to yet another journalist about how great Radiohead, in which he plays guitar, is and how important Amnesiac, its new record, is in the face of the cultural poverty that’s replaced the 21st-century…

I think G. Love is high.”What we do is just, like, American music. In this day and age, everything is one, and we just play music, you know what I mean?” Hmm. Correction: I know G. Love is high. “This is what we do, man. We just play this good…

Eric Bachmann doesn’t like to think of himself as a singer-songwriter. Ask him about the idea, and he’ll probably rasp himself into a fiery cul de sac about how the very idea of singing about your problems is nothing but self-indulgent whining, that if you’re singing in the first place,…

“It’s pretty simple. There’s no smoke and mirrors. We’re just a musical group.” John Herndon is looking for a way to make it clearer, to say that all he and the rest of the guys in his band do is plug things into amps and set up microphones and try…

“Beethoven is my hero,” says Jeremy Enigk, Sunny Day Real Estate front man. “I mean, writing a song on his deathbed — that’s beautiful to me.” He pauses, reflecting on what’s placed him on the other end of the phone. “And that’s kind of why I do it: for the…