If you’re gonna have an organ player in your group and call yourselves Oh My God, you could be mistaken for a Christian rock band. So indie trio OMG has this clarification on its MySpace page: “This Chicago rock band is not affiliated with God or Satan (though the band…

After watching these longhaired Canucks tear up the stage opening for Nashville Pussy at the Clubhouse Music Venue, I’m convinced they are the most impressive and diverse band in the current wave of retro metal-rock, surpassing such stellar company as ’70s-sounding acts Wolfmother, Danava, and The Sword. They have incredibly…

Boobs and beer. The Georgia-based raunch ‘n’ rollers in Nashville Pussy don’t need much more symbolism than that, even though they’ve used the Confederate flag on their albums and show fliers for years, à la Lynyrd Skynyrd. But when you’ve got hot blonde guitarist Ruyter Suys kneeling down on the…

Go ahead, call them a “novelty act.” This nine-member group from NYC is asking for it with songs like “Nipples” (with eloquent lyrics like “Na-uh-na-uh-na-uh-nipples”). But once you’ve heard “Connecticut’s for Fucking,” the leadoff track to JHC&tFHotA’s debut album, there’s no denying this band’s snarky brilliance. The song’s ridiculously catchy…

“My house is like a crash pad for aging punk rockers,” Keith Jackson tells me over the phone one day. But not just any old aging punk rockers. The singer/guitarist for local punk band Glass Heroes has hung out with some of the most legendary names in the genre, including…

Melissa Ferrick’s been quietly fighting her way out of pigeonholes for the past few years. First, she got branded with the “granola/Lilith Fair crowd” label, not because she actually played at Lilith Fair in 1999, but because she’s a female singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar. Then, she got stuck with…

You’ve got to be intrigued when singer/guitarist Todd Staples says his band, Suicide Circus, is “along the lines as if Skynyrd and Pantera had an illegitimate baby and Zakk Wylde was the weird uncle that came around to baby-sit.” But listening to Suicide Circus’ self-titled disc is more than intriguing…

8mm consists of Sean Beavan, longtime producer for Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, and his wife, Juliette. Sean creates hypnotic layers of downtempo grooves and dark trip-hop, while Juliette’s sultry, haunting voice sails over the soundscapes with a laissez-faire richness. Critics have compared 8mm to Portishead and filmmaker David…

Who needs TV when I’ve got T. Rex?” Not local glam/’70s rock throwback band Crash Street Kids, who sing the legendary line from the David Bowie-penned “All the Young Dudes” with a sincerity that saves them from the “poseur” label. On a recent Friday night, I’m watching CSK play, along…

The members of New York-based band Scissor Sisters admit they were feeling the pressures of a “sophomore slump” when they headed into the studio to begin recording Ta-Dah, the follow-up to the Sisters’ critically acclaimed 2004 self-titled album. One of the things that made that first record so outstanding was…

The band wears ghoulish masks and uniforms, has an eight-man lineup, and plays a metal mashup that incorporates elements of hip-hop, industrial, and hardcore. Sounds a lot like Slipknot. But people who write Mushroomhead off as a Slipknot rip-off probably haven’t heard the one about the time Mushroomhead (formed in…

Over the course of the past decade, and with four highly innovative — and sadly underrated — indie albums, L.A.-based hip-hop artist Busdriver built a reputation in the underground by spitting poignant rhymes with a sense of humor set against fiercely danceable street beats and eclectic instrumentation. He never seems…

The drummers of rock ‘n’ roll lore are either dead (Cozy Powell, John Bonham), notorious chick-magnet partyers (Tommy Lee), or both (Keith Moon, Benny Benjamin). The drummers on Drum Nation Volume 3 are none of the above. But they are some of the heaviest hitters in metal and hard rock…

Fran Scianna, best known for playing in local rock band The Sciannas with his brother Dan, decided he wanted to make a “deeper, more psychedelic sound” and left to form his own band, Studying Stones, which takes its name from the Ani DiFranco song about digging through one’s family roots…

Summer festivals might be winding down elsewhere in the country, but since it’s sunny and hot nine months out of the year here, the Valley’s guaranteed to have a few more super-sized summer shows before we get the big fall festivals. Edgefest 2006, presented by “independent” Phoenix radio station Edge…

The first CD from local bluesician Paris James harks back to the back-porch country blues of the 1920s, when players like Blind Blake and Blind Lemon Jefferson were finger-picking through a mix of folk, gospel hymns, and Delta blues. The sounds of spirituals and the South that dominate James’ CD…

One can’t help but chuckle at the Red Elvises’ appropriation of cheesy American culture — the colorful bow-tie tuxedos, the lopsided pompadours, singer Igor Yuzov’s lounge-lizard panache. The band’s flair for fusing Russian folk music with American surf, rockabilly, and even disco led to interesting concoctions like “I Wanna See…