Perhaps you’ve heard about the Boston electro-pop quintet Passion Pit’s backstory: Two years ago, falsetto-voiced frontman Michael Angelakos — then just a dude making tunes by himself in his bedroom — wrote a batch of fizzy love songs to give to his girlfriend as a Valentine’s Day present. Those songs…
The other day I was perusing the all-knowing “Just for You” feature on iTunes and heeded its advice to check out Band of Skulls, the new British blues-rock threesome touring in support of its debut album, Baby Darling Doll Face Honey. I liked what I heard. Yeah, they sound a…
In case you love the Black Eyed Peas but didn’t care to see them open for U2 the last time they were in the Valley, get Pea-licious when the hip-hop dance group invades Jobing.com Arena March 31. Seriously, they’re big enough to headline an arena?…
Are you a struggling band, working your asses off to book gigs and make yourselves known? Then let Planetary Group and Sonicbids do some of the work for you. They are offering an opportunity for one band to tour China, all expenses paid. The Tour China 2010: East Meets West…
Aficionados of the often-overlapping genres of country, Americana, folk, and roots music should be pretty ecstatic after reading this post. That’s because a number of acts from said musical forms will pay visits to the PHX in the coming weeks and months. San Diego’s Johnny Cash tribute band Cash’d Out…
Much has been made about why certain big name musicians skip Phoenix on their large-scale North American tours. Phoenix once was the jumping off point for the Fame Kills Tour, featuring both Kanye West and Lady Gaga. West’s loud mouth put the kibosh on that tour, and when Lady Gaga…
Everyone knows about the crazy side of Lady Gaga. There’s the bubble outfit, the time she smeared (fake?) blood on herself at the MTV Video Music Awards and her affinity for not wearing pants. But on her new eight-song EP, The Fame Monster (the songs are also available on a deluxe re-issue…
[jump] The one thing I take away from this video is how badly I want to hang out in the desert wearing a black hood and banging a drum. I don’t know how Yeasayer made that particular image look so bad-ass, but they sure as shit did it. Also, those…
It’s no secret that Phoenix is desperately seeking its first rap superstar. The commercial failure of Willy Northpole’s debut album this summer simply reinforced Phoenix’s status as the biggest U.S. city without a bona fide hip-hop success story. As smaller cities like Atlanta, St. Louis, Detroit, and Minneapolis continue to…
With the average ticket to see Kiss costing more than $50, there’s definitely a chance your broke ass can’t afford to witness the long-in-the-tooth cartoon rockers breathe fire and spit blood all over the stage when their 35th anniversary tour stops at Jobing.com Arena in Glendale. And who wants to…
Death metal ain’t for everyone. But Decrepit Birth makes a good case for being the perfect gateway through which the metal-phobic could enter the darkened realm — provided that the prospective listener could overlook that scary-sounding name. Take an instrumental like “The Enigmatic Form,” from the, Santa Cruz, California band’s…
The cats at Live Nation sent out an e-mail blast late yesterday trumpeting that Minnesota power-pop band Motion City Soundtrack and NYC’s The Bravery will be joining Rivers Cuomo and his crew for the concert, which pretty much justifies the $36.50-$46.50 ticket price. The show goes down Friday, January 15,…
Katy Perry proves she doesn’t need Auto-Tune on her new MTV Unplugged EP and DVD. The 25-year-old singer/songwriter belts it with a small band for the intimate concert and picks up an acoustic guitar, on which she wrote music for her debut album, One of the Boys. The short, seven-song…
It seems like only yesterday that I announced Muse as a “confirmed” headliner for the 2010 Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival. What? It was only yesterday? Well then! Austin’s annual SXSW Festival has just announced their initial 200 bands. The list is long and tedious, but a few standouts…
Wanna talk about a band that’s rough on its fans: AC/DC has canceled the previously postponed Phoenix show nearly two months after putting it off because their sissy singer “needed some rest.” Now, due to “scheduling conflicts,” the Black Ice Tour has gone from “on ice” to dead.Refunds are available…
Even NME got snookered by this one: A rumored Daft Punk world tour with a date at Yankee Stadium. Wait, has Yankee Stadium ever held a concert? Hmmmm. The Internet was abuzz this morning with rumors of a massive tour by the French House twosome but it’s all bunk, says…
There are sure to be a dozen or so shows holiday-themed shows featuring local bands announced in the coming week or so, but I’ve got to think Kinch will have pretty much everyone beat. The Phoenix indie rock foursome has a pretty cool shindig lined up for December 22 at…
What is it about OC punk rock acts that makes them so tough to kill? Lose a few original members from most punk bands and they’re through, but OC acts like The Vandals, Bad Religion, Social Distortion and TSOL never seem to die. The Vandals (pictured above with Gwen Stefani…
Yours truly is a big fan of Coachella, having attended the festival for the past 4 years, and this news only ramps up my excitement for the 2010 edition. Muse last played Coachella in 2004, when their music wasn’t being played during Monday Night Football broadcasts and promos for the…
More than a decade into the internet age, it’s hard to imagine a time when music and the artists who created it carried an aura of mystery. Before information about any topic under the sun was just a few computer keystrokes away, word of mouth was an absolutely vital part…
Phoenix still can’t seem to wrangle a Wilco show (the band played Tucson in June) but we’re getting the next best thing at the end of December as singer Jeff Tweedy plays a solo show at the gorgeous Orpheum Theatre on Sunday, December 27.Tickets for the show will be $30…
We’ve got one late-breaking show announcement for you Friday afternoon: Nathen Maxwell & The original Bunny Gang, a side project featuring Flogging Molly bassist Nathen Maxwell, will play Jugheads tonight.Apparently this is all going down because of a canceled date in Albuquerque. The band plays the much-bigger Orpheum in Flagstaff…
