
Today is a great day for a number of reasons. For one, it's the last day of the workweek, which is always great. Plus, we got to watch the season finales of The Office and Scrubs last night. Secondly, we're only one day away from heading to Chicago to catch Arcade Fire at the Chicago Theater. And to cap things off, we're heading straight out to Boston the next day - although it's for work - but hey, at least we're getting out of Sconny for a few. Because of our escapades, we'll be off tomorrow [...]

Sweden's Mando Diao is playing Black Cat and they will be joined by Pop Levi and The Films . Mando Diao - Long Before Rock N Roll Pop Levi - Sugar Assault Me Now The Films - Black Shoes Son Volt is on tour again and they will be at 9:30 Club tonight. The High Strung will be opening the evening. Son Volt - Windfall [...]
No One Wants to Play Sega with Harrison Ford If you noticed the site being suspended early yesterday morning, I apologize for that as once again Midphase decided to bring the hammer down on us once again. It's almost become routine and I can't go a month without seeing the site get suspended for some ridiculous reason. To get the site back up I had to go through and delete all the mp3s that had been uploaded from the past couple of months. I feel terrible doing that, but it had [...]

Kevin Cole joins El-P's posse outside KEXP photo by Alex Ruder Thanks to El-P for dropping by KEXP yesterday and delivering an in-studio performance. If you want to go back and listen to his conversation with Kevin Cole, in which El-P calls out the music industry for not being in tune with consumers, you can grab it on our Streaming Archive for the next two weeks. Today's Tuesday, and you know what that means... Tuesday is payday, for the record stores. [...]

The press for The High Strung includes the mischievous tale of how they left their tour van in front of the Cleveland Rock Hall with a plaque, effectively making it a new, albeit, unscheduled exhibit. Anyone who sticks it to The Rock Hall is all right in my book. Now, in addition to their ability to pull a good prank on the rock establishment, The High Strung are also pretty skilled at putting down a quick, catchy three-minute tune. Consider, the track I'm featuring today, "What A Meddler." This guitar pop number with a [...]
Guns 'N Roses found themselves at the receiving end of a lawsuit. No, fans aren't suing for "pain and suffering" from the emotionally distressful long wait for Chinese Democracy to appear. According to TMZ, Axl and crew are being sued for over $100,000 by a logistics company that say they are owed money for work on Guns' last tour. Mere chump change...of course, any money in Axl's pocket is chump change. The Spiderman 3 soundtrack is out with tons of original music. Snow Patrol, Wolfmother, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Flaming Lips, Jet and [...]
The High Strung on Tour : Apr 27 University Of Wisonsin (CLUB 770) Madison, Wisconsin Apr 28 KUNI Presents The High Strung @ The Reverb Cedar Falls, Iowa Apr 29 The Subterranean (NARM) Chicago, Illinois May 1 George's Majestic Lounge (with SON VOLT) Fayetteville, Arkansas May 2 The Rev Room (with SON VOLT) Little Rock, Arkansas May 3 Ridglea Theater (with SON VOLT) Ft. Worth, Texas May 4 WATERLOO RECORDS in store *Free* Austin, Texas May 4 Stubb's (with SON VOLT) Austin, Texas May 5 Floore's Country Store (with SON VOLT) Helotes, Texas May 6 Continetal [...]

After knockin' ya upside the noggin' with 35 big ones yesterday , we'll tone it down a touch. Here are ten more from bands scheduled to play at Austin's South by Southwest Festival next month. Glancing up at the Powerpopulist masthead again, I would say these tend more to the "indie" and "whatever we like" side. Not to every taste perhaps, but each had some tone, grind, hook, voice, quirk, or whoknowswhatery I somehow needed. Except for Calla and Protokoll , each was new to me (so feel free to smirk [...]

Sonic Youth The Invisible Friends are still alive, just a little busy with work. Many lives to save (excluding Tim Hardaway). Some great shows to see this week. Hope this post makes up for the slackery. Friday, 2/16 The Arcade Fire (see the previous Invisible Shows post). The Dirtbombs , Tiny Masters of Today , Boy/Girl at Maxwell's . --- (mp3: Tiny Masters of Today - Stickin it to the Man , Bushy , Pictures [...]

For the third edition of our podcast, the fine folks at Aperture Music have decided to do something a little different: challenge you. Think of it as the musical equivalent of "The Da Vinci Code," only without the bad Tom Hanks haircut and without all the page turning and stuff. One word from each of this edition's eight songs, makes up the title of one of our favorite King Crimson tunes. Actually, the King Crimson song has nine words, but we'll give the "the" for free. To [...]