Music

Is the world ready for a Dirty South rap single that’s not about ostentatious automotive modifications or garish cosmetic dentistry? Waco’s Strange Fruit Project is banking on it. “Soul Clap” marries funky brass (arranged by Denton funk-rockers Mingo Fishtrap) and jazz guitars to a handclap beat. The deceptively simple beat…

The fourth release from Danish alt-pop stars Mew seems ripe for success in an American market currently embracing Coldplay/Keane epics and its indie flipside of slacker lullabies by The Shins and Rogue Wave. And the Glass Handed Kites opener “Circuitry of the Wolf” comes churning out with stuttered strums, spooky…

Like many of their contemporaries from the bygone dance-rock era, Ratatat’s Mike Stroud and Evan Mast are trying to expand beyond the fizzy, body-moving instrumentals for which they first gained attention. Ratatat’s 2004 self-titled debut gained admirers alongside accusations of cranking out sound-alike tracks, so Classics offers some variety alongside…

Here’s a real-life kind of needle exchange for you: A decade ago, superstar lesbian DJ Irene was shooting up meth and living out of her car in between gigs working the wheels of steel at L.A. dance clubs like Arena. Thankfully, the spiky-haired Sapphic spinstress eventually swapped out the tracks…

Remarkably lovely U.K. trio The Clientele, whose sound primarily falls somewhere between the bright psych-pop of late-’60s Britain and the lush jangle-chime of L.A.’s ’80s Paisley Underground scene, pulls off the rare, swell trick of reminding you of literally dozens of artists — the late Arthur Lee, Dream Syndicate, Mercury…

Pity the poor music journalist charged with the task of describing the enticingly exotic and eccentric music created by DeVotchKa. Over its six years of existence, scribes and screed-slingers (including this one) have used a plethora of hyphen-laced phrases to describe the Denver foursome’s strangely sumptuous sound, including such idioms…

If Gary Numan had to be remembered as a one-hit wonder, well, at least he gets to be remembered as the one who gave the world “Cars,” a paranoid portrait in icy detachment that finds him alone in his car and enjoying it not because he’s doing something twisted like…

Had they been around in the 1800s, Austin-based band Asylum Street Spankers would have been traveling the country in a caravan like a giant band of Gypsies, unloading a plethora of instruments — drums, guitars, standup bass, fiddles, washboards, harmonicas, banjos, ukuleles, Dobros — and rocking every stop with equal…

Sunday afternoons are meant to be spent maxing and relaxing, instead of stressing out about returning to your hellish job for another week of rat-race-style torture. So it’s a good thing that Counter Culture Cafe, 2330 East McDowell Road, has its weekly event HeadSpace, at which you can kick back…

Maybe it was his non-fro or lack of a hyphenated name, but Jon Theodore, longtime drummer for Latin prog rock act The Mars Volta, has left the band. Now, the earthy surnamed and mop-topped shadows of singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and bassist Pablo Hinojos-Gonzalez will fall upon new…

If every dark cloud has a silver lining, then the bright side of the imminent closure of legendary NYC club CBGB is chrome-studded rather than silver. When renowned and long-defunct straight-edge pioneers Gorilla Biscuits threw a one-off reunion to try to keep the ailing club’s doors open, they had such…

Back when rock was a real arena monster, fans used to hold up lighters at rock shows. At shows by local pop punk/hard rock band A Change of Pace, fans hold up their illuminated cell phones. That gesture’s a great metaphor for ACoP’s music — it’s an old sound, punched…