Club Candids: Retro Hi-Fi at Sidebar

What’s one to do on a Sunday night in downtown Phoenix? Going to bed early and vegging out seems like an appealing option, but by staying in, you’d miss all the fun Retro Hi-Fi at Sidebar has to offer. Check out the fashionable folks we spotted at Retro Hi-Fi at…

Digital Summer’s Kyle Winterstein on Playing Desert Uprising

Since 2006, local band Digital Summer has been garnering fans from all over the country, with a Facebook count of almost 50,000 fans. They have a distinguishable style of heavy, melodic guitars and raw vocals that not only comes off as radio-friendly, but also sets them apart from other local…

Happy National One-Hit Wonder Day: Here’s The Best and Worst

Just in case you didn’t know, Tuesday, September 25, is National One-Hit Wonder Day. It’s the day the nation has carefully selected (or something) to celebrate musical splashes that never go beyond that big single (at least in the ears of most listeners). One-hit wonders are tricky things. They can…

Rob Zombie’s Guitarist John 5 Has a Motto: “More is More”

“I love Phoenix,” Rob Zombie guitarist John 5 says excitedly. “Rob [Zombie] and the other guys in the band, they like the colder weather, but for some reason I love the really hot weather.” He pauses, then anxiously asks, “It should be really warm there still when I’m there in…

UK Thursdays Moves to Monarch Theatre

The Monarch in downtown Phoenix is going to be shaking and quaking with sonic booms of bass every Thump Day as long-running dubstep joint UK Thursdays has moved to the Washington Street club as of last week. Promoters behind the bass-heavy EDM night, which originally launched back in 2009 as…

Sondre Lerche @ Musical Instrument Museum

If you jumped on the Sondre Lerche bandwagon after the 2004 release of Two Way Monologue, you no doubt dreaded the hype you thought he’d receive because of his collaboration with Regina Spektor on the Dan in Real Life soundtrack in 2007. But somehow Lerche avoided the level of obnoxious…

2 Chainz @ Celebrity Theatre

Sometimes, old dogs learn new tricks. Consider Tauheed Epps, the Atlanta MC who has taken two stage names — Tity Boi for a decade and 2 Chainz for a more successful three years. Epps got his start in the rap game when Ludacris, then a fellow underground Atlanta rapper and…

Lymbyc Systym @ Yucca Tap Room

Ethereal and otherworldly, Lymbyc Systym has a knack for activating its purposely misspelled namesake, the little corner of your brain known for controlling emotions. Their instrumental waveforms also evoke Explosions in the Sky, Four Tet, or The Appleseed Cast, gaining them the attention of touring mates like The Album Leaf,…

Paul Oakenfold @ El Santo

Over the summer, an online list of the world’s richest DJs featured the multimillion-dollar net worths of 30 superstar spinsters and demonstrated once again that EDM artists and DJs are the new rock stars. British-born house legend Paul Oakenfold was ranked second on the list, as he has an estimated…

Jason Aldean @ Ashley Furniture HomeStore Pavilion

If it were 1987, Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson’s “Don’t You Wanna Stay” wouldn’t be a country-radio dominating hit; it would be a Bics-in-the-air hair-metal ballad, something Whitesnake or Cinderella would play near the end of the set to get all the girlies grooving. But it’s 2012, and the song,…

8 Kids More Metal Than You

See also: The Most Anticipated Heavy Metal Releases of the Fall See also: The 10 Hottest Chicks in Metal See also: Six Desert Metal Bands You Need to Hear See also: A Closer Look at KUPD’s MILF Contest 2012There are few things in this world that have the ability to…

Krewella’s Yasmine Yousef on Their Stylish and Sexy-Sounding EDM

See also: Top Five Must-See Shows This Weekend In the comments section on the YouTube video for Krewella’s dubstep-heavy track “Killin’ It,” one clever wiseacre describes the Chicago-born electro-pop act as “2 Girls, One Drop.” It’s an unseemly bon mot, recalling one of the Interweb’s most infamously vile viral videos,…

Little Feat @ Talking Stick Resort

In 1969, when Little Feat was formed by keyboardist Bill Payne and the just-fired Mothers of Invention guitarist Lowell George, 40-year-old bands didn’t exist. Yet 43 years later, Little Feat’s still cranking out their original brand of Southern boogie, which merges funk, jazz, blues, gospel, folk, soul, rock, and New…

Los Amigos Invisibles @ Crescent Ballroom

What happens when you cross acid jazz, disco, funk, and a performance-driven Latin dance troupe from New York by way of Venezuela? You get the sexy sounds of Latin Grammy winners Los Amigos Invisibles. The six-piece ensemble left its underground hometown scene 20 years ago to trot the globe and…

Otep @ Joe’s Grotto

Get ready for some unleashed feminine fury: One Eyed Doll, Butcher Babies, and Otep are coming to town. It’s a match made in the netherworld: One Eyed Doll mixes punk and metal with a unique Mad Hatter bent, that is if the Mad Hatter had decided to dismember all his…

The Walkmen @ Crescent Ballroom

The Walkmen didn’t set out to write a “dad rock” album with their seventh album, Heaven — though that’s exactly how the press perceived it. It doesn’t help that the record’s photos feature the band surrounded by their kids and spouses, or that songs like the high-and-lonesome “Southern Heart,” the…

Krewella @ Wild Knight

The mission of Chicago-based EDM trio Krewella is simple: They want you to lose your shit when listening to their shit. In order to do so, says vocalist/producer Yasmine Yousaf, they’ve injected their remixes of songs like Knife Party’s “Fire Hive” and original tracks like “Feel Me” and “Killin’ It”…