Music
Colin Reynolds was born and raised in Tacoma, but for the past two years, he's been holed up in a Manhattan apartment, writing and recording material - using only a laptop and his sonorous voice - and busking in New York's subways to scrape by. Now the 22-year-old is back
We Recommend
Music critic Mike McGonigal once compared the start of My Bloody Valentine's "Loomer" to the sensation he felt every time he got high back in the days when he was hooked on speedballs. And though Baltimore's Lower Dens share the shoegaze deities' affinity for graceful, diaphanous sounds, their music is
We Recommend
The Makeup Monsters are one of a handful of barely-legal NW duos whose youngness seems to be just as attention-grabbing as their undeniably brilliant music (the notoriously spastic Herr Jazz are another example). With popular culture more youth-obsessed than ever, promising talents like TMM's Shayne Weeks and Isaac Solverson seem
Music
The Makeup Monsters are one of a handful of barely-legal NW duos whose youngness seems to be just as attention-grabbing as their undeniably brilliant music (the notoriously spastic Herr Jazz are another example). With popular culture more youth-obsessed than ever, promising talents like TMM's Shayne Weeks and Isaac Solverson seem
We Recommend
Ostensibly, Jonathan Deschamps is a folk musician, but his tracks are laced with experimental touches that prevent them from coming across as too coddling or naïve - his music is childlike, but not childish, and clearly in touch with the "psychedelic unknown." He's also got a finely-tuned ear for hooky
We Recommend
Selling your style as substance is tricky business (for every Blade Runner, there are a dozen Ultraviolets). New York's brash, shamelessly gussied-up Semi-Precious Weapons make a valiant effort - they're in the business of looking good, and singing about how good they look ("I can't pay my rent/ but I'm
We Recommend
PDX band Symmetry/Symmetry's 2010 tour poster features headshots of band members Joel Uram, Daniel Jones, Mark Cleaver, Andrew Quackenbush and friends all dolled up like weird Aladdin Sane-wannabes - as if they stepped right out of someone's paranoid Halloween nightmare. In reality, Symmetry/Symmetry are far from glam-rock posers (or dreamt
Music
Ten years ago, a then-17-year-old Jonathan Deschamps started recording songs at home, experimenting as he went along, pushing himself to learn a variety of instruments. In a move worthy of L.A. weirdo Ariel Pink, he let the unreleased material pile up, resulting in a vast back-catalog of unheard compositions. "For years,
We Recommend
C.L.A.W.S. is the project of San Franciscan Brian D. Hock, an unlikely West Coast underground talent (and radio DJ) whose booming beats and wintry digital blips would sound right at home in the famed clubs of Cologne, the world capital for all things komische. Hock, who gleaned inspiration from time
We Recommend
They Rise, We Die is Tristan McNabb's newest project, a musical rebound from the 2009 break-up of much-loved Tacoma-area instrumental act Waves and Radiation. Winners of the 2006 Weekly Volcano award for "Best Experimental Band," Waves and Radiation made epic, shoegaze-y post-rock that coalesced a number of pedal-happy influences (e.g.
We Recommend
Levator (pronounced like "elevator" without the "e," not like "skeletor") is an integral member of the Northwest's hearty-but-underappreciated psych/shoegaze/experimental crowd, and their plaintive, achingly pretty songs are just one example of that scene's baffling diversity. With the incorporation of Psychedelic Fur-sy tenor sax and a healthy dose of shameless ballad
Music
I'm crammed into a tight practice space in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle, at Prospect and Elliott, down by the railroad tracks. They Rise, We Die's five members crowd the room, which is getting stuffier and sweatier the longer they jam. The walls are trembling from the force of their
We Recommend
Heavy, blues-adelic rock can be just as indulgent as hard candy - so, so tasty but wildly unhealthy at the same time. Lucky for Bellingham garage trio Sugar Sugar Sugar, there's nothing explicitly injurious about their pseudo-revivalist riffage; they're hardly ear-splitting but do rely heavily on the unwholesome power of
We Recommend
With the weather finally shaping up in the Pacific Northwest, there's no better time for Weed Diamond's balmy, golden-hued beach pop. The band excels in a specific (and very indebted) sub-genre, one that threatens to seal its own fate through blog-o-sphere over saturation. The band, however, (who hail from Denver,
We Recommend
Thursday's "Team Natalie" benefit concert at the Loft on Cherry - featuring Kill Rock Stars alumni Bangs and The Need, with C Average and doom metal solo project Thrones - is bookended by two more shows boasting the same stellar line-up (The Team hits up Portland on July 23, and
Music
The Northwest music scene knows how to take care of its own. Our woodsy, insular corner of the country has nurtured some remarkably supportive and artsy communities - a minor empire of wide-eyed, open-hearted creatives, stretching from Bellingham's coven of enthusiastic house-show crust-punks, to as far South as the legendary
We Recommend
Portland indie band The Harvey Girls aren't girls at all - they're actually married couple Hiram Lucke and Melissa Rodenbeek. While it might not be the most accurate moniker in the world, their name does serve a distinct purpose (beyond the general band-name imperative of "sounding cool"): in its syntactic
Music
Portland indie band The Harvey Girls aren't girls at all - they're actually married couple Hiram Lucke and Melissa Rodenbeek. While it might not be the most accurate moniker in the world, their name does serve a distinct purpose (beyond the general band-name imperative of "sounding cool"): in its syntactic
We Recommend
Nü Sensae are skull-crackingly loud and utterly ferocious-sounding - something that's all the more impressive when you realize they sculpt their gruesome creations with nothing more than drums, bass, and vocals. While Nü Sensae didn't deliberately set out to be a two-person operation following in the footsteps of other formative, sludgy
Music
When I catch up with Vancouver, B.C. punk duo Nü Sensae, they're in Southern California, making some tour purchases at Wal-Mart while their van is being serviced. "Hang on," says drummer Daniel Pitout. "I'm buying a Barbie doll." Nü Sensae are such a relentlessly hardcore band that them copping to buying
