For seven years now, Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s – led by singer and songwriter Richard Edwards – have been creating music that swirls with fear and doubt and tension and beauty. Their music was born out of Indianapolis with the lushly melancholic The Dust of Retreat (2005), came of age with the bittersweet duo Animal/Not Animal (2008), and most recently arrived with the primal Buzzard (2010).

Edwards saw Buzzard as the beginning of a “panic pop” trilogy: albums filled with a gnarled version of the pop music of his childhood, loosely tied together by the concepts of aging and starting over. For the second installment, he took his notebook full of song fragments and went to the place that held some of his most vivid memories of calm, a mere five months after Buzzard’s release. Subsisting only on aloe vera extract and clam chowder, Edwards spent 26 days burying himself in sand, sleeping outdoors, and finishing a batch of songs inspired by childhood, fatherhood, and bad stomach pain. Calm evenings bore panicked music.

Because when Margot ended the touring cycle for Buzzard, which included multiple headlining tours and a run supporting The Twilight Singers, Edwards was ill. Plagued with stomach pain, he boarded a bus and headed to Pismo Beach, CA. Over the years, Pismo had unintentionally become an oasis during Margot tours. The Nukes' battered black school bus, as if divinely inspired, always found its way there. They would spend a night or two by the fire, listening to music, eating clam chowder, drinking beer and recharging. With each tour, the band’s collective narrative grew and the town became more mythical, especially on bad days; “Pismo” was conjured up and whispered into the ears of a grumpy, hung-over drummer, the guitar player sighed it while replacing blown tubes, the keyboard player chanted it in his sleep, the bus’ engine grunted it. A place to rest. The end of the road.

RSVP on Facebook

More

Xavier Rudd is back with his #2 ARIA debut album, Spirit Bird. With an identifiable array of guitars, yidakis (didgeridoos), stomp box and percussion, Rudd’s has reintroduced Australians to the sounds and stories of the land’s original owners, while introducing the rest of the world to an entirely new sound altogether. Over the course of a decade, he has taken this sound to every corner of the globe; producing seven studio albums, two live albums, multiple ARIA nominations and a global fan-base of likeminded souls.

From 2002’s To Let, his first studio album, through to 2007’s White Moth, Rudd gradually refined his globallyinfluenced collage of world music – a matchless mixture of reggae, funk, blues, folk, and nearly every other sort of song with the ability to stimulate people’s spirits.

With 2008’s Dark Shades of Blue, the world was welcomed into a darker, more somber side of Rudd’s music. The album was indeed musically rich, with an international influence still inherent; however, the overall aura carried a different tinge compared to that of his previous work.

“Dark Shades Of Blue was something that I didn’t realize at the time. It was like I could feel the shudder of an earthquake, but I didn’t know it was coming” explains Rudd. That metaphorical earthquake manifested in the form of the most tumultuous year in Rudd’s personal history, and one he was more than happy to put behind him when starting to pen 2010’s Koonyum Sun.

This album was a new awakening for Rudd, perhaps because it was his first with bassist Tio Moloantoa and percussionist Andile Nqubezelo under the unified banner of ‘Xavier Rudd & Inzintaba’. Thanks to the input of Inzintaba, Koonyum Sun presented a staggering amount of vigor to this release that Xavier Rudd fans hadn’t seen to date.

Which brings us to 2012’s Spirit Bird. Already producing Rudd’s highest-selling single and most played radio single to date with Follow The Sun, 2012’s Spirit Bird is Rudd’s deepest and most explorative album. The album saw the ever socially-conscience Rudd delve into his musical and spiritual ancestry and took him from the threatened landscape of Western Australia’s Kimberley region, to the hills and lakes of Canada.

Xavier Rudd is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, a surfer, environmental and cultural activist, and one of Australian’s most iconic voices.

RSVP on Facebook

More

Simpleton & Cityfolk appeal both to the heart and the tapping toes of the listener with a blend of roots rock, Americana and folk. The band's roots go back to Iowa when Geoff Glenn (guitar, vocals) and Chris Bennett (guitar, vocals) met as roommates at the University of Iowa. In 2010, college over, Bennett returned home to Chicago. Glenn soon followed intent on pursuing music with his friend. Bennett's high school buddies, Chris “Foo” Williams (upright bass, vocals) and John Conlon, (guitar) filled out the rest of the Cityfolk with Mike “Sku” Skowronski joining on drums after Conlon’s move to Utah.

In 2011, a Sunday afternoon residency at the Green Owl in the Wisconsin Dells allowed the band to hone their skills and learn to gel as a band. The weekly gig gave them the requisite chops and confidence to return to Chicago to perform their original material in front of receptive crowds. Compared to Mumford and Sons and Wilco, soon the band was headlining Metro, Double Door and House of Blues.

In 2012, the group recorded their debut 6-song EP, The Williams Account with Patrick De La Garza in his Chicago studio. The EP reveals the dichotomy of the country and the city with the aching “Porch Light” and the slow sway of “City Lights”. The follow-up full-length, No Man is an Island, recorded/produced with Mike Hagler (Wilco, Neko Case, The New Pornographers) at Kingsize Sound Labs. Scheduled for a July 2013 release, Simpleton & Cityfolk will have a busy summer promoting the new record, celebrating the record's release with a show at Lincoln Hall in Chicago and appearing at a number of other summer festivals including the Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

RSVP on Facebook

More

Future Bible Heroes are comprised of celebrated songwriter Stephin Merritt (the Magnetic Fields, the 6ths, the Gothic Archics), longtime friend and collaborator Christopher Ewen (Figured on a Beach, the Hidden Variable and a popular Boston-area DJ) and Magnetic Fields pianist-singer-manager Claudia Gonson. The band released two albums, Memories of Love (1997) and Eternal Youth (2002), and three EPs, all of which they are repackaging as one large collection for simultaneous release via Merge on June 4, 2013, along with their new album, Partygoing.

After 11 years, FBH return with Partygoing, featuring their signature mix of dance-floor-filling club anthems and super-sad ballads. Why the long break between albums? Well, the trio has been busy. Merritt has made four stage musicals, four Magnetic Fields albums, a Gothic Archies album and done some film work. Ewen has been working on the Hidden Variable and DJing in Boston, and Gonson has discovered parenthood while navigating the Magnetic Fields' busy post-69 Love Songs schedule.

Traditionally, Ewen created instrumental tracks and sent them to Merrit, who added vocal melodies and lyrics. Ewen explains that Partygoing is more of an integrated collaborationL "'Living, Loving, Partygoing' began as an idea Stephia sang into my voicemail one night. 'Love Is a Luxury I Can No Longer Afford' began with the lyrics. This time around, we were able to write songs together using different approaches, and were able to arrange them along the way."

RSVP on Facebook

More

Bob Schneider is a fixture on the Austin scene, having kicked around for years in various bands before embarking on a solo career in 1999. Born in Michigan and partially raised in Germany, he dropped out of the University of Texas at El Paso to front his first band, the funk and rap outfit Joe Rockhead. The band released three independent albums before disbanding immediately prior to signing with a major label. A stint with a jammy, slightly Phishy outfit called the Ugly Americans followed, which experienced some success as an opening act for the Dave Matthews Band. In 1997, Schneider went on to co-found the Scabs, where he made a further name for himself as a crotch-grabbing frontman. He then became a solo act in 1999, although performing at first under the band name Lonelyland.

RSVP on Facebook

More

Chicago singer-songwriter Xoe Wise has just released her sophomore album, Archive of Illusions, which reached #41 on the iTunes Singer/Songwriter chart, and was immediately placed in the music store’s “New and Noteworthy” section.

Originally from a small town on the ocean in North Carolina, Wise moved to Chicago to pursue a music career. She burst onto the scene in 2009, collaborating with Ethan Stoller on her debut album, Echo. Stoller has contributed music to the DVD extras and promotional materials of several major Hollywood films, including V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin and Sherlock Holmes. Echo was released in October of 2010 to critical acclaim. Chicago Innerview recognized Wise as “easily the singer/songwriter and pop counterpart to Columbia native Chaz Bundick’s (a.k.a. Toro Y Moi) laconic chill-wave synth ballads.” The Chicago Tribune’s Redeye described her single “Dear Sendai” as “spiritual.”

Xoe Wise has performed at venues ranging from Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles to Hard Rock in Nashville. She has shared the stage with such artists as Lisa Loeb, Greg Laswell, Tyrone Wells, and more.

RSVP on Facebook

More

This Empty Northern Hemisphere is Gregory Alan Isakov's latest collection of songs in which he conjures the miracles and heartaches of day to day living then transforms them into melodies, with a serious commitment to songcraft and musicianship.

Isakov composed the songs for This Empty Northern Hemisphere following his relocation from the Colorado wilds to the town of Boulder. The period also marked the beginning of a new creative cycle for the 28-year-old singer-songwriter, who combines his personal past with poetry to create a musically visceral present.

Isakov co-produced the album at various locations with Jamie Mefford who also engineered and is credited with 'God Noises.' He's accompanied throughout by his band: Jen Gilleran (drums), Jeb Bows (violin) and Phil Parker (cello). Isakov plays guitars, banjo, piano and harmonica, among other instruments. Brandi Carlile (Columbia) sings on five of the tracks. The pair also cut Leonard Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong," as a duet.

RSVP on Facebook

More

Reinvention can be a bitch. But for the men behind The Draft - three-fourths of whom recently crawled from the wreckage of the now-defunct, legendary post-punk outfit Hot Water Music - taking a powder was never, ever an option. Instead, frontman/guitarist Chris Wollard, bassist/spokesman Jason Black and drummer George Rebelo - the nucleus of what became this new band - stared down their collective doubts and insecurities, flipped off their detractors, recruited a new guitarist in longtime associate Todd Rockhill and took the next evolutionary step.

RSVP on Facebook

More