Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch speaks on evil record companies, Phil Collins, the ugly faces of politicians, shitty guitar solos, future collaboration with Modest Mouse, and old reggae guys getting high. Alright, so Built to Spill is one of the greatest, most influential, and most acclaimed bands of the past fifteen years. There's really no way around it. And for those of you who are a little late to the love-in, here's a very small sample of some of the things that have been said about them:         "A band whose talent and proficiency at times seem[s] boundless." --Pitchfork Media         "Flawless." --Trigger Magazine         "In short, he's a talent more people ought to know about." --Rolling Stone, on Doug Martsch         "Better than getting laid, finding God and winning the lotto combined." --San Francisco Weekly, just last week when discussing their live performance...

Image courtesy Kill From The Heart fanpageAnyone who read the Meat Puppets cover story in the Austin Chronicle this summer knows that the brothers Kirkwood have had some serious ups and down in their 20-odd years together. From their belated arrival as grunge superstars in the mid-90s and appearing for a four-song stretch on Nirvana's Unplugged album to a heroin-fueled spiral into depression and bankruptcy, the Puppets have lived the kind of life most people......

Photos from the October 5th Sonic Youth / Meat Puppets show at Stubb's. Photos by Keith Gaddis. If you can't view the Flash slideshow above, an alternate version appears after the jump.......

Marfa, TX is a tiny, strange place crawling with perpetually drunk twenty-somethings that fancy themselves as misfit "artists". The weather is nice, though. It's still not enough to make us want to drive seven hours this weekend to celebrate the megalomaniacal minimalist Donald Judd's legacy by taking tequila shots around a maypole. We're gonna save ourselves the nightmarish Orwellian experience that is worshipping a yankee carpetbagger and stick around Austin. Who in the hell......

With bands constantly forming, regrouping, burning out or fading away, it takes moxie to stick around on the Austin club scene long enough to get noticed. Case in point: Elliott Frazier and his jangly noise-pop trio Ringo Deathstarr. Frazier originally formed Deathstarr two years ago with confederates fom his hometown of Beaumont; following a seemingly endless period of lineup changes, the band is currently making waves on fancy music blogs and radio playlists worldwide. We......

Another week has passed, and somehow there's a full Coachella lineup available but still no official word from SXSW. The Austin Chronicle did report that the powers that be intend to issue an official list sometime next week, so in the interim, we bring you round three of our unofficial but quite accurate SXSW 2007 band list. Interesting additions this week include Sloan, The Pipettes, Apples In Stereo, The Rosebuds, Beach House, Robyn Hitchcock,......

We don't know about you, but when we get a few drinks in us and somebody hands us a microphone (or a hairbrush) we suddenly think we're the second coming of Heart. But what if you could do karaoke to songs you actually listen to sober? Enter Karaoke Underground which has a song list comprised entirely of indie and punk rock. With everything from Built to Spill to Meat Puppets to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,......