Earlier this year, Austin bar the Mohawk earned the "Best Bar in America" title from Esquire readers. Now, on the cusp of the summer tour circuits, Rolling Stone has declared Stubb's BBQ "Best Rock Club" in America. ...

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...

SXSW Film Fest Producer Matt DentlerLast year we chatted with SXSW Film Festival producer and all-around cool guy Matt Dentler about film programming, Austin audiences and Texas filmmakers. This year, he's answered even more of our questions--and this time around, we talked Mumblecore, Global Doc Days, and SXSW success stories. Has the media attention around "Mumblecore" ultimately been a positive or negative thing for the Festival and the filmmakers? As much as it's a term......

Yes we can ... win 3 primaries for delegates in Maryland, Virginia and D.C. Texas State still wants a "body farm" in San Marcos. Wait, what's San Marcos currently? Prison escapee Abel Morin caught in South Texas yesterday. Researchers are revealing hidden complexities behind the simple act of kissing, which relays powerful messages to your brain, body and partner....

There was no escaping the gravity of Austin in 2007. Three major festivals drew artists, labels, promoters and press from around the world. Critically and commercially, Spoon was an undeniably dominating force. Production power increased with the emergence of C3 Presents, a joint venture between heavyweights Charles Attal, Charlie Jones and Charlie Walker. Yet our unique universe still grows from within. Bands like Okkervil River and businesses like Transmission Entertainment continue to expand our horizons. My best of list is a celebration of what makes the Austin music scene independent and innovative....

Born to a rickety plastic world that has since dissolved in a smooth digital sea, the mix tape has outlived its own name. For there is something about the basic structure, the essential production process, which cannot be changed. You must begin at the end and move backwards. This becomes an analog loop, unreeling and flipping back upon itself, transformed into an infinite self-portrait. Yet it always leads to the inspiration, away from the composer and back to the audience. Okkervil River’s latest creation is officially labeled a mix tape. Golden Opportunities is a collection of nine live songs performed in 2006 and 2007. The resulting album is a collection of old postcards and snapshots refashioned as a unique found object. ...

It's hard to explain in 2007 what it feels like for music to be both uniting and important. Having spent nearly three years of the '90s living in London, it's with honest nostalgia and wonder that we examine Rhino's The Brit Box. The set's mission is rather broad: it attempts to examine the whole of UK indie rock from 1985-1999 and devotes a disc each to '80s indie, shoegaze, Britpop, and the late '90s. One......

Mac Lethal has been called a “contemporary cross between a folk singer and a stand-up comic” by Rolling Stone – and that dichotomy of inane observation and thought-provoking insight defines his debut album, 11:11. We spoke with Mac Lethal from his tour bus while on the road for the Everybody Loves a Clown Tour with label-mates Grayskul and Atmosphere. That tour bus is currently parked outside of Emo’s, where the Everybody Loves a Clown......

We first fell in love with Yo La Tengo at 17. We were still stuck out in the sticks in high school, still reading Rolling Stone and still wearing those pink crackle-finish Vans. And Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out had just been released, and Rolling Stone recommended it for people who liked the Velvet Underground. We ordered the album from Hasting's, and when the album came in and we popped it into the Discman we......

Once in a while, we like to take some time to introduce you to bands -- both local otherwise -- that we think you'd enjoy. Le Diamont Brut aims to showcase those MySpace gems we hope to see shine. Recommend your local suggestions by emailing music@austinist.com. THE UNFORTUNATE HEADS What’s the Deal: The Austin indie folk fivesome has just released their sophomore disc, Come Be Light. Featuring multi-instrumentation by the likes of banjo, keyboards, upright......

The Hold Steady have been holding, er, steady in the limelight since 2004, picking up a Village Voice cover here and a best album of the year there (2006: The Onion’s A.V. Club), and just generally best-ing all over the place: they were Blender’s 2006 Band of the Year and made it to Rolling Stone’s annual album ranker at number 8. Critical acclaim blah blah blah. The big hit from the big album Boys......

Graham Reynolds' Golden Arm Trio will be performing at the Mohawk on Saturday night in support of the new album, no doubt full of the experimental power-jazz you'd come to expect from a group that Rolling Stone has called "a merger of John Zorn's Naked City and the 1970's radical-prog band Henry Cow. In case you weren't aware, Reynolds has worked on film scores (most recently, Linklater's A Scanner Darkly), symphonies, operas, and children's......

Strawberries and chocolate. California and Schwarzenegger. Spiderman 3 and Xanax. All classic pairings that destiny and the Austin Museum of Art have been working to outstrip this week, with the presentation of two new exhibits: The Target Collection of American Photography: A Century in Pictures and 24 Summers at Barton Springs Pool: Photographs by Will van Overbeek. Both shows open this Saturday. A Century in Pictures presents nearly ninety photographs taken by men and women......

Since unleashing the Peter Gabriel-like "Staring At The Sun" in 2003, TV On The Radio has done just about everything an indie band can hope for. They've released two lauded albums, made the major label jump, opened for the Pixies, recorded with David Bowie, and won the Shortlist Prize. And while The Arcade Fire may be the most blogged about band of the last two years, one could argue that TVOTR may be the......

Dallas’ The Hourly Radio has garnered some top-notch buzz lately. Rolling Stone and Filter magazines both named History Will Never Hold Me in recent “Top 5” listings, while their guitar-centric, post new-wave musical stylings are a hit in NYC, among other cities. We, too, have enjoyed their Texas shows, be it last year’s non-SXSW the rich girls are weeping bash during, well, SXSW, or their opening gig for Stellastarr* at the Parish a few......

She's arty, but her songs are as catchy as hell. She was an anti-folk regular on the New York club scene, but also hangs out with The Strokes. Tonight, Antone's hosts the entertaining contradicton that is Regina Spektor in a sold out show. Spektor's latest album Begin To Hope has received accolades from NPR, Pitchfork, The Onion, and Rolling Stone, so we suppose that just about everyone likes it. The disc is a blend of......

Looking for some extracurricular, non-Barack Obama-related Texas Book Festival fun? The Gallery at the Continental Club will be hosting The Lolita Update: The Romantic Devastations of Youth in Fiction on Saturday night at 8:00pm. Mark Binelli, Rolling Stone contributing editor and author of Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!, will be opening with a vaudevillian skit involving anarchists and knives. The evening’s centerpiece is a panel discussion concerning young love, adolescence, and fiery loins. The panel......

Let’s face it, this is Austin. If you live in this town, chances are you’re in a band. Or you wish you were in a band. And while this is a great town for aspiring musicians, it’s also a great town to learn the hard way that your musical career is going nowhere and that you’re destined to wait tables for the rest of your hipster life. Maybe it’s a rite of rock ‘n’ roll passage, to persevere through those periods of doubt to put together the kick-ass band you always envisioned; or, maybe, that little cliché is just a sappy piece of romanticism best left for the tired pages of Rolling Stone. Because if the guys from Crash Gallery represent any kind of decent sample at all, it might just be a matter of finding the right chemistry, with the right bandmates, at the right time. ...

Okay, so the headline isn't entirely true, but forget about World War III for a second and listen to some really good news: yesterday Rollingstone.com broke the story, and today pitchfork reported to people under 35 that legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has been added to Modest Mouse's permanent lineup. Our minds are reeling with the possibiities: imagine the man who wrote the riffs to The Headmaster Ritual and This Charming Man working for......

Having played an outrageously amazing show at Coachella after winning a MySpace contest they didn't even know about, Austin's The Octopus Project are coming back to their hometown this Saturday to headline at Emo's outside, with Loxsly, Gil Mantera's Party Dream and Featherweight Burden. The trio's been busy these past few months: they played a bunch of well-received shows back at SXSW (prompting Rolling Stone's David Fricke to name them one of his standout bands......

When The Streets' third album, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, came out last month, Austinist sponsored a listening party with the We Explode! kids at Beauty Bar. By now, most of you've probably had a chance to check out the new record by the feisty UK rapper; The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (VICE) follows up the adorably adroit Mike Skinner's hugely successful first two albums, Original Pirate Material and......

Our second giveaway of the day is a pair of tickets to The Sword's show at Emo's this Thursday, plus a signed CD. The Austin-based metal thrashers are currently on the road, touring in support of their new LP, Age of Winters, which came out back February. Shortly after they finish up stateside, the foursome are heading over to Europe for an enormous month-long tour at venues with such ridiculous names as "Rockfabrik," "De Effenaar,"......

Austinist is recruiting! We're looking for 5 or 6 proficient, dedicated writers. If you're interested in covering: Music Art Film Local News Politics Fashion Food Interviews with Austinites Then we'd like to talk to you. To get a sense of what joining our staff would entail, we've lifted this from our IST brothers and sisters over at Shanghaiist: Ask yourself What would I like to write about? If you're a good writer with style and......

Tonight, the James A. Michener Center for Writers at UT is hosting a special reading by author Jonathan Lethem - he of such critically acclaimed novels as The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, as well as various and sundry pieces in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Rolling Stone, Granta and more. Special thanks to Greg for the heads-up! Jonathan Lethem Thursday, March 23 UT Campus - Avaya Auditorium, ACES 2.302 (24th and Speedway) 7:30 pm......

Rude Mechanicals is back with their theatrical adaptation of David Rees' hysterical and incisive internet comic strip, "Get Your War On." From the Rude Mech site: Rolling Stone called this internet phenomenon "sardonic, hilarious, and impossible to pigeonhole." USA Today simply dubbed it "Brilliant." "Get Your War On" represents stunned and outraged Americans as they react to 9/11, the Bush administration and this totally awesome War On Terror. "Hey, remember when we declared a......

**Well, well...thanks for the head's up Jooley. Apparently KUT is carrying Iggy Pop and Tim Curry. But we are listening to "today's" Fresh Air on their website. Quite confusing indeed. This is a first. (The discrepancy of the programming, not us being wrong)** In case you have been buried underneath a sound-proofed rock and had not heard, today is the final day of the KUT fall pledge drive, so call in or go online......

Every now and then a local band gets some big-time national publicity: Fastball, Los Lonely Boys, Bob Schneider, to name a few from the past decade. You can now add Spoon to that list. The minimalist rock band from the River City has its latest release, "Gimme Fiction," covered in next week's issue of Time Magazine (5/16). The magazine admits that while the songwriting and sound are not wholly unique, the band does what......