El Rey is the second record out from the Wedding Present after they broke a lengthy hiatus with 2005's Take Fountain. Frontman David Gedge's penchant for bittersweet love songs and catchy hooks remains intact, but the album strikes a hair dark....

The Black and White Years are not merely a group of affable gents - as Austinist discovered in a recent interview - they're also way into creating compelling pop morsels that eschew immediate categorization and confound otherwise severely judgmental blog-journalists....

New York songstress Nina Nastasia stops by the Mohawk tonight at the near-beginning of what will become a sprawling world-wide tour, meeting up with Denton's well-liked Tre Orsi and the local Silver Pines in the process. Nastasia has garnered herself quite the underground momentum, moving from humble roots as an untethered musician wandering her way through the dimly-lit club scene, to an artist with international demand and the respect of idolized names such as producer Steve Albini and Dirty Three drummer Jim White. Her debut album, Dogs, is impossible to find and is futilely sought in a way not unfamiliar to Belle & Sebastian's debut cut, Tigermilk. But she's not just a machine for hype---she plays some pretty fine music, too, using her acoustic guitar and a knack for captivating storytelling to cut through the muck of singer-songwriter-dom to create a niche all her own. And that niche has her and her band being called everything from "remarkable" to "enrapturing" to "inspired" by critics....

As Austin emerges from the thorough soaking we've received over the past few weeks, it becomes time to dry off in the warm breeze of some talented female singer-songwriters. Saturday night at The Parish, you can do just that. St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) headlines, supporting her first proper LP Marry Me, an album that will mercilessly wallop your preexisting notions of not just female artists, but any artist writing compelling music out there.......

There are quite a few mentionables this week, including Dappled Cities' Granddance, produced by Jim Fairchild (of Grandaddy) and Peter Walker, and mixed by Jaquire King (Modest Mouse). Dappled Cities are an Australian indie rock band that we've grown rather fond of as of late, mostly because of "Fire, Fire Fire". Also of note this week is the latest from Ladybug Transistor and the latest Eccentric Soul compilation, The Prix Label. As usual, do......

Tonight, Alamo Music Mondays presents Danielson: a Family Movie, JL Aronson’s odd, adorable, utterly engrossing documentary look at the popular Christian indie band The Danielson Famile. Shot over the course of five years, the film follows the Danielson project from its inauspicious art school beginnings through to bona fide indie-rock stardom. Weaving interviews, live performances, animated sequences and candid footage, the film examines the band from myriad angles, exploring the personal and creative lives of......

Two weeks ago, we sat down for a chat with Lillian Berlin, frontman of Living Things, a rock band whose emphatic liberal leanings all but scorn the conservative suburbs of St. Louis from where they came. Touring for the past two years with the likes of The Libertines, Velvet Revolver, and The Vines, the quartet - brothers Lillian, Eve and Bosh Berlin and guitarist Cory Becker - earned the respect of music critics, the......