Our Indieroke night returns this Tuesday to The Mohawk. What started out as a one-off fling with rock stardom has turned into a monthly gathering of like-minded folks craving that fleeting moment of exhilaration. If you haven’t made it to one yet, we strongly recommend getting there in a timely fashion to get your name and song on the list early…and often. (You know who you are!) We will have multiple song list books going forward to ease that pain....

Our Indieroke night returns this Tuesday to The Mohawk. What started out as a one-off fling with rock stardom has turned into a monthly gathering of like-minded folks craving that fleeting moment of exhilaration. If you haven’t made it to one yet, we strongly recommend getting there in a timely fashion to get your name and song on the list early…and often. (You know who you are!) We will have multiple song list books going forward to ease that pain....

Editors’ note: The opinions and ideas expressed in this opinion piece are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook and belief of anyone else in the Ist network. I hadn't initially planned to attend The Flaming Lips show at La Zona Rosa this past Tuesday, opting to avoid possible run-ins with any "Furries", but a last-minute ticket to a Lips show is not something to turn one's nose up......

Every fall, Austin looks forward to ACL Fest, and each year, there's always a point where two of your favorite bands are playing on different sides of the park at the exact same time. ACL Band Clash is a new, theoretically weekly series in which Austinist scribes Paige Maguire and Tom Thornton examine the worst ACL scheduling clashes, and try to provide good advice on finding a resolution. Well, good advice might be a......

So which influential band would you die for? Tonight offers a mouth-watering choice of Hoot Nights for two legendary bands. Stubb’s Inside hosts acts such as The Christophers, Robbie and the Robots, and The Wailing Walls covering the plethora of material put out by Oklahoma’s eccentric pop outfit, The Flaming Lips. A complete line-up can be found on do512. We’re leaning towards a similar event at Emo’s Lounge with alt-country legends Wilco being the......

After a six-month wait since the UK release, Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr.'s solo debut Yours To Keep finally arrived in US record stores this week. We reviewed the disc back in October, saying: "On his quick, punchy solo disc, Hammond does a slightly poppy variation on The Strokes' first album. This is meant as a compliment, because while most side projects are self-indulgent and weird, this one is concise, fun, and really catchy."......

Seattle's Aqueduct have been doggedly honing an indie/laptop pop sound for several years. Essentially a one-man studio band, David Terry channels influences ranging from a suburban Oklahoma upbringing to fandom of Guns 'N' Roses and The Princess Bride into his catchy, lo-fi home studio creations. Live, the band is a very different animal: at SXSW two years ago, they simply demolished the crowd with a blend of original tunes, rap covers, an Aqueduct theme......

Ever sniff the inside of Weezer's Pinkerton? Wait, hear us out. Its monochromatic liner notes were printed on a kind of matte, somewhat grainy paper, and happened to possess a pungent, fantastic smell. Don't look at us like you've never sniffed a record before. It's the music fan's equivalent of picking out a wedgie: inevitable, personal, and done when others aren't looking. Upon cracking open the Ace Fu Annuals debut offering, Be He Me,......

I swear, the last few previews are the hardest to write. It's not that I'm having trouble with them, it's just that I have SO much other stuff to do - shopping, packing, making sure I'm well-rested enough to cope with three days of non-stop awesomeness and the scorching heat that comes along with it. But my flight leaves tomorrow, so I promise I'll have the last few previews up by tomorrow morning when......

Golden Bear's CD release show is this Friday at the Flamingo Cantina, and if you're like us, you've been waiting to get your hands on some sweet Bear rock for far too long. The Channel and Driftin’ Luke & His Many Personalities will round out the bill. Golden Bear's sound is a mix of familiar pasts in your parents' record collection fused with some of your favorite sounds of today, drawing influences from My......

Time for another look at some of the artists playing the Austin City Limits Festival in September. There are only 49 days left and I have oh... just about a ton of artists left to preview on my ACL Artist Previews Page. But rainy weekends are made for writing, so if the lousy weather in Nashville holds up, I'll have a more than a few for you next Friday. Here's what I've covered since......

There is much to report this week surrounding the Zilker Park-sized dust oven that is ACL Fest. The big news is that a ridiculous number of 'official' ACL aftershow concerts has been announced. Many of the fest's acts will take over all of our club venues immediately after the big show ends each night. All tickets go onsale tomorrow at 10am, except for Sufjan Stevens, which is already onsale. This means that either (a)......

There's another one of those bipolar indoor-outdoor shows at Emo’s tomorrow night: sweet-as-candy indie pop inside, lurching packs of stoned werewolves outside. Oh, decisions, decisions... Inside Fresh off their gig opening for The Flaming Lips in Europe, Dentonites Midlake put on a little rock and roll program for us plain ol’ 'mericans. The Starlights Mints open with heaping fistfuls of sophisticated chamber-pop; Mints pal and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Lindsey opens for them. We don’t know......

You don't take care of your CDs very well. Your car—probably a mid-nineties Honda Civic with hit-or-miss air conditioning—is littered with albums, sans jewel cases. On this particular, hypothetical afternoon, you find that five discs have melted together whilst carelessly stacked in your center console: My Morning Jacket's Z, The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka, Broken Social Scene's Broken Social Scene, Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, and anything from any labeled band out of Athens, Georgia... ...

Like most attendees, our biggest frustration with last year's Austin City Limits Festival was the wretched dust cloud blanketing Zilker Park after the first day. With tens of thousands of people milling about and the daytime highs between 98-107 degrees, everything was worsened by the fact that the park was already suffering from drought-like conditions. But not anymore, if Capital Sports and Entertainment (CSE) and its massive coffers have anything to say about it. Perhaps......

So word on the street's that John Mayer is coming to Austin City Limits this Fall, at least according to gig repository Pollstar, who, as far as we can tell. are paid to traffic around such information. Make of it what you wish. Meanwhile, Tier I ($90) and Tier 2 ($100) passes are sold out, and they're now going for about $140 a pop, after service fees and shipping's included. Already confirmed, according to aclfest2006rumors.blogspot.com:......

Update: THE SHINS are playing ACL! South by Southwest ended a mere month ago, but there's already an online frenzy building up for this fall's ACLFest -- which, dudes, is still five months away! Early-bird tickets came and went (in less than an hour, much to the chagrin of most people who received their notification emails later that evening), and the regular lot of full-price passes are selling at a healthy clip. So you've......

(Ed. Note) *Unverified rumor update: Austinist reader Nathan tipped us off to this curious post on the ACL Concierge site (the site for high-rolling package-buyers - insert crass package joke here). But if you are to believe the graphic on the right, Coldplay will be coming back. No wonder the fest is not being held during OU-Texas weekend, how would all the college girls get to see that dreamy Chris Martin?* Although the Austin......

Summer is coming, and the post-SX lull appears to be ending for Austin gigs. Many SX bands are scheduling return appearances, and our outdoor venues are beginning to release May and June schedules. The following list offers some highlights (for comprehensive listings, check Pollstar or Showlist Austin): 4/15 - Calexico (free early show) @ Emo's 4/15 - Deathray Davies + The M's @ Emo's 4/24 - TV on the Radio + Celebration @ Emo's......

After SXSW trashes our fair town, Coachella layers the California desert with dusty beer cans, and Wall of Sound leaves Fort Worth a city ... well, much the same, we're probably heading over to Sasquatch, the annual Pacific Northwest festival at Washingon State's scenic Gorge Amphitheatre. Scheduled to perform during the three-day Memorial Weekend blitz are Austinites Trail of Dead and Iron & Wine, plus a salivatory stew of sweet, sweet bands: FRIDAY, MAY 26......

Austin is Taradise! And Lance and Sheryl split Congrats to Adlai McMahon, winner of our giveaway contest for Bloc Party's documentary/concert DVD, God Bless Bloc Party! The SXSW Music Festival roster expanded to over 1,100 this week, including such esteemed acts as Morrissey and The Flaming Lips Austinist photographer Matt Wright captures yet another amazing night shot in Austin, as well as some sexy shots of last week's Box Magazine issue release party. The......

LA's Mae-Shi are dilettantes of experimental electronic-noise-funk-rock, employing all manners of instruments - "guitar, bass, drums, tamborines, noisemakers, computer programs, omnichord, glockinspiel and voice", among others - and "staccato bursts of rhythm" to create something wholly original and, well, unsettling. Unsettling in the sense that listening to these guys in our little monkey boxes makes us want to run outside and set a trashcan on fire! Or deliberately misfile our weekly status reports or......

England's Flotation Toy Warning is a band of inventors, academics, and a former flying machine test pilot - most telling of their avant-garde leanings, it was while discussing exotic butterflies over dinner that the five "discovered a common interest in astrophonics and decided to become a musical item." Their debut album, "Bluffer's Guide to the Flight Deck" - released by Austin's own Misra Records - is what would have resulted had Johann Sebastian Bach......

If you are looking for a quiet night at home on the couch this week, you’ve got a large selection of new releases from which to pick. All of the following were released today (listed in order from best to worst, as we see fit) and are available at most of your major rental houses around town, but might we suggest Vulcan Video, Waterloo, I Luv Video, or Pedazo Chunk. Layer Cake: Guy Ritchie’s......

In recent years the UK has supplied an otherwise apathetic American audience with sensational rock bands, of such intensity that one might pronounce this decade the renaissance of New Wave Britrock. Or not. These virile ejaculations so recently spewed forth from the fertile loins of the Queen's Land include The Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, and the Futureheads. Among those whom we adore, consider British Sea Power: a troupe of five young lads from Brighton, England.......