Rapper Lil Durk brings his “Sorry for the Drought” tour to Denver’s Ball Arena Aug. 26.

Wednesday, 5/24

Sting will take the Red Rocks stage on Sept. 20.

Live music is so special because it brings a new dimension and energy to the music. You see how the musician delivers their art and it can make or break the overall experience. Maybe the band you love plays everything perfectly like it sounds on the record — but they’re not moving. Or maybe …

New business startups are a risky undertaking these days. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of new businesses will fail within their first two years, 45 percent within their first five years, and 65 percent within their first decade. 

It’s fashionable these days to beat up on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Meta’s newly introduced LLaMA, but lesser algorithms are beginning to get their fair share of criticism as well. Specifically, the algorithms that select what music pops up uninvited into your Spotify, Apple and Am…

Colorado Springs missed out on Algiers last Sept. 23, when the Atlanta band’s appearance at Gregg Deal’s outdoor mural unveiling was canceled due to production problems. The tour to launch Algiers’ fourth album Shook (Matador) will hit Europe and U.S. coasts while bypassing the Rockies. Loca…

Frozen Dead Guy Days Festival, Friday-Sunday, March 17–19, various locations spread across Estes Park, schedule and ticket information at frozendeadguydays.com

There’s a strong classic pop sensibility running through the songs on Tchotchke, the self-titled debut album by the New York City trio. The three musicians admit as much. “I grew up on a lot of classic rock,” says guitarist Emily Tooraen. Though the lead vocals of drummer Anastasia Sanchez m…

Classless Act, Black Sheep, Dec. 22

Record collecting means more than just getting a new album every now and then. Collectors create community. When you go to record shows, you see familiar faces; when you go to stores, you chat about music and it’s a very cool and important thing. As a record store owner myself, I believe “th…

Tracks from King Princess’ second album, Hold On Baby (Columbia/Zelig) began streaming in late summer, but the first physical copies of the album didn’t ship until early December. Fans can now hold Mikaela Mullaney Straus’ first album as King Princess, Cheap Queen, up to this sophomore effor…

You can always tell when it’s the holiday season because yet another KISS box set is out and ready for gift wrapping. Well, maybe not every holiday season. After all, there’s only so much KISS magic to go around. But that hasn’t stopped the band from releasing 10 box sets’ worth of what long…

‘We all get nostalgic for a time and place 1,000 light years from my mortal innings,” said Nick Allbrook recently. “Now we also live at the BBC, like my nameless-faceless childhood heroes.”

Colorado Springs’ Autumn Creatures have been playing emotional, engaging post-rock since 2012. They’ve changed members over the years and have even switched up their aesthetic. At one point, it almost felt like the band would be no more, but they powered through.

Bill Payne may not be a household name, but most people have heard the native Texan’s piano/keyboard contributions whether they realize it or not.

Last week we examined year-end releases from tried and true artists. Among relative newcomers, Weyes Blood leads a holiday gift list that includes Plains, Dawn Richard and The 1975. Natalie Mering has released four previous albums as Weyes Blood, sometimes going overboard on orchestration, b…

‘Through our bleeding, we are one” shouted a nearly sold out crowd to AFI at Fillmore Auditorium in Denver on Nov. 18. The day started cold with snow covering everything outside, but rest assured, I was going to that show. I’ve loved AFI for a very long time, and although their music has cha…

It’s not unusual to see a flood of pre-holiday releases, but 2022 is doubly blessed to witness a rash of new offerings from older legacy stars, and a similar torrent from relative newcomers. This week, we’ll cover Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Phoenix and Lambchop, following up with newer artists.

If you were asked to guess the best-selling Christmas artist, answers would invariably range from Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby to Mariah Carey, Josh Groban or Kenny G.

It was more than 20 years after The Cramps gave birth to the psychobilly genre that The Koffin Kats showed up on the scene, and it’s been another 20 since.

Nora O’Connor has sung for the likes of Andrew Bird, Iron & Wine, Neko Case and Kelly Hogan, but she rarely approaches the microphone with her own material. Thankfully, the new My Heart (Pravda Records) is the best of her infrequent works. O’Connor’s already known for a rich and melliflu…

It’s not altogether unusual for musicians to encourage their fans to get out and vote. But July Talk co-leaders Leah Fay and Peter Dreimanis managed to take that a step further.

Atlanta’s CHEW is an incredible three-piece instrumental project that bleeds energy and persistence. Forming in 2015, they grind nonstop, putting out new music and touring on a consistent basis. The last time CHEW was here, with Zeta back in March, they blew everyone’s mind. They have a uniq…

Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Soderberg were scarcely out of their teens when their duo, First Aid Kit, launched its first EP in 2009. Despite a growing U.S. audience, they have been invisible for several years, and a recent live-album tribute to Leonard Cohen was criminally ignored. But…

Over its first two decades, Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s shows have become easily the biggest and most elaborate of the holiday tours. It was all the vision of the group’s founder, Paul O’Neill who passed away in 2017.

If you’re a bass player who suffers from frequent bouts of career envy, you may want to skip over this introduction and head straight to the interview.  

What is a legacy? A legacy is what one leaves behind. All bands have legacies but the most influential pave the way for many others — and their songs never die. Many have been dubbed “legacy bands,” a term I don’t particularly care for. But who asked me? Anyway, many worthy bands are continu…

When it comes to being a tribute band, there aren’t a whole lot of prerequisites. You avoid playing any original material, you confine your repertoire to a single legend, and that’s pretty much it.

Taylor Swift broke global supply chains recently by releasing 10 physical variants of her new album Midnights (Republic), along with a downloadable extended version called 3am. Pity Canadian pop star Carly Rae Jepsen, known here for “Call Me Maybe,” who released her album The Loneliest Time …

Where did the year go? Both 2020 and 2021 felt like they took their sweet time but 2022 couldn’t wait to get things over with. It’s already November, but there are a handful of great events going on this week to welcome in the new month. 

As has been the case among the general population, creatives reacted to the lockdowns and isolation of the pandemic era in a variety of ways. Some found the lack of human contact and disconnection from life’s routines deeply frustrating. For others, the time away from familiar people and act…

Composer Brian Eno has traditionally separated his pop vocal works and ambient instrumental releases. For ForeverAndEverNoMore (Opal), Eno combines the two to lament the wretched status of humans on the Earth. His earlier word-salad vocals have been replaced by slow chants and laments. The s…

This ain’t no Mudd Club or C.B.G.B., as the Talking Heads once put it, but David Byrne and writer Mala Gaonkar’s “Theater of the Mind” is about as close as you’ll get to the art-for-art’s-sake vibe of Lower East Side performance spaces in late-’70s Manhattan.

What’s great about Colorado Springs is we get to see all kinds of acts come through here at different stages in their careers. Maroon 5 and Modest Mouse played the former 32 Bleu, 3OH!3 played The Black Sheep, and there are countless more examples. That brings me to Moodie Black, one of the …

Last month At a Goldman Sachs-sponsored technology conference in San Francisco, Warner Music Group CEO Steve Cooper made what, for many, was a startling claim. Spotify and its competitors, he said, have now reached the point where 100,000 tracks are uploaded to their streaming music platform…

With its base in Lincoln, Nebraska, Josh Hoyer and Soul Colossal have been close enough for an occasional tour stop in Colorado. The sextet’s powerful sound belongs in the same category as Durand Jones or St. Paul and the Broken Bones. Hoyer’s sixth studio album, Green Light (self-released) …

Lila Downs has an enormous talent, as well as a three-octave range and commanding stage presence to go with it. The operatically trained Mexican singer-songwriter also boasts a career résumé that includes a half-dozen Latin Grammys, including an Album of the Year Award for her aptly titled B…

Time really does fly sometimes. It seems like only yesterday when Colorado Springs’ new bar/venue Vultures opened. But in fact it was a year ago! This weekend, Vultures will celebrate their first anniversary with a festival-style showcase featuring nearly 20 bands. On Friday, Oct. 21, they’l…

When Toronto trio Alvvays headlined the Denver Underground Music Showcase in 2018, their crisp delivery seemed to belie the “dream-pop” label that had defined the band’s first two releases. The arrival of Blue Rev (Polyvinyl) suggests the band may have been mischaracterized all along. The so…