Given her history, it should come as no surprise that, when seven-time Blues Music Award-winner Janiva Magness set out to record her John Fogerty tribute album Change in the Weather, she chose to emphasize his more political material.

When the Duluth, Minnesota, Mormon couple Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker launched the band Low in the 1990s, it found an immediate cult following thanks to slow time signatures and exquisite vocal harmonies. Within its first decade, Low was adding eerie effects suggesting an undercurrent of a…

From John Prine and Jerry Jeff Walker to Charlie Pride and Billy Joe Shaver, this decade has already taken from us some of our most beloved country artists. Last month, the music world lost another legend with the passing of Nanci Griffith.

Quebe Sisters, Lulu’s Downstairs, Sept. 22

The past year (going on two years now, actually?) has been a transformative time for us all. Some good, some not. But this time has given many an opportunity to learn more about themselves and the world. For some, music is a great way to express or deal with what they’re feeling in the momen…

For Durand Jones & The Indications, the past two weeks should have been cause for celebration. With a two-month headlining tour on the horizon, the Bloomington, Indiana-based soul revivalists were busy rehearsing songs from their new album Private Space and fielding interviews from criti…

New works from four well-known Americana artists — James McMurtry, Son Volt, Jackson Browne and I See Hawks in L.A. — arrived at summer’s end, and McMurtry’s The Horses and the Hounds (New West Records) clearly leads on several fronts.

While triple fiddles are popular in the Western Swing world, the combination is exceedingly rare in other genres. But that hasn’t stopped the Quebe Sisters from using them to create a body of work that draws upon jazz, pop, doowop and, yes, Western Swing.

Durand Jones & The Indications,Gothic Theatre, Englewood, Sept. 16

Everybody loves songs about weasel pot pies and meat raining down from the sky, particularly when they’re performed on a homemade 7-foot-tall instrument called The Magic Pipe and delivered in a style that recalls Frank Zappa, Les Claypool and Captain Beefheart. OK, maybe not everybody, but e…

Gogol Bordello, Gothic Theatre, Englewood, Sept. 8

A key element to music is dancing — whether that’s swing dancing as a couple, swaying by yourself, or even thrashing in a mosh pit. The rhythmic movement to a song can send feelings of joy through your soul. There is a real art to dance, and many different styles and forms can be found acros…

John Wood, a bandleader whose groups included jazz legends like Woody Shaw and Billy Higgins, once led a campaign called “Drum Machines Have No Soul.” It was a slogan that echoed the concerns of real-life drummers, who viewed the introduction of programmable drum machines as a threat to thei…

When Halsey elected to title their fourth album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power (Capitol), it was a demand to be taken seriously, as though having a baby was no excuse for soft edges. New Jersey singer Ashley Frangipane always had a frank edge, but the gothic film trailers and public brea…

Have you ever wanted to vigorously smash a funnel cake into your mouth while singing “Bad to the Bone” and simultaneously yelling that no, your children can’t ride the Ferris wheel... again? Well, never fear, because that dream can become reality this Labor Day weekend thanks to the Colorado…

Surprises in R&B range from disco nostalgia with a reunited Kool & The Gang to British soul collective SAULT’s mysterious message from the future. The release of Kool’s Perfect Union (Ru-Jac/Omnivore), sadly, came just after the death of founding saxophonist Dennis “D.T.” Thomas.

For Mike Hadreas, who for the past decade has recorded and performed under the name Perfume Genius, music has been part of an evolution that’s taken him from obscure cult status to upcoming dates at Red Rocks Amphitheatre and the Hollywood Bowl. He’s also found his way onto numerous publicat…

The Underground Music Showcase has been a staple in the Colorado music scene for almost 20 years. Best known as UMS, the festival takes over South Broadway in Denver for a weekend and features many well-known artists from around the country along with great acts from our beautiful state. 

In the Indy’s Aug. 11 cover story, Mountain Goats leader John Darnielle talked about his band’s return to the road for their first post-lockdown tour. Initially, he’d been totally excited by the prospect of once again playing for fans live and in person. But as the tour approached, the Delta…

Sean Padilla, a no-nonsense booking agent in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been recognized since the turn of the millennium as a rare Black musician diving deeply into the eclectic realms of indie rock. Too infrequently, Padilla brings out his Cocker Spaniels project to bedazzle fans with t…

The coming week will be filled with loud decibel levels reverberating upon your eardrums, partly thanks to solo artists trying new things while backed by full-powered bands. When it comes to variety, Colorado Springs has  lots in store.

Five years ago, Ryan Walter did what even the most obsessive music fan would never do. In an effort to discover the next big thing in pop music, the talent-hungry manager fired up his computer and spent close to five months, seven hours a day, listening to 10 seconds of every new artist he c…

Prince’s vault of unreleased music is rumored to rival the archives of Gram Parsons or Tupac Shakur. The Minneapolis superstar’s estate promised the first of regular releases beginning in 2021, but few guessed the debut would be a fully realized album, Welcome 2 America (NPG/Legacy), recorde…

At the beginning of March 2020, when known cases of COVID were still confined to a handful of states, Mountain Goats leader John Darnielle was doubling down. Tripling down, actually. In a single month, he and his crew would record three different albums in three very different settings and s…

Lulu’s Upstairs has a packed month for you. Their new upstairs location is the perfect place for an intimate, relaxed show.

Billie Eilish and Faye Webster had to make a stylistic leap to concoct a throwback chanteuse appropriate for a sultry nightclub. Because she came from a languorous electronica background, and preserved the record-at-home ethos with her brother, Eilish was closest to that goal in Happier Than…

It has been a nice feeling going back to shows. The dark lighting in the room, the ear-piercing decibel levels, being able to see people again and, of course, the love-hate relationship with draft beer. Shows are back in full swing now, from local live sets that test the waters to full-on na…

Radkey and Starcrawler, the two youngest bands in Foo Fighter Dave Grohl’s new documentary What Drives Us, could hardly be more different. While both are undeniably talented, the similarities basically end there.

Advance publicity for Pom Pom Squad made project leader Mia Berrin sound like a punk heir to the riot grrrl movement. To be honest, the debut Pom Pom Squad album Death of a Cheerleader (City Slang) bears the most resemblance to Olivia Rodrigo’s runaway hit Sour (Geffen).

Have you ever seen a folk artist put down their acoustic guitar, throw a chair and go into an intricate hip-hop song? Have you ever seen a hip-hop artist grab an acoustic guitar and go into a beautifully touching folk song? Have you ever seen either work the crowd as if it is a punk/hardcore…

Jake Loggins had al-ready logged hundreds of gigs by the time he first played Colorado Springs’ Stargazers Theatre. But for the local blues-rock musician, it was still a rite of passage.

For some, the term orchestrated pop is synonymous with syrupy overproduction. But a deft touch can occasionally yield remarkable results. Oakland-based Chrystia Cabral is on her third album as SPELLLING, and once you get past the voice of equal parts Kate Bush and Betty Boop, it’s clear she …

My Life as a Bear is a new Colorado Springs alternative rock band born out of several other projects. In February 2020, Brandon Metz and Kyrt Ellis, formerly of Audible and Sound Studies, joined Jeff Krieger, previously of GhostRadio, to create on their terms. The result: fun, raw music.

This is not Jenny Don’t & The Spurs’ first rodeo. At least, it isn’t for Jenny, a talented singer-songwriter whose alt-country band includes former members of Portland punk acts The Wipers, The Rats and Napalm Beach

Isaac Brock would be the first to agree that there is something untoward about a sullen band with roots in the 1990s, led by a guy in his late 40s who likes to play golf. But unlike the wildly misnamed Sonic Youth, Brock has decided to go along with the joke, making the new Modest Mouse rele…

In music, the term Southern Gothic has been applied to a who’s-who of artists who are anything but Southern, ranging from Australia’s Nick Cave and L.A.’s Gun Club to Colorado favorites Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and 16 Horsepower.

Tigerwine is a band that has been doing huge things musically, helping put Colorado Springs on the map. They have a unique sound that combines elements of ’90s grunge, post rock, shoegaze and modern post hardcore. If Linkin Park, Nirvana, My Bloody Valentine and Thrice all had an adorable li…

On a cold morning in late February of last year, the singer-songwriter Tensas is driving out to Victor for a photo shoot. In the backseat, his 11-year-old daughter clutches a plague doctor mask, the kind worn by physicians while treating infected patients back in the 17th century.

When The Mountain Goats play The Black Sheep Aug. 18, they’ll bring three albums’ worth of new material since their last Colorado visit, all produced and mixed during the pandemic. Dark in Here (Merge) was recorded in Muscle Shoals in March 2020, but the common themes of emerging from places…

Ozonic have been Colorado Springs purveyors of poppy prog rock since their inception in 2015, with an energetic and fun live show that feeds off of crowd energy. When they didn’t get to perform live last year, they took the time to perfect their craft, which they will be sharing with everyon…