Sufjan Stevens

Serengeti's New Song: "Queen Wasn't Content"

Rapper Serengeti has a new album out next week called Saal. After a string of works on Anticon, this is the arty and introspective MC's first for Savannah label Graveface. It features less rappity-rapping and more spare beats with singing. As is often the case when he's not rhyming as his alter ego ... More >>

Serengeti's Chin Music

See also: *Anticon MC Serengeti: The Quirkiest, Deepest Rapper *Free Download: Serengeti's "Tracks" Serengeti is wisecracking at Rex's Batting Cages in Inglewood, while hacking at 90 mph heaters. The Chicago-raised, Mount Washington-based rapper riffing on a character in his raps, 45-year-old, Dit ... More >>

Top 20 Sexiest Male Musicians of All Time: The Complete List

See also: *Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time: The Complete List *Top 20 Greatest Musicians of All Time, in Any Genre: The Complete List *Top 20 Hair Metal Albums of All Time: The Complete List Physical appearance actually has little to do with sexiness. Sure, we've all been known to stare at a shirtle ... More >>

Top 20 Sexiest Male Musicians of All Time: #20-16

Physical appearance actually has little to do with sexiness. Sure, we've all been known to stare at a shirtless dude, but to give us whiplash he needs to arouse our minds. Whether it's a sidelong glance, the hint of a smile, a swagger that piques our curiosity or just the way he flicks his cigarette ... More >>

Danny Brown: Hip-Hop's Cormac McCarthy

See Also: Das Racist, Danny Brown - The Roxy - 11-3-11 Despite a troubled past topped off by a year-long jail stint, Danny Brown maintains a strikingly serene and friendly disposition. Over the past several years, the Detroit rapper released a handful of well-crafted mixtapes, his most recent XXX ... More >>

Mary J. Blige, Larry Carlton, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds

Also, Peanut Butter Wolf, Lucy Woodward, Chromeo and others

Music Picks: Method Man, Sufjan Stevens and Raymond Raposa, Billy Childs Jazz Chamber Ensemble

Also, Lights, Gallows, Slow Club

Best Music of the Year Lists: Do Pitchfork, Billboard, NME, Vibe Have A Certain Gender Bias?

"Hey bro, we hear you like bros, so we put some bros in your End of the Year Best Music Lists so you can bro while you bro!"​Well, 'tis the time of year for lists and charts! Several mags and blogs attempted to answer the question you've been dying to ask: Who had the best album/"new music"? ... More >>

Ceci Bastida Interview: "You Need To Feel Free"

ceci bastida​ Tijuana might be better known right now for its crooked cops and affordable prescription drugs, but Ceci Bastida has been sounding off for the border city's next generation since she was a feisty 15 year-old fronting politically-minded Mexican ska band Tijuana No! (famous for th ... More >>

Listen: Members of Minutemen, Rare Grooves, Sufjan Stevens' Band and Philip Glass Ensemble Collaborate for New Album by Chris Schlarb (of I Heart Lung)

Chris Schlarb, composer, I Heart Lung, collaborators​Long Beach player-producer-composer (and indie label head) Chris Schlarb is releasing what looks to be a bit of a magnum opus on Asthmatic Kitty Records this month. Featuring nearly 30 musicians, including the inimitable DM Stith (a solo ar ... More >>

Live Review: Sufjan Stevens at The Wiltern

Timothy NorrisSufjan Stevens​ Over the weekend the enigmatic Sufjan Stevens showed off his latest album The Age of Adz for two nights at the Wiltern. The good news was that after a prolonged absence and a frightening illness, the gifted songwriter was back. The bad news, Stevens has no intere ... More >>

This weekend: Sufjan Stevens, Interpol, the Temper Trap, Shakira, Monster Massive, Bobby Brown

Denny RenshawSufjan Stevens​If you take in Sufjan Stevens' shows in Los Angeles this weekend expecting some warm-and-fuzzy orchestral pop from a banjo-toting folkie, you've got another thing coming. In fact, dancing shoes may be in order. Stevens' newest album The Age of Adz is full of insist ... More >>

Music Picks: Batusis, Interpol, Minus the Bear

Also, Taj Mahal, Shakira, Sufjan Stevens and others

And the Jukebox Sailed On

KROQ brings back everyone's favorite Sex Pistol radio jock. Will they allow Steve Jones to be his burpy self?

EXCLUSIVE Photos: Steve Jones's Debut at KROQ, Live on Air for the First Time in Two Years

This Sunday saw Steve Jones, the radio DJ Los Angeles misses the most, present his Jonesy's Jukebox live on air for the first time in nearly two years. LA Weekly was invited into the KROQ studio to capture the moment so many have longed for, and we watched the Sex Pistol sail through his two hour sh ... More >>

Across the Universe: Tupac Film Gets Fuqua'ed, LCD Will Record Again, 50 Cent Crazies Up Twitter

Across the Universe: Tupac Film Gets Fuqua'ed, LCD Will Record Again, 50 Cent Crazies Up Twitter

Tonight: Fol Chen, Nneka, Alice Russell, the Ruby Friedman Orchestra, Abe Vigoda, White Arrows, Twilight Sleep

Timothy NorrisFol Chen's Samuel Bing​You have to give it to L.A. art-pop ensemble Fol Chen: They keep it interesting. They're building up steam behind their second release for Sufjan Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty label, "Part II: The New December," an ear tickler of glitchy pop and falsettoed funk ... More >>

Tonight: Lost in the Trees, Brahms and Smetana, The Joy Formidable

​"This young North Carolina-based outfit recently signed with L.A.'s Anti- label, which just yesterday released a newly reworked version of Lost in the Trees' 2008 debut, All Alone in an Empty House. Full of dramatic string arrangements and folky acoustic guitar, Empty House belongs to the sam ... More >>

Music Picks: BB King and Buddy Guy, Silversun Pickups, Hard Summer, W.A.C.O.

Also Lady Gaga, Frazey Ford, Whispertown 2000, Ludacris and others

Rock Picks: Daedelus, Beth Thornley, Yeasayer

Also, Ohioan, Hepcat, Vivian Girls and others

Dangerbird Special: INCHES reviews Darker My Love, Silversun Pickups, Sea Wolf, Eulogies (MP3s)

In the strange wake of music's digital rebirth, vinyl has experienced a modest boom in popularity, seen by many as a replacement for the awkward middleman that is the compact disc. INCHES reviews the output of L.A.'s healthy vinyl community (artists and labels, indie or other), believing that good m ... More >>

West Coast Sound: An L.A. Music Pro's Guide to South by Southwest

Ten to watch: The next Ford jingle?

LA at SXSW Tip #1: Is Fol Chen the City's Best New Band?

At least 171 Los Angeles-area acts will represent at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, next week, and they range from metal (Ancestors, Metallica, Black Math Horseman), acoustic (Jim Bianco, Tom Brosseau, Tori Amos) and punk (Japanese Motors, the Mae Shi, DEVO) to hip-hop ( ... More >>

Top 10 Americana Albums of 2008

By Noah W. Bailey Picking the best folk and Americana records of the year isn't nearly as hard as discarding those great records that just didn't feel right stuck in the category.Releases by Calexico and DeVotchKa felt far too worldly to pigeonhole as folk or country, for instance, while Blitzen ... More >>

The Islands' "Arms Way," Islands' Kona Pie and The Pros of "Miscenegenation"

Last year when Sasha-Frere Jones wrote his now-infamous piece on the whiteness of indie rock, he repeatedly included the phrase "miscenegation" to describe the cross-pollination of sound between black and white music. The diction seemed deliberate, a molotov cocktail designed to rile up the chatte ... More >>

Part 1: Thoughts on Music Now. (The festival that is. You'll have to wait for my multi-volume treatise on the state of music today.)

The rise of classically informed indie music, one awesome photograph of MC 62 Foot Jesus, and my thoughts on "conflict of interest" in music criticism today. ALSO, a member of Grizzly Bear getting crunk in a Cincinnati, OH parking lot. It's kind of like US Weekly for obscure people.

The mysterious case of the Microphones who climbed away to Mt. Eerie

Our newest musical voices who, a decade a ago, might have been tempted to call themselves Moon Flower or Dog Park proudly go by their given names: Sufjan Stevens, Joanna Newsom, Neko Case, Devendra Banhart. Not so with the mysterious Mr. Phil Elverum...

Weiss' Top 50 Albums of 2007 (#10-6)

10. Spoon-Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga [Merge] Sasha Frere-Jones is a joke and Spoon can prove it. I mean, if all I had to judge indie rock on was the Arcade Fire and the Decemberists and Sufjan Stevens (all acts I like), maybe I might come up with something as hackish as his risible blow-up, but the best R& ... More >>

Summer Lovin', Happened So Fast

The (Ugly, Nasty, Pissed) Men Among Children

With Deerhunter, The Horrors and Pissed Jeans

Rock Picks

For the week of May 10 – 17

Rock Picks

For the week of April 19–27

Take You Higher!

Featuring Prince as Joni, Emo as jock-jam

Rock Picks

For the week of March 8 – 15

Film Reviews

Including Danielson: A Family Movie, Guru, Primeval and more

The Year Blogs Got Lame, Business Got Hip and Nostalgia Was King

Jest Fest

Dave Eggers on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

Heady Metal, Britain's Favorite DJ, and a Defense of Americana's Best Killers

Rock Picks

For the week of Oct. 5–12

Annual Anagrams

Josh Rouse

And other picks for Tuesday, Jan. 24

Music: Jah Wobble

And other picks for Tuesday January 31

More Politics Lists

Blogs & iPods & Jay-Z & (non-ironic) Metal

The Hipster’s musical year-end predictions and post-game analysis

Busking for Stardom

What matters for buzz bands these days is becoming the next blog thing

Live in LA

Say Yes to Sufjan Stevens!

A brilliant American songwriter with a lover’s “need to worship” God, Cream of Wheat

The Psychic Hipster’s Pop 10

What We Talk About When We Talk About Harp Players

Joanna Newsom is a riddle wrapped in heartstrings

Sick of Jazz