Vampire Weekend

Haim: From a Family Band to International Acclaim

Why You Shouldn't Drop Out of College to Pursue Your High School Band.

Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist and is the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to help you s ... More >>

The Economics of Music Festivals: Who's Getting Rich, Who's Going Broke?

By Chris Parker It's as though the sad, lamentable death of recorded music was accompanied by a kick-ass wake. Sure, label executives have had to sell their fancy homes and put their kids in public schools, but the rest of us have been feasting on a musical smorgasbord. Nothing better exemplifies ... More >>

Zach Galifianakis Helps Nick Offerman Discuss His New Film Somebody Up There Likes Me at Cinefamily

See also: *More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage *50 Reasons Los Angeles Is the Best City in America *10 Best Standup Comedy Shows in L.A. Last night Zach Galifianakis helped close an opening weekend of showings and conversations about Nick Offerman's film and 2012 SXSW darling Somebody Up There Likes Me ... More >>

Ariel Rechtshaid Is the Indie Super-Producer

He's not in bands, but he makes them sound a hell of a lot better

HARD Summer, Day 1 - Los Angeles State Historic Park - 8/3/12

Top Ten Awkward Electric Daisy Carnival Dance Move GIFs World's Douchiest DJs: The Top Five Ten EDC Girls Who Are Out of My League Interview With a Raver Who Wears Electrical Tape on Her Boobs Top Ten Awkward Coachella Dance Move GIFs DJ Gets Death Threats for Playing Dubstep HARD Summer 8/3/12 Lo ... More >>

The Top 20 Whitest Musicians of All-Time: 15-11

See also: *Top 20 Whitest Musicians of All-Time: 20-16 *Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time 15. Michael McDonald A yacht-rock refugee, McDonald took the blandest elements of his former bands Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers -- smooth jazz keys, pinched falsetto harmonies, bass lines kidnapped from d ... More >>

Conan O'Brien's Workout Mixtape: Stuff White People Like

Last week, we received the following press release: "Curious on how Conan O'Brien maintains his lean physique? It takes hours and hours in the gym -- and to keep his energy up, Conan needs the right kind of music. We we cornered Coco and got him to reveal what's thumping in his headphones while he ... More >>

Music Picks: Funk-a-Palooza, Keith Jarrett, Ute Lemper & the Vogler Quartet

Also, Hot Snakes, Strange Boys, Ken Parker, Flash Express and others

Music Picks: Amanda Palmer & Jason Webley, Tinariwen, Mastodon

Also: Wadada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summers, Danzig and others

Fool's Gold - FYF Fest - September 3, 2011

Ben WesthoffFool's Gold​By Anna Westhoff See also: FYF Review: The Descendents, Kid Dynamite, and Ty Segall FYF review: Smith Westerns and the comedy stage FYF Slideshow! Fuck Yeah! It's the FYF SAT Quiz! FYF Preview: The Descendents Attempt To Clone Themselves FYF Preview: Drinking Tequila ... More >>

Simon Reynolds' Retromania: Critic Talks About Pop's Obsession with the Past and the Digiculture of Tomorrow

Courtesy of Simon ReynoldsThe cover of Retromania, released in May​ Isn't it ridiculous that it's now fair game to recycle the nineties and call your product retro? We've entered a phase where mashing up the sixties and the seventies is overdone -- now, the recent decades are up for grabs in t ... More >>

Over The Weekend: Best Coast, Cops and the Cheesecake Factory at Make Music Pasadena

Sam BlochBest Coast, Assembled Multitudes​ STORY BY SAM BLOCH At the dawn of the Napster age, sociologist Tia DeMora wrote eloquently of the relationship between commerce and pop music. "Consumption behavior can be understood as a kind of dance," she wrote. And in a retail environment, it's ... More >>

Submarine: Directed by Richard Ayoade, English Sitcom Star

Can Music Critics Who Revere Dirty Projectors, Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend Ever Begin to Understand the Genius of Tyler the Creator's Goblin?

​Just finished listening to the BRILLIANT Goblin by Odd Future's Tyler the Creator. It's a fantastic feat by a true artist who'll be around for a while. Solid, sober and soulful. A kind of stream-of-consciousness poetry up there with the best. Now, other reviews from the little fraternity of ... More >>

This weekend: Rx Bandits, Band of Horses, Vampire Weekend, Muse, Abbot Kinney Festival, Epicenter Festival, Willie Nelson, Rancid, Waved Out II, Helmet

Rx Bandits​Few would have thought that the Orange County ska-punk kids who a decade ago started playing as the Pharmaceutical Bandits would grow up to be a Coachella band. But the quartet now known Rx Bandits has, their party in the desert last spring certifying Matt Embree and crew as musica ... More >>

UPDATED: Wavves to Play Historic L.A. Punk/New Wave Venue Madame Wong's Before it Closes for Good

"Madame" Esther Wong, founder of the former restaurant and eventual punk venue in Chinatown​UPDATE: L.A.-based noise-pop artist Wavves, a.k.a. Nathan Williams, will be playing one of Madame Wong's' final shows on Wednesday, August 3. Commenters have pointed out that the venue never officially ... More >>

Tonight: Dum Dum Girls, 'Also I Like to Rock,' Sloan, Gary Jules, Gulf Coast benefits, more

Dum Dum Girls​If it's hard to regard the Dum Dum Girls' moody, distortion-drenched pop as anything more than the hipster flavor of the month, it's probably because of the creative left turn taken by frontwoman Kristin Gundred. She was the straw that stirred the drink as drummer-singer in Gran ... More >>

Over the Weekend: Baaba Maal, Tinariwen and Yeasayer Play the Bowl

Fool's Gold (Andrea Whiting)​By Andrea Whiting Given that it was Father's Day and the dude half-responsible for my existence loves live music, I decided to bring my dad along to the season's first KCRW World Festival. And via this ploy to beat out my little sister for the Best Daughter Award ... More >>

Five Ways Organizers Can Make Coachella A Better Experience

Dennis Romero​Following reports of three-hour waits to get in, a bizarre appearance by Sly Stone and a dirt-lot parking situation that had festival-goers walking for up to an hour in desert dust to get to their cars, the Los Angeles Times declared the 11th annual Coachella festival a rousing s ... More >>

Day 2: Coachella's WINs and FAILs (featuring Gossip, MGMT, Dead Weather, and Tiesto!)

On Saturday the "organizers" got some of their act together -- plus most people already had their wristbands after the clusterfuck of Day 1 -- so it was relatively painless to access the festival grounds. People were noticeably more chill throughout the day, which is what happens when you haven't ha ... More >>

Day 2: Hannibal Moncrief, Hot Chip & Flying Lotus & The Ascent of Nerd-Chic

​ Hannibal Moncrief saw the future last night. No, he didn't brew mushroom tea and watch Doc Brown tinker with the fabric of the space-time continuum. And no, he didn't spend three hours inside the glowing pink origami bird mumbling the phrase, "cool colors, man." The double-stacks of white ... More >>

Forage: the Found and the Farro

Straight out of Silver Lake

INCHES reviews Ascend, Blank Realm, Active Child, Ernest Gonzales [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 record-making community (artists and labels, indie or other), believing tha ... More >>

INCHES reviews Sunn O))), Flying Lotus House Shoes, Russian Circles, Langley Sisters [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 >>

Coachella Confirmations Begin to Trickle In, Rumors Abound

The Coachella message board is doing a good job of tracking the upcoming Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio. Now's the time that bands begin leaking confirmations, revealing their hands on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook, and basically spilling the beans one way or another. For example, this f ... More >>

Nightranger Looks Back at '09 Fashion and Music

2009: The Year in Obsessions

L.A. Weekly’s music editor lists the 10 records he couldn’t get out of his head

Rock Picks: Ozomatli, Harper Simon, Spain

Also, Tenacious D, Lady Gaga, Local Natives and others

SXSW '09, Day 2: On Applying for Secret Canadian Citizenship, The Tidal Wave of Tastemaking, and Dirty Projecting

Last year was my first year in Austin, so I can't really speak to nebulous notions of the SXSW "good ol' days." Anecdotal evidence suggests that the place has expanded exponentially each year since the rise of the Internet, and the demolition of the quasi-mythological monoculture. In layman's term ... More >>

Maybe We're Amazed: Notes on the Fairly Odd Coachella 2009 Lineup

Our only hope — that Macca gets Ram tough

Pacific Heights: L.A. Weekly's Top 10 L.A. Recordings of 2008

No Age, Chapin Sisters, Mia Doi Todd, the Knux, Flying Lotus, Madlib and more

Best Gay L.A. Nightlife

Sexy time

Rock Picks: Digable Planets, Pigeon John, the Wedding Present, Prima Donna

Also, Josh Rouse, the Raconteurs, Chicha Libre and more

Grab The Believer's Music Issue While It's Still on the Racks -- It's Totally Worth It

Though it's been out for the past month or so, I'd highly recommend that you race to your nearest newstand to grab the recent music issue of The Believer, which is still on the newstands this week (or so we've been told) but on the verge of vanishing. There are a number of sublime highlights in ... More >>

Live in L.A.: Lykke Li at the Hotel Cafe, August 25

Pitchfork Day 3-I Now Pronounce You Hip-Stock

Every time I inasmuch as mention the word "hipster" on the blog these days, some Mensa Mind has to scrawl some stupid, scurrilous statement about how "maaan, all you do is stereotype hipsters and make egregious generalizations and you, Jeff Weiss, are the worst writer in the history of time. Plus, ... More >>

An Interview With Nick Thorburn of Islands

Islands are playing the Henry Fonda next Tuesday. As your faithful attorney, I recommend that you attend. Their recent Arm's Way is one of the year's finest records and they put on a fantastic show. Plus, the last time I saw them play in LA, for their encore they decided to light Roman Candles o ... More >>

The Kidz In the Hall Demonstrate the Power of A Good Rolodex

When ex-Just Blaze proteges, Kidz in the Hall released their debut album, School Was My Hustle on the newly revived Rawkus Records, I didn't listen to it for a variety of reasons. Chief among them was the "Ivy League Rap" label critics ascribed to the duo of Nawledge and Double-O. Still scarred f ... More >>

Good Times Never Seemed So Good: Snapshots From Coachella

From the express train to the Gobi Tent to the VIP and beyond

The staggering idiocy of Bob Lefsetz boiled to its essence

As long as we're on the subject of Bob Lefsetz, let's talk Bob Lefsetz. I've stayed away from mentioning Santa Monica-based music biz prognosticator Bob Lefsetz because, well, he hangs himself from the endless rope on a daily -- nay, hourly -- basis every time he opens his blathering Bachman-Turner ... More >>

Rock Picks: HorrorPops, Steve Earle, Ace Frehley

And other March 20-27 music shows

Rock Picks: Rutlemania, Kinky, Angels & Airwaves

And other March 14-20 concerts

SXSW Day 1: Van Morrison, Division Day, The Ting Tings, The Duke Spirit at SXSW, March 12

Van Morrison at La Zona Rosa, Austin, Texas; Division Day, The Ting Tings and The Duke Spirit at Buffalo Billiards. Van Morrison's pretty cool, wearing his trademark cap and sunglasses, holding a saxophone and totally nonplussed about this show. He's got nothing to prove, nothing to hide. He couldn ... More >>

Hello Mommy Africa: A Hipster's Guide to Afro-Indie Rock

Here's eight records. Now go start a riot

Khmer Wedding: Dengue Fever

Reminding the hipster community: There are other places to gaze besides your shoes

Rock Picks: Jimmy Scott, the Raspberries, Sharon Jones, Wreckless Eric

For the week of November 30 - December 6

Neko Case: Deep Red Belle

She's an auburn-haired Caucasian woman of Ukrainian descent. Is Case also the blackest woman in indie rock?