Kevin Bronson

Can it get any more real that Sharon Jones? Well, it can't get any more heartwarming. The leading lady of the Dap-Kings is, after all, a rising star at 54, having shucked the uniforms of her previous careers (corrections officer at Rikers Island, and armor truck guard) for the bright......

Soul to the left of us, soul to the right, soul on the weekend ... Our little burg is doing its best Motown right now, so dress appropriately. While local soul merchants Fitz & the Tantrums finish up their residency tonight at Spaceland, Boston-bred crooner Eli "Paperboy" Reed tees it......

When the New York Times recently referred to Josh Ritter as a staple of "what might be called the soft-rock establishment: NPR, Starbucks and noncommercial radio stations," it wasn't pejorative. Ritter has long been a hero to fans seeking literate songwriting and engaging storytelling, and his sixth album, So Runs......

The Brian Jonestown Massacre got a little bit of that dance-music religion on its latest album, and why not? You can only drone for so long, right? BJM's latest album Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? (recorded last year in Iceland and Berlin, released in February) finds the band's famously volatile frontman......

As anybody who's witnessed their spectacles at Coachella or the Detour Festival (R.I.P.) can testify, it's all about Gogol Bordello's live shows. Nothing esteemed producer Rick Rubin could have done on the gypsy punks' recently released fifth album Trans-Continental Hustle -- short of maybe integrating some magical digital cattle prod......

Pasadena is used to its parades, but on Saturday its denizens will be traipsing around Old Town to get an earful of music rather than an eyeful of rose pedals. What's impressive about the annual Make Music Pasadena is how many constituencies the festival is serving over one day. With......

Bring on the hard stuff: Vato Negro, the side project of the Mars Volta bassist and effects pedal fetishist Juan Alderete, makes instrumental rock that sounds like a soundtrack to a war zone. His collaborators in the latest incarnation of this long-running project (which finally saw an album, "Bumpers" released......

So the legend of Sea of Bees — aka Julie Ann Bee, aka Julie Baenziger, aka Jules — goes like this: One day at the Hangar recording studio in Sacramento, the ba...

It's not like José González always traded in soft stuff; the Swedish singer-songwriter with Argentine bloodlines got his start in a Gothenburg punk bands before marrying his velvety voice and nylon-stringed guitar to fashion the sound you probably first heard on "The O.C." His side project with drummer Elias Araya......

In case your lifeline to Brooklyn is broken: Woodsist is a four-year-old record label, founded by Woods guitarist Jeremy Earl, that caters to fans who like things gloriously unvarnished, or who think the Vivian Girls are original. The label has brought a small army of lo-fi loyalists to the West......