Pearl Jam is touring (nowhere near Seattle) this month—they’re kicking off a 13-stop trip tonight in West Palm Beach, actually—and that means more official bootlegs of Pearl Jam shows. Announced yesterday, the band will once again make their sets available via high-quality downloads—and on physical, “made-to-order” CDs. (Fans clamored for the latter option after the band’s last tour was released solely in intangible file format.) Even you crazy kids with Verizon V CAST phones......

Think nightlife is getting the short end of the stick in Seattle? Filled with righteous indignation over the way hiphop gets portrayed as Capitol Hill's downfall? We do, and we are, so it was a healthy shock to the system (and yet oddly familiar) to read about this Saudi hiphop group which, to the great chagrin and social shame of the guys' fathers and wives, made it onto MTV Arabia. From the MSNBC story about......

We're trying to test Amazon's new MP3 download service because we hate CDs and iTunes and we love DRM-free music files and compensating artists for their work. Hang out with us a minute here while we try this... Local band Kinski has a new album out and since we felt the last time they released something they were finally on the right track we definitely want to check this one out. Their label is Sub......

There was a time when every urban iPod listener had a choice to make regarding personal speakers. Do you use some pair of headphones from the 80s with the orange foam on them that you found in the spare electronics box in the garage to disguise your identity as an iPod owner? Or do you fly the snowy whites your iPod came with and announce your Apple Cool to everyone on the bus, and......

The first time we saw The Polyphonic Spree was as the crazy band whose drummer had heart problems on Scrubs. A symphonic pop outfit formed in 2000 by the surviving members of Nineties power-pop outfit Tripping Daisy, the Polyphonic Spree was modeled after Seventies acts like the Electric Light Orchestra. Their new album The Fragile Army has been getting a lot of buzz with the first single "Running Away," which sounds like a mix......

There's been a lot of hype about this disc--Clarkson fired her management and pissed off Clive Davis in the process of making it--and you can bet pretty much every reviewer will mention that somewhere in their assessment. We're sheep, so we thought we'd open with that and get it out of the way. We'll be honest. Nobody's going to be giving Kelly Clarkson an award for being a great lyricist, so just get it out......

Amazon says it's going to launch an online music store sometime this year and we say it's about time. We've been putting up with iTunes forever now while secretly hoping that someone in town would come up with a competitor. Microsoft has something, but, c'mon, a Microsoft music store? Obviously no. If they'd ever done a thing online we'd have been on the lookout for Starbucks launching a store, but their inexperience in online retail......

We came across two examples of Microsoft's less-successful marketing attempts yesterday. One from the '80s via YouTube: And one from SXSW a few days ago via BoingBoing: In a rare instance of us supporting The Man, Austin P.D. hauls off a guerrilla marketing posterer for Microsoft Zune on 6th St. at SXSW. I am not sure I heard everything clearly, but I think he said: “We’ll have none of your advertising for your DRM’d crippleware’d......

Marty, who's journeying through Egypt, Greece, and Rome, found this out the hard way when his wallet was stolen in Athens. He called WaMu to report the loss, close the accounts, and move on -- when he ran into trouble: Anyway, I then spent the better part of the morning trying to confirm that the cards were indeed closed. No one at Washington Mutual (WaMu) would help me. They kept shuffling me from department to......

Christopher Lydon's Open Source did a show last night, "One Nation, Under Surveillance," partially inspired by Jonathan Raban's new book Surveillance and his article in the Guardian, "We have mutated into a surveillance society -- and must share the blame." If you missed KUOW's broadcast, you can check out the MP3. You can also check out Raban's contributions to the show's comment thread, including this wrap-up: An afterthought: we need to treat the word “surveillance”......

Joanna Newsom---child-voiced chanteuse/classically trained harpist/hyperliterate woodland nymph---took the stage at the Showbox last night looking just as we expected: with long, flowing hair and donning a red garment more nightgown than dress. Climbing behind her harp, she was totally Holly Hobbie at the renaissance faire. She kicked off her set solo by launching into "Bridges and Balloons" and "The Book of Right-On," both off her first album, before playing a traditional Scottish tune. Cradling......

Tuesday 7th >>> Foreigner at The Paramount. Be warned: whether you're cold as ice or hot-blooded, this is the kind of rock that leads to double-vision. *video: Urgent 8:00pm; $40-$150. The $150 includes a pre-show wine tasting and meet & greet. >>> Bonnie Prince Billy at The Tractor. Will Oldham has been keeping us at arm's length with the "Bonnie Prince Billy" moniker for years. We can pretend it isn't true, but it is.......

Bumbershoot sent out an email this morning announcing a bunch of acts for this year's Smaller, Better Festival. There's even more hiphop on the bill with the addition of local act Blue Scholars and Common Market and Brit chick Lady Sovereign (who we're looking forward to seeing with The Streets soon). Area indie rockers Crystal Skulls and Rocky Votolato will be there and to continue the trend of one Brit band for every couple of......

DCist is screwed in the event of an oil crisis. Not that we're not all screwed in the event of an oil crisis, just D.C. is more screwed. Don't sell your car yet, District resident, a cabbie can kick you to the curb if he doesn't like your address. Not even Metro can save you now. Londonist experiences the London of the future through the wonders of 3D modeling, but while the 3D guys are......

These guys are in haz-mat suits outside of a Bill Gates speech to protest the Digital Rights Management (DRM) capabilities that Microsoft's building into their software. "Defective by Design" is their catchphrase, meaning if you try to play an MP3 file, for example, and MS's software doesn't recognize it as belonging to you it won't play. Defective by design. They're trying to call attention to the fact that while DRM might be functionality that......

The middle of the year is approaching, so we think it's fair to give you an update on the folks we listed as creating some of the best tracks to come out of the area last year. For those of you who missed out the first time, here's a second chance to hear what the Pac NW is putting out into the world. Suntzu Sound - Tickles SunTzu Sound is building on their momentum in......

As far as we can tell the second installment of the city's super cool OnHold program went into rotation over the weekend. No, we haven't spent the last two days on hold with city hall, but it appeared in our RSS sometime over the weekend so we're assuming it's new. You remember OnHold, right? It's a playlist composed of various Seattle-based musicians that you hear if you're on hold with the city or if you're......

Seattlest sat down with a BBC reporter a few weeks ago and said a bunch of incredibly profound (but apparently also unintelligable) things into his minidisk player on the subject of Seattle's threatened two-newspaper town status. That BBC reporter was Matt Wells and he filed his story over the weekend, but it's only got a little taste of Seattlest at the very end where we talk about how in the future you'll pilot your......

Once upon a time about a hundred blog years ago Seattlest tried doing an 'MP3 of the Week' post, um, weekly. Possibly it lasted two or three weeks. Those were glorious weeks, sure, and the mp3's were flying for those few posts, but, of course, the well of decent tracks dried up and the feature died. One of those posts was around the holidays and featured a holiday song by Jay Cox of the Sea......

Whenever a big-time sports team gets in some serious championship contention, local radio starts playing quickie novelty songs inspired by (or exploiting) the team in question. Usually some unknown artist will give a popular song the Weird Al treatment, altering its lyrics to fit the team, and often enhancing the tracks with fake play-by-play announcers and crowd cheers. The earliest example we recall is “Husky Fever,” adapted from "Boogie Fever,” the Sylvers’ #1 disco hit......

Last week Seattlest went to a rave at the never-mentioned Aristocrats. While not quite a resolution for the new year, we're certainly trying to experience some new things, musically and otherwise. It wasn't the most attended party in history, but it was fun to hear some gritty house and ghettotech on a club system and to see that the younguns are still out there for their beat marathons, despite the same claims that plague the......

The past year has been a good one for Seattle. The Decibel Festival, Red Bull Music Academy, and one-off shows brought in talent to a degree that's inconsistent with the actual size of our metropolis. Seattle's producers and DJs also managed to make waves outside the region, with well-received releases and appearances at world-reknowned festivals. Most importantly, the year is closing with strong momentum, setting up next year to further propel the Seattle scene. In......

This woman just can't follow directions. This Ali Marcus. "Send us the url to a freely downloadable MP3 written and performed by you," we said, and she sends in a link to an entire album's worth of Windows Media formatted files. We don't know where she thinks she's going in life with an attitude like that, but might Seattlest suggest something in the "creative field." Ali said in an email, "I am releasing my album......

People will email Seattlest with random crap fairly often. "Please check out my potato collection," or "Just thought you should see my new site dedicated to potato collecting." Some of it we check out (that's a lot of potatos, and they look fantastic in that cabinet in the bathroom) and some of it we ignore. This week we got an email from Jay Cox of local rock band The Sea Navy alerting us to the......

KEXP recently announced that they will be pulling out of the Tacoma area and ceasing to broadcast on the 91.7 KXOT FM band they were using down there. The easy thought on this is similar to the one that appeared when, say, the Bellevue Art Museum announced it was shutting its doors: That is, "Anyone that lives in the area outside of Seattle is lame and doesn't care about art or culture and if they......

In an effort to prove they are still relevant, Real Networks has released a new version of their Rhapsody service. This service labeled Rhapsody to Go allows for a monthly fee users with compatible MP3 players to load as much music as they want onto their portable devices. If this seems similar to the rent-to-listen model of Napster To Go, you would be right, since to our discerning eye, they are exactly the same.(By the......