The Detroit Cobras, from the selfsame city, mix the old and the new, combining the sounds of Motown girl groups with raw garage rock. With their tough chick singer Rachel Nagy (and female guitarist Mary Ramirez), the Cobras are kinda like a certain big-haired British trainwreck minus the trackmarks. LA Weekly said it loud and clear: "No offense to Amy Winehouse, but it was the Cobras [and] Rachel Nagy who first reinvented the 60s soul-pop diva as a boozy, punk-informed, smart-mouthed chanteuse in the late 90s." more ›

Next Tuesday at Neumo's, the elder statesmen of post-rock make a stop in Seattle. Formed in Chicago in 1990, Tortoise are by no means new on the scene, but their instrumentals, equal parts jazz and prog, have always garnered them fans of experimental music and varied instrumentation, as well as folks who just like a lovely melody. Be forewarned: this also means the occasional dirty dreadlocked jam band hippie. Check out the above video for a live version of "I Set My Face to the Hillside," from 1998's seminal album TNT. more ›

Apparently there's a reason we don't usually start the quiz fuelled by a shot of Jack Daniel's -- we give away answers. Sharp-eared teams -- which was most of them -- noticed that we gave away the answer to a Wizard of Oz question when talking about Hugh Rockoff's interpretation of the book as a parable about the gold standard. We didn't realize it until we were reading the answers, and suddenly understood why Brazilian Mietze had wagged their fingers at us. more ›

Last night a record 450 teams packed into the Old Pequliar for Seattlest Trivia. Sadly we had to disqualify 432 of the squads when they would not participate in the mandatory drug testing. The remaining 18 team answered questions on tragic romances, the World Series, John C. Reilly movies, and Project Runway. more ›

Alternative energy in the Pacific Northwest can mean biodiesel, ethanol, nuclear, hydro-electric, pedal power or a sticker on the back of your Volvo complaining about the war, but rarely do we hear much about wind farms. You’ve seen the photographs of wind farms and they always look really cool in a kind of sterile future-topia way and you get how they work: Wind turns windmill, windmill turns turbine = electricity that doesn’t require unsavory political relationships or ass raping the earth. It’s not completely free of drawbacks, of course, and Wikipedia’s got the whole yay vs nay thing covered (it’s clean, it kills birds and trees), but we’re thinking we should get to the Seattle hearing on the Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project tonight to figure out exactly what’s going on. more ›