The eerily dusky orange skies never did stop dumping snow on our plans last night. Instead of screaming and ripping out our hair in a cabin-feverish craze, we clicked over to Raindrophustla, a dependable source for entertainment and strange, local-music-oriented Youtube videos, to see what the Hustlas could offer us in terms of musical distraction. The Seattle blog didn't let us down. A downloadable, punk-spirited, indie rock-rinsed, effin' wonderful mix, entitled "Snowed In," is available on Raindrop--you should immediately left click, save as, extract, and play in your favorite media player, for sanity's sake. The Thermals, Velella Vellela, Raphael Saadiq...yessss. more ›

Idly we wondered, "Move on up where?" as we listened to Velella Velella shake the Sunset Tavern into percussed splinters of funk. But it seemed better not to ask questions. Velella Velella (named for a jellyfish) are Andrew Means, Michael Burton, Jeremy Hadley, Bethany Petersen, and Johanna Kunin, and we'd been meaning to check them out ever since we ran into Andrew at a party and he knew what Zork was. "Gonna move on up," the chant from "Do Not Fold / Do Not Bend," could be a band mantra. Up tempo, upbeat, they took us up where we belong--their enthusiasm is as infectious as the Santa's sack of hooks they're carrying around. They have a whole two albums out now: their Flight Cub EP and Bay of Biscay LP, but they played until they were short on material. The encore was just one song. Imagine a crowd of white Seattle hipsters wanting more dancetime. It could have gotten ugly, but Velella Velella is not about ugly--they are about a profusion of happy non sequiturs and a rock flute and a bunch of piledriving beats on an recalcitrant iPod. (Andrew was fiddling with it, Jeremy said, "iPods! What are ya gonna do?" and either new member Bethany or new member Johanna piped up with, "Buy a Zune!") If you're into it, you can jump down the rabbit hole of musical sources and influences (Curtis Mayfield, DJ Shadow, Timbaland), but the band's appeal is equally the five live people beaming with sweaty pleasure and the keyboards, bass lines, and that classic Fender sound, all producing a (mostly) irony-free, joy-filled groove that you're an equally sweaty party to. Crazy kids. more ›

As previously mentioned, Monday at Bumbershoot was heavily skewed towards the alt-country side of things. We're not sure if that's good programming or bad programming. On the one hand, if you're way into alt-country, just attend that one day of the festival and you're all set; on the other hand, you've got some tough choices to make among Blitzen Trapper, Langhorne Slim, Two Gallants, the Maldives, and Old 97s. We managed to catch some of all of the above, which ranged from alt-country to straight-up country to country-twinged blues rock. The diversity of sound was overwhelming. more ›

It'd be easy to bitch and complain about certain aspects of the Capitol Hill Block Party. Sure, it attracts a bevy of tools who by the end of the night are barely-standing drunken douchebags. And yes, you have to put up with the poorly-scripted political pablum in between acts. Plus, in the aftermath, there's all that garbage. But in the midst of the typical festival chaos, there are plenty of things to praise about this year's block party. Here's our list: more ›

Friday: Catch Common Market (4:30) and U.S.E. (5:30) at the main stage, then skip over to King Cobra for the second half of Truckasaurus (6:00). Take a dinner break (may we suggest eating something protein-heavy?), then get yerself to Neumo's for Thee Emergency at 7:45. After that, we suggest Das Llamas (it's their last set...THEIR LAST ONE!) at 9:45 at the Cha Cha. To round out the night, buy yourself a fancy rum drink at Havana and party until the wee hours with DJ Curtis. more ›

Jack has already mentioned Stars at the Showbox, and Katelyn's put the word out about Grayskul and Hangar 18 at Chop Suey. That leaves us to mention M.I.A. and the Cool Kids at Showbox SoDo, or, if you like things a little more old-school, Mudhoney is at El Corazon. Here they are playing "Hate the Police" in Prague: more ›

We caught about thirty seconds of Library Science's dubby goodness while we got our stamp. The sidewalk outside was filled with people looking for tickets to the show, with some going so far as to make signs offering "big money." We were sorry to miss Velella Velella (we heard they were great), but we had to go hear Kate Simko (who was also great). We came back to Chop Suey just in time for the main event, and what a wonderful main event it was. more ›

We hate to sound cynical and old, but my god! Day two at Bumbershoot felt a lot like a tenth grade field trip to white people's rock and roll camp. We ain't dissing the kiddies, but when we head to the overcrowded, sweat-drenched beer gardens just to be amongst people our age, it's worth mentioning. more ›