“If you ask most people what art’s meant to them in the past few months, they might not have an immediate answer,” said Duluth mayor Emily Larson. “But if you asked them about what music they’ve been listening to, what old favorite books they’ve been rereading, what podcasts have been informing them, I think you’d…

Music has the power to make or break a mood. Take a busy, traffic-filled drive to work and set it to Clair de Lune. Suddenly a hectic morning commute turns into an invisibly choreographed cityscape, people and cars flowing gracefully around one another in an active and intentionally designed universe. The influence of an effective…

The Twin Cities music scene has a new chart-topper in its ranks. The interdisciplinary jazz drummer and producer L.A. Buckner scored a number one record on the iTunes jazz chart at the start of August. The album, titled BiG HOMiE, is a heterogeneous mix of jazz, gospel, hip-hop, and avant-funk that is just as reminiscent…

After a years-long effort, the Minneapolis recording studio formerly known as Sound 80 has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, joining the ranks of New Ulm’s Hermann Monument, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s row house in St. Paul, and the Aerial Lift Bridge in Duluth. Located at 2709 E. 25th St., the studio was…

Lupine is a plant with long flowered stems, commonly in Minnesota gardens and the wild. Luppen is the last name of a singer-songwriter named Jake, best known as the frontman of Hippo Campus. Lupin is his new solo project. We’re pleased to share “May,” the falsetto-laden first track from Lupin’s self-titled debut album, set for…

Double Grave is a band I, along with many others, became acquainted with in a way that feels completely natural to the Minneapolis music scene. Sometime in 2017, I descended some rickety stairs into an unfinished basement where a packed room of music fans nodded along to Double Grave’s distorted, shoegaze-influenced breed of punk. That…

Whether your desk is tiny or gigantic, chances are you may be spending more time at it than ever this summer. As many of the artists who submitted to National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk Contest can attest, it’s a great time to have a project, and for some, that meant participating in this year’s contest.…

The White Castle on 32nd and Lyndale is itself part of Minneapolis history. In 1986, the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission worked to protect this then 50-year-old piece of the city’s architectural history by having it saved from demolition and entered into the National Register of Historic Places. The literal white castle will soon house another…

“When it all started happening, I had reached a point — the first time in my life — where I was making a living solely through doing sound and other music projects,” said Ian Sutherland, “and had just kind of come to the realization that I’d finally reached that little goal of mine. And then,…

After a sold-out homecoming show in Minnesota last December following the release of his first album and a long string of tour dates, Ondara told Andrea Swensson, “Looking at my journey and my trajectory, where I’m from is just so far that there’s just no way…I can’t go back. Forward is the only place to…