Minneapolis pop-rock band Bad Bad Hats have announced the release of their sophomore album Lightning Round, which will be available on Aug. 3. Their first album, Psychic Reader, put them on the map back in 2015, with songs like “Midway,” “Joseph,” and “Fight Song” getting stuck in listeners’ heads. Since this initial release, the band have toured with…

“Girl, please,” says a man wearing a purple jacket and carrying a stylized guitar, “I Big Mac like a Prince.” Could this South African TV ad possibly be referencing any well-known musician? Not really, says McDonald’s…but an industry group begs to differ. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), an independent trade group in South Africa, received…

People from all around the world visit Minnesota every spring for Soundset, the largest hip-hop festival in the United States. But how many venture beyond the State Fairgrounds to discover where our local heroes grew up? Where they shop or eat? Here are a few hometown spots you can go to soak up the culture. Of…

The Minnesota State Fair sometimes likes to call itself the state’s biggest music festival — which is hard to argue, given the mix of big-name Grandstand headliners and seemingly infinite variety of live performances at free (with Fair admission) stages across the grounds. The Fair has just announced this year’s free music lineup, and indeed,…

History was made at the Billboard Music Awards last night, when Janet Jackson became the first black woman to receive the Icon Award. Her extraordinary career, which included collaborations with Missy Elliott; her older brother Michael Jackson; and extensively, with Minneapolis’s Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, was recognized at the Las Vegas ceremony. In her…

The Revolution have announced that they will be hitting the road starting in June and running through 2019. The band have been touring extensively since the death of Prince, to bring his music to fans across the country and now around the world. Minnesota fans will have no fewer than four chances to catch the…

The royal wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle is set to take place tomorrow, May 19. The wedding promises to include many big names, from political figures to athletes and musicians. The couple only invited 600 people to the function, and several well-known musicians are among them. Hoping to watch the wedding? MPR News…

This weekend is Art-A-Whirl: the annual art crawl and de facto music festival that brings thousands to Northeast Minneapolis. At the Solar Arts Building, The People’s Museum for Prince is an art exhibit “designed to commemorate the ways Prince shaped and transformed personal lives.” Curator Emma Balázs is an Australia native and lifelong Prince fan who moved…

It’s hard to set expectations much higher than David Byrne did in announcing his American Utopia Tour, promising his most ambitious stage show since Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense performances. Immortalized in the classic 1984 concert film, the Stop Making Sense shows reached the pinnacle of what artfully executed rock concerts can achieve, all the more impressive because…

Nazeem & Spencer Joles – “Rock Lee” Nazeem & Spencer Joles have made a tradition out of setting music videos at Twin Cities hotspots. This time, Cup Foods (on 38th & Chicago) and the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood get the honor. Nate P. is the perfect videographer to accompany them around town, adding wild visual effects to the cartoon-honoring…