Happy Friday on this crisp, sunny day! If you’ve been following this feature throughout the past year, you’ll have seen a Pony Rug video pop up about every week or two. But this week, I wanted to highlight a whole stack of work from this series, which really seems to have come into its own lately.…

Juliana Hatfield will be releasing a new album of Olivia Newton-John covers this spring. The album, entitled Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John, will be available in several different forms from cassettes to CDs and variously colored vinyl. A separate 7-inch vinyl, Bonus 7 with two extra songs, will also be available, its cover art created by Minnesota’s…

Minneapolis musician Mark Mallman is no stranger to composing for TV and film. He recently tackled his first taco jingle in an advertisement for Taco John’s. The ad is currently airing online and on TV, and many fans heard it during last week’s NFL playoff games. In the 30-second jingle, Mallman details the new Taco Taco…

New-York-based electro-folk duo Overcoats are on the come-up on the national music scene after the release of their debut LP, Young, in 2017. JJ Mitchell and Hana Elion met during their first week at Wesleyan College and grew to become best friends before turning seriously to music after their graduation. The duo moved to Ireland…

On Friday, David Letterman’s new Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction will debut, with former president Barack Obama as Letterman’s first guest. In a teaser clip from the show, Obama tells Letterman about being pulled up to dance with Prince during the late icon’s White House concert. (Pitchfork) When Low Cut Connie visited The Current’s studio last year, frontman Adam…

Less than two years after a major remodel and reopening, the historic Viking Bar in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood has closed and its building has been put up for sale. Built in 1905 and opened as the Viking in 1959, the bar became a hotspot for West Bank blues and folk musicians during the scene’s explosion…

You’ve told us your favorite tracks of 2017 for The Current’s Top 89, but which albums did you pick up at your local record stores last year? Electric Fetus, Mill City Sound, Down in the Valley, and Flashlight Vinyl told us what albums were their best-sellers of 2017 — both in vinyl and CD. Electric Fetus…

Smooth soul singer Alexander O’Neal’s career has spanned over 40 years. Newly-released archival recordings shine a new light on the early career of an artist who became integral to the 1980s Minneapolis Sound. Update 1/9: In a tweet, O’Neal revealed that the tracks were released without his involvement. Sorry guys but I had no involvement in…

For obvious reasons, purple is the color most closely associated with music in Minneapolis — but an artist associated with another bright hue is coming to U.S. Bank Stadium to sing the National Anthem at this year’s Super Bowl. This morning, the NFL announced that pop star Pink will do the pre-kickoff honors. The game…

Welcome to the residency bonanza of January 2018! We made it to the New Year, and with its first month comes a slew of residencies: weekly shows helmed by locals Metasota, jeremy messersmith, Charlie Parr, the Cactus Blossoms, and Andrew Broder. We’ll be posting photos and a brief recap of several of the series’ first nights.…