Courtney McClean and the Dirty Curls: This One’s For Dad Just in time for Father’s Day, Minnesota’s most ribald bluegrass band are releasing a new record featuring suggestive jams such as “When Baby Becomes Legal” (“…I’ll be 54”), “Dirty Talk” (“you bore me with your dirty talk; every time we make love I’m watching the clock”),…

From A Mighty Wind to Inside Llewyn Davis, the 60s folk revival has proven fertile ground for fiction and spoofery. The latter is much in evidence in Guided By Voices‘ video for “Bad Love is Easy to Do,” the lead single from their new album Cool Planet. The video, which premiered today on Funny or Die, casts comedians…

The wall of stars: First Avenue’s massive monument to notable past performers is a landmark in its own right. As the venue prepares to celebrate its 45th anniversary next year, we’re setting out to tell the stories of the artists whose names decorate the side of Minneapolis’s iconic rock venue. First up are the punk-rocking triple…

Happy Friday! It’s a picture-perfect summer day here in the Twin Cities, and anyone who manages to stay indoors until quitting time today deserves some kind of major bonus. Here’s a handful of hot-off-the-presses Minnesota music videos to make the end of the work week scoot by a little faster… Trampled by Turtles With their…

Almost a year to the day CHVRCHES first stepped in The Current studios, the Glasgow electronic three piece returned to the Twin Cities for a show at First Avenue. CHVRCHES

Thursday, June 5 #MPLS Album-Release Show Fine Line Music Café, Minneapolis 7:30 p.m., $10 adv/$15 door, 18+ With a little funk, a little R&B, a little rock, and a lot of influence from the founders of the Minneapolis Sound, #MPLS offer a fresh take on soulful party music on their debut album, HELLO. Sample the…

The Heliotrope Festival is an annual event spotlighting underground and experimental music in Minnesota; this year, the festival celebrates its tenth anniversary with a three-day lineup (Thursday-Saturday, June 5-7) that includes dozens of artists. I spoke by phone with Richard Barlow and Erik Wivinus, who were among the festival’s founders and continue to serve as…

Duluth has always had an active music scene, but in the past few years the city seems to have it going on. The Homegrown Festival grows a little bit larger every year, new talent seems to be springing up left and right, and albums recorded in the North Country are consistently ending up on year-end…

Fans of The Daredevil Christopher Wright, a ten-year-old Eau Claire band that’s won many fans in the Twin Cities, are familiar with the emotive performances of vocalist J.E. Sunde. (Hear the band perform in our studios in 2012.) With the upcoming album Shapes That Kiss the Lips of God (July 15, Cartouche Records), Sunde ventures…

For the first in three sold-out nights at the Cedar Cultural Center, Dan Wilson dove deep into the songs on his new album and a few other fan favorites for a show titled “Words and Music.” True to the title, Wilson eased into his mini-residency by weaving his set together with detailed stories about different…