On Sunday night’s Local Show, we celebrated Women’s History Month with a two-hour special dedicated exclusively to women in Minnesota music. This year, a large focus of the show was on hip-hop and some of the under-the-radar acts that started bubbling up to the surface in recent years. In addition to a fiery in-studio performance…

Human Kindness: You Are So Loud That I Want To Die cassette On their debut EP You Are So Loud That I Want To Die, self-described Minneapolitan “rock ‘n’ roll friends” Human Kindness sound like microbudget contemporaries to modern punks like No Age and Joyce Manor. The record is melody-focused, occasionally experimental, and perfectly abrasive, with…

Happy Friday! And I mean that, too—the temperature rose above freezing for the first time in what feels like about eight years and the work week is winding down for the 9-to-5ers. We may actually be able to go outside this weekend. To celebrate (and make that weekend come a little bit faster), slip on…

Events that simultaneously take place in First Avenue’s Mainroom and the 7th Street Entry become mini-festivals, all about the ebb and flow of fans placing bets on where the must-see action will be at any given moment. Last night at Vita.mn’s Are You Local? showcase, all streams were flowing towards Black Diet. The showcase featured…

The funny thing about an artist’s mystique is that it only works if everyone around them buys into it.  And Prince seems especially skilled at keeping up appearances and maintaining an aura of implausible oddness and secrecy. There are no “normal” Prince stories out there; even when he asks a friend to do something relatively…

It all started with Batman, in 1989. I was living in Jakarta, Indonesia; my father worked as a diplomat, so we always travelled around a lot. Tim Burton’s movie was huge that year. Toys, posters, music: I bought them all, including the soundtrack by Prince. I remember being seven and enjoying the “Batdance” video immensely. I thought it…

Over a casual conversation, longtime friends Tommy Dehler and Shaun Hagglund came to the same conclusion: their businesses cater to fans. Dehler runs the Rock N’ Roll Music Sale about three times a year. Hagglund owns Fan HQ, a sports apparel and collectibles store in Ridgedale Mall. Dehler and Hagglund decided to merge their operations…

For more than a year, Stefon Alexander, the Twin Cities rapper who performs as P.O.S., has been looking for a kidney. His musician pals, DoomTree, crowdfunded the cost, raising more than $47,000 for the procedure, well over the initial $25,000 goal. Most musicians don’t have health care. All he needed then was a kidney. The…

EMOT, EMOT A four-man indie band taking cues from slowcore and Americana, EMOT now present their third self-titled LP, loaded with breezy, heartfelt melody and subtle folk twang. The follow-up to their 2011 sophomore release Make You Electric, which earned praise from City Pages and landed on CMJ’s top 200 for the year, EMOT sees the…

In honor of Women’s History Month, we asked a few women who are legends-in-their-own-time on the Minnesota music scene to share their favorite local music memories. Laurie Lindeen, Zuzu’s Petals I have many great Minnesota women-specific music memories.  Playing with Babes in Toyland, L7, Smut, Dutch Oven, Tina & the B-side Movement, and the Lunachicks come…