Phoning the Hall & Oates Emergency Hotline earlier this morning inspired our Coffee Break for today: What songs do you want to hear that contain or that reference phone numbers? Send us your requests.

Rob Simonds, executive director of the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis’s Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, will step down this fall. Under Simonds’s leadership the Cedar has become an integral component of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, using music and cultural events to engage the neighborhood’s growing Somali-American population. Before his involvement with the Cedar, Simonds worked with both Boogie Records…

Eau Claire is looking to add a new arts center to their downtown area. Called the Confluence, the project hopes to contribute new performing, visual and educational arts programs to both the community and the Eau Claire campus of the University of Wisconsin, as well as draw in new tourism and revive the downtown area.…

Last month, the Hennepin County Millionaires Club, a local band from Minneapolis releasing their first full-length album this September, got a chance to brew a beer made expressly for them with the assistance of local brewpub Day Block Brewing Co. Though they are far from actually being millionaires, the band got their name as a joke because…

Tragedy has struck the family of Nick Cave: his son Arthur Cave, 15, died on Tuesday after falling from a cliff near Brighton, England. “He was our beautiful, happy loving boy,” said Nick Cave and his wife Susie Cave in a statement. In addition to his parents, Arthur Cave is survived by his twin brother Earl Cave. Authorities are…

The Lone Bellow, Lake Street Dive, and Dawes are all great bands, and last night the Cabooze Plaza proved to be the perfect setting for all three. First openers the Lone Bellow began their set with the title track from their latest album, Then Came The Morning. The Brooklyn-based band immediately seized the attention of their audience…

As more scrutiny and attention is being placed on a possible name change for Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, for today's Coffee Break, what songs do you want to hear by artists — solo performers or bands — who have changed their names? Send us your requests.

The Ramones will meet the Archie gang next year in “a special comic that brings together the formerly disparate worlds of CBGB’s and Pop’s Chocklit Shop in a hyperspeed bubblegum battle of the bands,” reports Comics Alliance. Sugar Hill Records executive Joseph Robinson Jr. has died of cancer at age 53. The label was founded by Robinson’s parents,…

Bad Bad Hats: Psychic Reader Need a new musical addiction? Well listener, meet Bad Bad Hats. It’s surf-rock riffs that married your favorite pop star, a band with enough ambience to give you the chills but who also know how to craft a song that makes you move. As NPR notes, “impeccable production by Brett…

On Monday night, it felt strange to see a formerly grungy star perform in a theater with plush red seats. Lavish curlicues decorated several box seats above me, and the pre-show music was classical, at least until the playlist switched to rock. I tried not to feel out of place in such an elegant environment.…