When your best-known number is a cover of an explicit song about oral sex and your dad is a Saturday Night Live star, the odds of a career as a respectable musician wouldn’t seem to be in your favor. Whether or not Elle King ever set out to be “respectable,” when her first full-length album dropped this year to critical…

Short and sweet, clocking in at just two minutes and 40 seconds, Peter Wolf Crier’s single “Don’t Leave” rings out like a clarion call to fans of the band: Come back. They are back. And they have recaptured the sound and spirit that made us fall in love with them in the first place. The song will…

2015 marks the ten-year anniversary of B-Girl Be, a series of events intended to highlight female contributions to hip-hop. The anniversary will be celebrated with an exhibit at Intermedia Arts, opening today and being celebrated with an overnight opening reception on Saturday night. B-Girl Be was founded in 2005 under the auspices of Intermedia Arts, a Minnesota…

The latest person to be recognized with a star on First Avenue‘s iconic wall is Slim Dunlap, a local singer-songwriter who’s well-known as a member of the Replacements. Since 2012, Dunlap has suffered adverse health in the wake of a severe stroke, and local musicians have rallied to raise funds for Dunlap with projects including…

In February, Jack White realized his dream and got coffee with “Weird Al” Yankovic. Now, Yankovic has stopped by White’s Third Man Records in Nashville to record a bizarre chant in the store’s make-your-own-record booth. The chant is a multi-song medley that Yankovic and his band typically perform live as part of the song “Yoda.” Yankovic’s review…

Bobb Bruno of Best Coast explains how he came to play an Eastman T386, enjoying the feel and sound of the guitar so much that he made it one of his go-to instruments in Best Coast's live set. Bruno also describes some of the main effects he employs when playing live.

At The Current, we love music and we also love books about music. In partnership with MPR’s The Thread, we’ve started a new series we’re calling The Current’s Rock and Roll Book Club. Each month, we’re picking a book about the music we love, and one of our staff members is sharing his or her take on the…

Saturday, June 13 will bring Northern Lights.mn’s fifth annual Northern Spark event to six zones of Minneapolis; according to the website, every post-dusk visitor can expect to see “the city in a whole new light.” For the uninitiated: Northern Spark is a free all-night arts festival that will take place on Saturday night from 9:00…

Our Coffee Break idea today comes from Marissa in Columbia Heights, Minn., who wants some attention given to accordion. So for today's 9:30 Coffee Break, what songs do you want to hear that feature accordion among the instruments? Send us your requests.

Before this week, I’d never been to two concerts on the same day before, much less two concerts by the same band. But on a first-time-for-everything Tuesday, June 9, I got to see two Purity Ring performances. During both the 5:00 and 9:30 p.m. shows, visitors to First Avenue’s Mainroom enjoyed the music, nodding along…