MTV doesn’t call it the “Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award” for nothing: the late artist was a pioneer in music video, and his 1983 video for “Thriller” is among the landmarks of the genre, voted the greatest of all time by Rolling Stone readers. Director John Landis is now creating a 3D version of the 14-minute…

By strange coincidence, a guitar make that we hadn't covered before was mentioned by two different guitar players within one week: Anthony LaMarca of The War on Drugs and singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle both describe their acoustic guitars built by San Francisco-based The Loar.

It’s October—better known to Minnesota music fans as “Rocktober.” More acts seem to play local music venues during this month than any other: the summer festival season is ending, and fall tours are ramping up. A lot of Minnesotans also believe touring acts try to avoid the Gopher State during our notoriously frigid winters, so they…

What songs with a musical instrument in the title should we play for today's 9:30 Coffee Break?

Every night is a little emotional when you’re the mystical gods and goddesses of pop rock, but Tuesday evening at Target Center in Minneapolis, the members of Fleetwood Mac were feeling particularly soft and fuzzy—towards their fans, and especially towards Christine McVie, the songwriter/vocalist/keyboardist who rejoined the band for the first time on stage since…

Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio says he was “blindingly nervous” to ask Paul Reubens—the comedian best known for his character Pee-Wee Herman—to star in a racing-themed video for the band’s new single “Happy Idiot.” Reubens was down, and the video is now streaming on Funny or Die. TV On The Radio’s new album Seeds will…

With only an hour to go before firing up a livestream from Paisley Park on Yahoo’s Live Nation channel, @3RDEYEGIRL issued a single-word invitation to the music community at large: “COME.” The last-minute event was intended to celebrate Prince’s pair of new albums, which both arrived in stores (and on iTunes and Spotify) on Tuesday. And although…

What songs with grunts, a little -ugh-, do you want to hear for today's Coffee Break?

The other night, while listening to Caroline Smith belt out a ballad at her very sold-out concert with Lizzo at First Avenue, a young woman booty-shook her way into the very small space where my friends and I had gathered and started flailing her arms and thrashing around like the beat had just dropped at…

What do Bob Dylan and flatulence have in common? In their research paper “Nitric Oxide and inflammation: The answer is blowing in the wind,” two Swedish scientists made the comical connection. For the last 17 years, Jon Lundberg and Eddie Weitzberg, professors at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, have been sneaking Dylan lyrics into their…