Anyone who has seen Lucius live can tell you just how mesmerizing they can be, with co-frontwomen Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig merging their voices and standing in perfect symmetry, often coordinating their appearance right down to the color of their socks and the cut of their blunt bangs. Wolfe and Laessig have been performing together for…

Pornonono: Yes Pornonono’s new “Mornonono” single from their new Yes EP feels like new wave met electropop and this is what happened. The five-piece has found a way to meld those twitchy electronic sounds into the warbling bass lines and processed guitar work. The wailing pop vocals aren’t just another part of the electronic soup that Pornonono create,…

A crowd of wet bucket hats swelled for J. Cole’s set that closed out a day of hip-hop Sunday at Soundset: the sold-out crowd at Canterbury Park stuck through a full day of cold rain to hear it all. Soundset’s line-up had far more big names than years past, including J. Cole, Ludacris, Ice Cube,…

Jack White is a poet, the world discovered over the weekend when the rocker published a 19-line poem titled “Music is Sacred” on his Third Man Books site. “The melody of the human race,” writes White, “is a song that never ends.” (Rolling Stone) Art Garfunkel has lashed out at Paul Simon in a new interview with…

St. Paul business owner Rob Hahn first heard about El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero in a senior theology class at Notre Dame. It was in that class that he learned of the Archbishop’s campaigns to fix social problems and his subsequent assassination. The Archbishop’s story struck a chord with Hahn—literally—and shortly after, he composed a…

Weirdly, the news of B.B. King’s recent passing did not spark in me the immediate sadness or regret I might have expected. It wasn’t just because news reports suggested he had died on his own terms—at home, in hospice care—or because, at age 89, he had lived a life of fullness and success far beyond…

Happy Friday! The sun is out, the weekend is packed with all kinds of outdoor fun (including the Memory Lanes Block Party and the just-sold-out Soundset), and the gears are starting to crank in the local music scene as everyone gets ready for another busy summer. Why not celebrate our good fortune with some hot-off-the-presses new…

One of Duluth’s most unique musical events, the Blood on the Tracks Express, took place on Thursday evening on a train, and you’ve probably never heard of it. The sold-out Blood on the Tracks Express is part of the Duluth Dylan Fest, a celebration of Bob Dylan’s birthday, making this its fifth year on the rails. The…

Daft Punk have released limited-edition blue-and-orange skateboards, available for just $280. (Pitchfork) That reported “gentlemen’s agreement” to reunite Oasis turns out to have been not so much of an agreement after all; according to Noel Gallagher in an interview with TMZ, a reunion simply isn’t in the cards. (Billboard) B.B. King‘s daughter Shirley King will host a free…

As the Replacements head off on a short European tour, Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson granted a long, career-spanning interview to The Guardian‘s Michael Hann, who calls the ‘Mats “one of the ur-bands of American rock—beloved by peers including R.E.M. and disciples such as Nirvana.” Here are nine great quotes from the interview. “There was a game that…