The band's first album since 1999 once again mixes unlikely sensibilities: miserablism made vital by gritty forcefulness, scabrousness harnessed in the pursuit of beauty. Even as singer Lou Barlow offers up clear-eyed postmortems of a wrecked marriage, Defend Yourself exudes the live-wire energy of musicians brought back from the brink.

The candy-coated craftsmanship and joy on display throughout Spreading Rumours makes the record ludicrously easy to love -- a welcome dose of summertime from the L.A. pop-rock band, just in time for fall.

J. Roddy Walston and The Business - Heavy Bells, from the new album "Essential Tremors."

nelle Monae's music is often called futuristic. That's partly due to her subject matter: Her breakthrough releases, the 2007 EP 'Metropolis' and the 2010 album 'The ArchAndroid,' form a connected story arc about a robot who falls in love with a human. But moreover, the work of the 27-year-old singer is difficult to classify -- rooted in R&B but pulling from too many different genres to count.

Music evokes strong memories. That's true not just for the music of your generation, but what your parents listened to, too, a study says. Researchers found a strong "reminiscence bump" for music of the early 1980s in people in their early 20s.

The 27th annual Summit Backyard Bash happens this Saturday, and we wanted to give you a preview of the killer lineup along with a suggested Summit brew for each set of music (please drink responsibly!).

Listener Bob was upset about all our cat coverage in the 9:30 Coffee Break, so he recommended we have a dog song themed Coffee Break. What should we play?

MPR Movie Maven Stephanie Curtis reviews Afternoon Delight, a new film starring Kathryn Hahn and Juno Temple.

Adam Dunn is easily one of the most prolific videographers in the Twin Cities right now. In addition to producing conceptual music videos for artists like Longshot (who we featured in this space last week), he’s been cranking out dozens of videos at a time for his Lights and a Backdrop series. I actually had…

The Morning Show's Jill Riley and Heavy Table's James Norton sat down with Nic and Orest Kramarczuk to talk about the history of the festival, details for this year, and they tried out a couple of this year's sausage and beer offerings.