Anyone who has even casually followed Giant Sand leader Howe Gelb's career has been rewarded handsomely. Orbiting around the foundation of desert-rock have been projects veering from collaborations with a gospel group in Canada and a flamenco...

Full disclosure: I don�t much care for M. Ward. I find his songwriting nearly as dull as his listless, smug voice, and I find his invocation of vintage American music to be disingenuous, just another affect he slathers over his flimsy songs. I admit this now not to rip on a performer I�ve mostly held my tongue about for the past half decade, but to give context to my endorsement of the debu...

It looks like that long-rumored Conor Oberst/Jim Jones/M. Ward collaboration is actually going to happen: Monsters of Folk�wow what a name�will release their debut album on Sept. 22, according to a press release sent out this morning that promises this album will bring peace on earth: Monsters of Folk began as folklore of sorts, when James, Obert, Ward and [Mike] Mogis did their first run...

Possibly the most appealing quality about lo-fi folk hero M. Ward-namely that unrelenting pleasantness-could also prove the biggest deal-breaker for new listeners: As Kate Winslet reprimands Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of theSpotless Mind, "I don't need 'nice.'" And so begins Hold Time, Ward's sixth...

M. Ward is familiar. He may, in fact, be the familiar-ist musician of this century. His music is plucked from the furthest reaches of your long-term memory, from songs you can't quite remember, from bands whose names get lost on the tip of your tongue. He swivels from Johnny Cash to Chuck Berry to Roy Orbison, and channels Buddy Holly just as well in his own work as he does in a cover of Holly's "Rave On...

Teasing their upcoming SXSW showcase show, 4AD is giving away free downloads of a mini, five-song compilation, featuring new or recent songs from five of the label's acts: M. Ward, St. Vincent, Anni Rossi and Camera Obscura, who contribute the show-stopping title track to their upcoming album, My Maudlin Career. The track has been floating around the blogosphere for a month now, but it's worth dow...

"World Cafe" favorite M. Ward returns to Milwaukee for the fifth time in about as many years for another return performance at the Pabst Theater on Friday, April 24. A longtime critical favorite, Ward raised his commercial profile considerably last year with She & Him, an improbable collaboration with singer/actress Zooey Deschanel that earned more praise than, say Scarlett Johansson's Tom Waits c...

There are few musicians in today’s indie scene as enigmatic as M. Ward. His latest album, 2006’s critically acclaimed Post-War, came across like a series of bulletins from a long-gone era, with Ward’s voice often sounding like it was channeling the highs and lows of American history. The result was a record that had something of an otherworldly feel to it. Post-War was clearly rooted in the past, but there was something about Ward’s delivery that made the record feel incredibly relevant . . .

A young Leonard Cohen for the degree-holding, NPR-listening, Portland-romanticizing set, singer-songwriter M. Ward has spent much of this year promoting his recent album with actress Zooey Deschanel as the duo She & Him. Ward will kick off a short tour with that project later this month, but . . .

HEALTH @ The Borg Ward Collective, 7 p.m., Thursday. Partnered with the Canadian electronic duo Crystal Castles, HEALTH recorded one of last year’s sharpest singles, the disorient ing, Orwellian “Crimewave.” Left to their own devices, though, the Los Angeles group is more of a conventional noise-rock band than that dark dance track suggests, heavy on rusty guitars and cacopho nous drums.