Ever since The Bad Plus attracted way more attention than most of their contemporaries could ever dream of over a decade ago with their cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the unexpected cover has been the surest way for a jazz act to garner buzz outside of the usual jazz circles. That's proven to be both a blessing and a curse for the genre. While it's introduced new listeners to a form...

"This next one is by country legend Robert Schumann," joked the opera singer Andrew Wilkowske as he introduced his arrangement of the Romantic German composer's “Ich grolle nicht.” In the translation by Kelley

In the seven years since The Darkness disbanded, Justin Hawkins got sober, his brother Daniel formed a new band and the world was forced to move on from its sudden obsession with power chords and leotards. Or so it seemed. During its performance at The Rave Saturday night, the reunited, re-energized Darkness

"I didn't know it was possible for a person to throw up 10 times," Youth Lagoon's Trevor Powers told the crowd at Turner Hall Ballroom Thursday night, apologizing for a case of food poisoning he'd picked up on the road. The 2...

The final chapter on rock history might yet be written, but meanwhile, it looks as if Radiohead could be the music's last superstar band. In his linear, blow-by-blow account, American music writer Mac Randall traces the band's emotional energy to its...

Today Pitchfork ran a thoughtful but dubious analysis of Radiohead's Kid A that argued, artfully but rather arbitrarily, the CD was "the last of its kind." Kid A turned out not be the music of the future, but a relic of the past, more in line with dinosaurs like Dark Side of the Moon or Loveless as try-out-your-new-speakers, listen-with-the-lights-off suites. By the time Amnesiac offic...

Perhaps jealous of all the buzz Radiohead gets whenever that band so much as offers a free JPG download on its Web site, Beck has upped his online game this summer, unleashing an onslaught of freebies, almost all of which are good enough to charge for. He re-launched his site in June with a "Record Club" where a different band is enlisted to cover a classic album in day, beginning with his own tak...

The common knock against the White Rabbits? "They're derivative." My retort? "So what?" The Walkmen may have mined this territory first, but White Rabbits are the ones coming away with more gold. On their second outing, It's Frightening, White Rabbits wear their influences on their album sleeve�that the record was produced ...