This week on The Disclaimer, WMSE's near-weekly klatch between station promotions director Ryan Schleicher, A.V. Club Milwaukee editor Matt Wild and I, I float the theory that indie-rock is in decline, and explain why that might be a good thing. The once-inordinately influential genre no longer dominates conversations around music and culture the way it did in the mid-'00s, as the very term "indie...

It’s an oddly confrontational image, the vintage portrait of a Polo-clad, pretty young woman with an ambiguous, perhaps vacant stare and lavishly coiffed hair that adorns the cover of Vampire Weekend’s latest album, Contra. “It&rs...

Yesterday I sat on a media/press panel for local bands sponsored by WMSE, where bloggers from Fan-Belt and Muzzle of Bees offered helpful best practice tips for securing coverage. Since the conversation was heavy on procedural and technical practices, though, there were a couple important tips I wasn't able to share about how bands can make the most of their media exposure. Most musicians see...

Last year's SXSW was dominated by a handful of burgeoning bands with major next-big-thing potential. Vampire Weekend, MGMT and Bon Iver were all already well on their way toward bigger things when they played Austin last March, but SXSW was in many ways the tipping point, the moment media cemented the narrative that these were to be the great success stories of 2008. No burgeoning acts as Sout...

By adding an agreeable African-jangle to otherwise pretty conventional, guitar-based indie-rock, Vampire Weekend went from virtual unknowns, to a buzz band and then finally to a bona fide phenomenon—all before they even released their debut album. They’ve won over the blogs, played on “Saturday Night Live,” graced . . .

What is a young artist to make of a post-Giuliani, post-9/11 New York City? Some credit the former mayor’s strategic employment of the “broken window” philosophy in fighting urban crime and blight—along with a police force that, putting it kindly, ignored many of the subtleties of community relations—with helping the city to clean up its act. Many old haunts that once housed angst-ridden musicians are being developed into condominiums and shopping centers (it was, for example, recently announced that the former site of CBGB is being converted into a store for upscale men’s fashion designer John Varvatos). At the same time, the horrific events of 9/11 have created both a newfound sense of community among many New Yorkers and an intense preoccupation with all things safety-related. The grime, danger and sin historically associated with New York have seemingly been wiped off the cultural landscape of the city, creating a new atmosphere marked by a cleanliness that threatens to erase many aspects of the region’s checkered history.

SXSW is pretty easy when you have a media badge. By and large, you�ll be let into any show you want. But there are a few hyped shows where press credentials aren�t enough, and perhaps the most hyped of all was yesterday�s from Vampire Weekend, the preppy Afro-popsters who were compiling binders of New York Times and Spin press clippings before they even put out an album (their ascension has only continued since the album finally dropped.) A fortuitous (and much appreciated) connection put me on the �must get in list� for the show, which despite the name, he told me, only gave me just a slight chance of getting in. And sure enough, the crowd was already well over capacity when I arrived. Two long lines waited; one for people who were on the list to get in (not all of whom would be so lucky), and an even longer one for those who stood absolutely no chance of getting in. I eventually made the cut in time to see opener Bon Iver, the indie-folk outfit which sounded as beautiful live as on record. When Justin Vernon rode his long, blissful falsetto, the audience closed their eyes contently. Perhaps improbably, Vampire Weekend also lived up to their considerably greater hype. They had the crowd singing along, stomping and dancing through their entire set. I still think that they risk a massive backlash once their novelty wears off

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Like so many electronic- and dance-music collectives, the Chicago group Mahjongg is difficult to label. Their new, second album, Kontpab, blends a host of electronic and synthesized textures and sounds, but it also prominently features a strong whiff of Afro-beat rhythms, proving that blog-favorites Vampire . . .