Tarik Moody doesn’t have much regard for genre boundaries. As a DJ for 88.9 Radio Milwaukee, Moody spins a little bit of everything, and as a principal behind the concert series Unlooped

Wye Oak introduced themselves promisingly with their 2008 debut If Children, a charming if occasionally overly timid disc plucked from the quaint apple orchard as another co-ed hush-pop duo from Baltimore, Beach House, but Wye Oak's upcoming album, The Knot, is grand improvement�a louder, more purposeful record that refashions Galaxie 500's starry-eyed haze, Among My Swan-era Mazzy Star's acid-was...

There's something disingenuous about the modern indie-folk scene, a movement dominated primarily by young city dwellers who grow (fashionable) beards, don (stylishly trim) flannel and hang out in the woods on the weekends (between touring cities). Their instrumentation says Americana, but their calculated, sometimes deliberately abstruse execution is coded to catch the ears of hipper, more educate...

How does a scrawny Swede like Kristian Matsson so perfectly capture the Appalachian spirit of bluesmen like Mississippi John Hurt? That's part of the mystery that makes the music of Matsson's project, The Tallest Man on Earth, so captivating. With a voice so reedy is makes Bob Dylan sound like Pavarotti, Matsson fingerpicked his way through last year's earthy Shallow Grave, an album that earned hi...