Though Southern Culture on the Skids, who play an 8 p.m. show at Turner Hall Ballroom tonight, sing of mobile homes, box-sized motels, fried chicken and other phenomena mostly associated with the south of the Mason-Dixen, the band would fit right in with Milwaukee’s punk- and rockabilly-loving music scene. Southern Culture’s latest album, Countrypolitan Favorites, collects 15 rowdy covers of songs best associated...

Without Translation, the new album from Milwaukee's Burbank Cartel, is the album I've been waiting for the band to make. It is an album that sounds remarkably modern, remarkably self-assured: It sounds like alternative rock should sound in the early 21st century.

Few bands seem to have more contempt for the structural formality of sheet music than San Francisco's Deerhoof, a trio whose rhythms waver with all the precociousness of lead singer Satomi Matsuzaki's schoolgirl voice. So it was with some irony that the first taste of Deerhoof's latest work was a single released as sheet music well before a recorded version surfaced.

   When Lindsey Buckingham took the stage at the Pabst Theater on Saturday night, the capacity crowd was primed to hear their favorite songs from his days with Fleetwood Mac. After all, this was the guitar whiz who, along with then-girlfrie...

   To many indie rock purists, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James has committed a most grievous sin: He has infected the scene with a sort of jam-band aesthetic. And, based upon their recent sold-out show at the Riverside Theater, such cr...

During the 1980s Sonic Youth brought the fringe a little closer to the mainstream, editing the inspiration of Glen Branca's noise symphonies into rock songs of a most unconventional nature. Nationally recognized rock critic David Browne writes knowingly and interestingly about the band's husband-wife core of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon (who have led an orderly life in the eye of their own musical storm), the sources of the...

The Irish-American group Solas is still playing the same sunny, Celtic music they’ve specialized in since their 1994 formation, but these days they’re doing it with a new voice. This summer the popular band, which first made a name for itself on National Public Radio, welcomed their newest singer, Mairead Phelan. The group plays an 8 p.m. concert at Shank Hall tonight, which will be the first of an unofficial, two-day Irish...

In the UK and their native Australia the drum-and-bass-inflected alt-rock band Pendulum has been a gigantic success story, playing to mass amounts of people at various festivals like the Reading Festival, but thus far they haven’t made many strides toward breaking in American. They hope to change that with their latest tour in support of their driven new album In Silico, which stops the Turner Hall Ballroom tonight at 7:30 p.m.

Sacramento hard-rockers Telsa have been touring off and on since 1984, and after all these years, their hair is for the most part as long and unruly as it was in their heyday. Though it’s unlikely the band will repeat the success of their 1989 power-ballad “Love Song,” the group is set to release its seventh studio album this week, Forever More, and they’re giving it the full tour promotional push, stopping tonight at the Rave...

Alanis Morissette launched her rock career with Jagged Little Pill, one of the best selling debut albums of all time, so it’s no surprise that she’s had a difficult time topping that introduction. Subsequent albums have been released to ambivalence (and, increasingly, outright disinterest) from critics who are still more interested in learning who “You Oughta Know” was really about than hearing Morissette’s thoughts on spirituality. Morissette’s latest, however, returns the ever-burdened singer to the subject matter that made her a...