Gary Tanin’s name might not ring a bell with all local rock fans. But as a veteran producer, he’s worked with some of the city’s finest and best-known musicians—including the BoDeans’ Sam Llanas, the Violent Femmes’ Victor DeLorenzo and Genesis’ Daryl Stuermer. Natural Selection gathers 18 songs from...

New Orleans has always been America’s most unique city, nurturing great music from the days of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong through the present. Galactic, a contemporary Crescent City band, has second-line marching band rhythms and staccato horns in its bones. And like the city itself, Katrina or no...

On any sunny day on the beaches of Santa Cruz, Calif., a crowd might gather to hear a true world music hybrid, SambaDá. Formed by Brazilian immigrants and their Yankee neighbors, the band distills the easygoing lilt of bossa nova into a rock-funk format, with carnival rhythms and echoes of more ancient...

On her second album, Jen Gloeckner digresses occasionally into the elastic whiplash chords of rock, or slips into a harsh-tongued vocal emulation of Americana. Mostly, Mouth of Mars is a layered, largely acoustic sequence of soundscapes involving febrile and agitated strings, percussive echoes and surreal...

Mention Cambodia and the killing fields of the country’s Communist regime still come to mind. But since the toppling of the Khmer Rouge and, later, the restoration of a constitutional monarchy, Cambodians have taken steps to reclaim their culture from the devastation wrought by Pol Pot, one of the 20th century’s most...

On his latest studio album, Odd, veteran one-man band Keller Williams sounds perpetually stoned—just the way his fans like him. Williams receives minimal accompaniment on these dozen tracks, and he keeps the arrangements sparse enough that he’ll be able to handle them just fine at his whimsical solo gigs...

At the heart of The Singing Image of Fire is the poetry of Rumi and other timeless literature from the Near East, India and the Far East. Led by drummer Brian Adler, Prana Trio’s music seems inspired by the atmospheric chamber jazz of the old ECM label—a rippling symphony of orchestral percussion and fluid...

Coco Montoya's new album is a compilation of original songs and covers drawn from three albums released in the mid- to late-1990s, after a 10-year run with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. All three CDs received critical acclaim, and his debut album earned him a W.C. Handy Award for Best New Blues Artist, along...

At the heart of hugely underrated singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet’s sound there’s always been a kind of tug-of-war among disparate eras. In turns Petty-esque, Springsteen-like and generally rife with Stones swagger, there’s also an undeniably coy, modern indie slant. Sure there’s “Born to Run”-style driving...

Melissa Czarnik and Eric Mire are among East Side Milwaukee's more verbally dexterous rappers. Their sociopolitical M.C.-ing and the organic soul/jazz vibes on their latest studio projects transfer well to a live setting in one of the city's favorite noncommercial radio stations, WMSE. Saxophone, bass, guitar and...