While hardcore may not be the most female-friendly genre, there is a long history of punk bands using the stage as a sort of bully pulpit to get their fans to think about such issues as domestic abuse, rape, and sexism. As a young suburban hardcore kid...

Being the first ever electronica band from Burkina Faso, the landlocked African nation formerly known as Upper Volta, is an interesting accomplishment. More intriguing, however, is the overall career of the group’s co-founder and percussionist, Lukas Ligeti. The son of one of the mid-20th century’s singular composers, Gyorgi Ligeti (author of the spooky music from 2001: A Space Odyssey), the younger Ligeti has found...

A band’s first months are a period usually reserved for false starts, the scrapping of potential names and learning how to play together as one. Evidently, Surgeons in Heat—a 6-month-old Milwaukee transplant that’s already played more than 25 shows, recorded and tirelessly promoted itself—wasn’t aware of that. When singer and guitarist Johnathon Mayer left Appleton and relocated to Bay View in September, he and longtime friend and drummer Ryan Rougeux enlisted the help of Milwaukee bassist...

While recording her latest album, Give Up the Ghost, Brandi Carlile continually found new ways to tap the emotions that inspired her songs when she wrote them months earlier. “I would do things like wake myself up at like 6 o’clock in the morning when I was all tired and hadn’t had my coffee and I’m all bummed out and grumpy, and sing a song like ‘I Will,’ because I wanted it to sound crackly, pained and tired...

For five years, Sharon Van Etten wrote music in secret, stockpiling songs she hoped to perform under better circumstances. “I started playing open mics when I went to college, but then I took a break,” Van Etten explains. “My boyfriend at the time wasn’t very supportive of my music and didn’t think I was good enough to perform, so I had to hide it from him...

Open mic nights have long been stigmatized as forums for inexperienced musicians to play off-key cover songs to disinterested audiences at second-rate venues, but local businesses are working to change the image of open mics, and musicians are benefiting from their participation in this unsung format. Over the past three and a half years, bartender Tim “Timber” Buege...

In just the past several years, a support system coalesced around Milwaukee’s music scene, with venues, radio stations, promoters and cheerleaders offering new opportunities and a bigger spotlight for local musicians. Newly nurtured, the music scene flourished in 2009, closing the year stronger than it had been all decade. As a result, 2009 was marked with success stories...

It’s official: Spoon is the artist of the decade. The review aggregation site Metacritic made the call this month after crunching the numbers to determine the decade’s best-reviewed band. “The band topping the list was a surprise to us as well, albeit a pleasant one,” the site wrote. “The Austin, Texas, indie-rock band Spoon may not be the most prolific band of the decade, but they were the most consistently great...

No one is entirely sure of the number of albums released by Jay Reatard and his bands. His record company says it's more than 90. Wikipedia places it somewhere around 60. Reatard isn't certain of the exact number, but says that Wikipedia's discography has some...

The Lab Partners is a new group that pairs Rusty Ps rapper Adam James (known as Phantom Channel) with Milwaukee producer Brandon Birchbauer (The LMNtlyst), but the project isn’t quite the traditional beats-and-rhymes rap excursion that description might suggest. The group was born of impromptu jam sessions between the two musicians, with James laying down drums...