It's a stirring story, one that wraps Justin Vernon's album into a neat package. It starts when Vernon's first band breaks up, and it ends in the Northwoods. Jobless and sick, with nowhere to live and a desire to be alone, Vernon stayed (rent-free) in his father's hunting cabin through the winter. He chopped wood, brooded for a while, and then created a spectacular solo debut. Vernon's For Emma, Forever Ago doesn't merely capture a desperate Wisconsin winter, it captures a man resigned to its snowy, woodland loneliness. That's the true-to-life legend of Bon Iver-the dreariness of life expressed through an album full of dreary optimism, written by a man whose stage name is a play on the French words for "good winter." At least, that's the true-to-life legend that people keep telling . . .

One would think that a 64-year-old blues musician who performs sitting down due to ongoing recovery from a hip broken in 2000 wouldn't be hard to track down. But it took several weeks and numerous trans-Atlantic phone calls before Johnny Winter finally surfaced in a club in a suburb of Rome, Italy. Winter and his three-piece backup band were on the last leg of a southern European tour, having just finished a late-night set performed before what the Albino blues guitarist thought was a fairly reserved crowd . . .

The Supersuckers are the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world. It says so right on their Web site. And album covers. And merchandise. "At least 25% better than the next best band," says Rontrose, the band's one-named guitar player, tongue firmly in cheek. Some time around Thanksgiving, Rontrose and crew will celebrate their 20th anniversary as punk's answer to hedonistic, cowboy-hat wearing, meat-and-potatoes American rock 'n' roll. Twenty years is long enough for the band, born in Tucson, Ariz., to have moved to Seattle before the grunge movement took full steam . . .

Katy Perry’s single “I Kissed a Girl” has just topped the Billboard pop chart, and the 23-year-old’s schedule for the day is booked solid. Later today she’ll be shooting an insert for Blender magazine, doing an interview with Rolling Stone, signing autographs for an hour and a half, then performing as part of the Warped Tour. Right now, though, she’s doing phone interviews through an earpiece as she sits in pajamas and hair curlers, getting her nails done in a St. Louis strip mall. “I didn’t even care where we went,” she says, amused by the unglamorous salon. “I was like, ‘I’ve just got to get these cuticles cut!’ ”

Local band Wooden Robot couldn’t be more mysterious. First, there’s their undeniably spooky sound: Think haunted Old World carnival or, better yet, a vodka-drenched dance party with your dead Polish-babushka grandmother. Then there are the places they usually play: dimly lit bars, crowded houses of friends and dark corners in cramped basements. The band’s performance at Turner Hall Ballroom on July 26, opening for Secret Chiefs 3 with The Demix, will mark a rare appearance in the spotlight.

The band name We’rewolves resulted from a misunderstanding between the group’s members, Eliah Koerner (vocals, keyboard), Dan Perlstein (drums) and Ryan “Smitty” Smith (bass). “I said, ‘Let’s call ourselves The Vampires,’” Perlstein recalled. “And Smitty said, ‘How about werewolves?’ and I thought he said ‘we’rewolves,’ like ‘we are wolves.’” The contraction was subsequently expanded into a song in which the group chants “We are all wolves!” over and over. I interviewed the band before a recent show at Mad Planet. It was raining, and they stood huddled under . . .

Gavin Rossdale was never a particularly convincing tortured soul to begin with, but with each passing year of domestic bliss with his superstar wife, Gwen Stefani, each picture of the photogenic couple and their beaming son, and each celebrity tennis tournament, it became even harder to buy the sun-tanned family man as the embodiment of existential despair. The former Bush frontman gave his old tormented persona one last spin in 2005, teaming with members of Helmet to record a lone album of thrashing, seething alternative rock with a short-lived new band, Institute . . .

The Brahms symphony, considered to be one of the 19th-century com poser’s most emblematic works, gave Lesh a musical appreciation and grounding in a broader compositional discipline unusual to rock musicians. It also led the Berkeley, Calif. native on an impressive musical journey that preceded his chance mid-1960s...

Like just about everything in the city, Milwaukee’s hip-hop scenes are divided by racial and geographical boundaries. Populated largely by college students and graduates, the East Side’s hip-hop scene favors conscious and alternative rap, lionizes Talib Kweli and heralds the ’90s as rap’s golden age. Milwaukee’s grittier North Side scene, on the other hand, is more in the moment, drawn toward contemporary club rap, much of it fashioned after hits from the South. Separated by just a few miles, these two scenes exist with little overlap.

It’s not hard to get Kenny Wayne Shepherd to talk about cars, especially the Detroit muscle machines of the early 1970s. The Shreveport, La., blues musician, in fact, seems to have as much respect for Chrysler and Plymouth products from the V8 era as he does for some of the blues giants that inspired the searing, rapid-fire guitar riffs that have become his trademark. “I grew up with Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars,” says Shepherd, 31. “As an adult, I’ve had the chance to indulge that interest.” Shepherd’s passion for high-performance autos led him to join the 2008 Hot Rod Power Tour, a public driving event sponsored by Hot Rod magazine that left the Arkansas State Fairgrounds . . .